Procter & Gamble was losing value to unsalable products, items damaged, expired or returned across its retail network, and at P&G's scale even small improvements meant large savings. Vivaldi Group built a technology-enabled sales force strategy that gave retail account teams the data and tools to find and fix unsalables account by account, concentrating effort on the 100+ accounts with the highest impact. The strategy generated $2.7 million in annual savings and secured more than 75,000 incremental retail facings.
Procter & Gamble was losing significant value through unsalable products, items that were damaged, expired or returned across its retail distribution network. Across a portfolio the size of P&G's, even marginal improvement in unsalable rates meant substantial cost recovery.
Vivaldi developed a technology-enabled sales force strategy that gave P&G's retail account teams the data and tools to identify and address unsalable issues at account level. It targeted the 100+ retail accounts with the highest unsalable impact, focusing sales force energy where the financial return was greatest.
The strategy generated $2.7 million in annual savings, secured more than 75,000 incremental retail facings and improved supply chain performance across the 100+ accounts.
| Client | Procter & Gamble |
|---|---|
| Industry | CPG |
| Region | United States |
| Starting point | Value lost to damaged, expired and returned products across the retail network |
| Vivaldi scope | Technology-enabled sales force strategy, account prioritization, account-level data and tools (commercial strategy, business strategy and transformation) |
| Focus | 100+ retail accounts with the highest unsalable impact |
| Outcome | $2.7 million annual savings; 75,000+ incremental retail facings; better supply chain performance |
Unsalables are usually treated as logistics waste. In practice many of them start at the retail account: how product is ordered, rotated, displayed and handled. That makes the sales force, which manages those accounts, the team best placed to reduce them, if it has the data to see where the losses are.
P&G’s distribution network is so large that unsalables were spread across thousands of points. Treating every account the same would have spread effort thin; the opportunity was to find the accounts where most of the value was lost.
Vivaldi built a technology-enabled sales force strategy that put unsalable data and tools in the hands of P&G’s retail account teams, so each team could see and address the issues in its own accounts. The strategy ranked accounts by unsalable impact and concentrated sales force energy on the 100+ accounts where the financial return was greatest.
Fixing the causes at those accounts also freed shelf space, which the teams converted into incremental facings for P&G brands. Vivaldi’s article on the causal link most growth strategies miss explains why commercial levers like this compound.
P&G is one of the growth strategy case studies with measurable results Vivaldi has published.
Procter & Gamble partnered with Vivaldi to recover value lost to unsalable products across its retail distribution network, deploying a technology-enabled sales force strategy focused on the 100+ accounts driving the largest unsalable impact. The strategy generated $2.7 million in annual savings, secured more than 75,000 incremental retail facings, and improved supply chain performance across those accounts.
Procter & Gamble is one of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods companies, headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, with brands sold across household, personal care and health categories in markets worldwide.
$2.7 million in annual savings and more than 75,000 incremental retail facings. Vivaldi’s technology-enabled sales force strategy gave retail account teams the data to find and fix unsalables at the 100+ accounts with the highest impact, which also improved supply chain performance.
By ranking accounts on unsalable impact and concentrating sales force effort on the 100+ where the financial return was greatest. That kept the program focused on the accounts where most of the value was being lost, instead of spreading the same effort across the whole network.
Because many unsalables start in how product is ordered, rotated, displayed and handled at the retail account, which is the sales force’s territory. With the right data, account teams can remove the causes and turn the recovered shelf space into incremental facings.
That unsalables reduction pays twice: once in recovered cost and again in shelf space. Giving account teams account-level data and focusing them on the highest-impact accounts turned a logistics cost into $2.7 million a year in savings and 75,000+ new facings for P&G.
