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[EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a replay of the Sales Game Changers Panel Webinar hosted by Fred Diamond, Host of the Sales Game Changers Podcast, on June 10, 2020. It featured sales leader Dominic Strada from Nestle]

EPISODE 242: Nestle’s Dominic Strada Shares What Sales Professionals Must Do To Serve the Changing Consumer as Re-Openings Speed Up

Listen to Dominic Strada’s original Sales Game Changers Podcast.

DOMINIC’S TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “If you’re not willing to change based on market conditions or whatever changes that day, you’re going to fail. Consumers are shopping different, they’re looking for different things. You’re dealing with different things internally whether it’s on the supply side or the people side so ask what do I need to start, stop and continue with my products, my route to market, my customer communications, my customer interaction and my people interaction.”

Fred Diamond: Dominic was a guest on the Sales Game Changers podcast almost a year ago today, it was one of my favorite interviews, it was almost like taking an MBA class. Dominic, it’s great to have you here. Nearly 50% of the people watching us on today’s webcast said they’re having difficulty connecting with customers. It’s interesting, you guys are on the front line, Nestle.

Again, you’re based down in Rosslyn, Virginia but when everything kicked in you were supplying food to the groceries and the Walmarts of the world. We’re going to talk today about some advice for sales professionals and you’re a top sales guy in the industry. Tell us what it was like, you were right there in the heat of things, you deal with the channel, you deal with supply chain, again you run sales for the Gerber product line and the Boost product line. Give us some thoughts on what it was like when things got started and then we’ll get to some of your advice on how you can be a better sales professional today.

Dominic Strada: I’ll be honest, it was chaotic because all of a sudden you started to see order patterns in frequency that candidly you’re not used to and most companies are built on platforms where you keep a certain number of days of supply in your warehouses to meet the daily demand and all of a sudden you start burning through what you think is 60 days of inventory in a week and a half and you just cannot manufacture and keep up with that. Fortunately we saw what was going on elsewhere and we increased our days of supply by over 30 days and that’s what helped keep our products in line. It’s different industries, if you’re talking of food business, for example our baby lines you can’t just produce and immediately send out, there’s safety checks that you need to go through.

If you deplete your inventory then you’re going to have an out of stock on the shelf for a couple extra weeks than you were experiencing. It was chaotic, it was making sure that you can get enough trucks, enough labor, enough raw material to keep your factories going. You were also concerned every day, “Was there a case of COVID that was going to be in the factory?” Because if that happened you could take out an entire shift, you could shut down an entire factory. That’s really what the major concerns were and our conversations with our customers moved away from things like promotions and price to demand, meeting demand, simplicity. How do we get our trucks in and out? How do we get our pallets in and out? How do we get to the store quicker, that last 100 feet? How do we make it easier for the consumer? Everything was different overnight because of what we were experiencing.

Fred Diamond: Talk about your customers for a second. Again, tell us who the customers were you were dealing with. You don’t sell directly to end users, I presume but you have the channel. One thing that we’ve been talking about over the course of the last 10 weeks that we’ve been doing four webcasts a week has been the types of conversations that you need to have with your customers. In a lot of cases these are customers who might be out of business, some of our people who are watching today’s webcast or who’ve been on past webcasts sell to the entertainment space. We had a supplier who sells food to theaters and obviously there’s not much going on right there. We’ve had people from sports teams who sell tickets, no one’s going to be in stadiums this year.

Tell us what your conversations were like at the time with some of your customers, I’m just curious. Did you have time to be empathetic with the major food distribution channels or were you on the phone around the clock trying to help get supply onto the shelves?

Dominic Strada: A lot of that was driven with conversations with our customers because we needed to make sure that we understood what their needs were, we really saw what was going on from their warehouse to the store. A lot of it had to do with there was stuff in the warehouse that wasn’t showing to the store because of labor which is why you’ve seen a lot of retailers condense their hours. I would say the level of communication with our customer base dramatically increased during this window because you’re working together at that point. It was as I said earlier, “How do we get the most product to you with the frequency that we need?” We’ve had various conversations so you look at scaling down your product lineup, less but being stocked with those, a lot of conversations went in there.

With some of our product line that has a government subsidized component to it like baby formula, making sure that that’s available for mom because she comes in with that voucher, she needs to buy that product, it needs to be in store so you can’t miss on that. Making sure that we met those needs really drove a lot of our conversations and I’ll say this, the retailers were really focused on, “How do I meet the demands of the consumer in a scenario that I haven’t experienced before?” I don’t remember anytime that I went into a store and saw entire gondola shelves clear from one end to the other unless they were stripping it to redesign. The other side of this was you were also trying to deal with e-commerce, you saw a lot of consumers switch to different platforms.

You said we don’t market directly to the consumer, we do, we have the Gerber store dot com where consumers can buy directly from us and that dynamic was taking shape at the same point. There was a lot of things about ultimately the consumer had a new demand or a new perceived demand and everybody from the retailer/manufacturer was trying to figure out, “Exactly what do we do to optimize all the assets to meet the need of today’s consumer which changed?” Today’s consumer was totally different than the consumer 24 hours before.

Fred Diamond: One of the reasons why we wanted to have Dominic on the show is he truly understands buyer behavior, he truly understands what intrigues and what motivates the end consumer for things and again, you also have a great understanding of the channel as well. Someone says here, “Talk to us more about the conversations you had with your customer then versus now.” One of the interesting things is we’ve seen things evolve and we were talking before the show about what it’s like to go into a supermarket. Four, five weeks ago it was horrible, people were afraid, the people who worked there were afraid, some of the smaller supermarkets cut back on their staff, like you said, there were rows and rows of products that weren’t available and limitations and court wasn’t available and then it was available. Tell us how the conversations with your channel, the people who sell your product and they do online as well but the critical channel that you deal with, how have those conversations evolved over the last couple weeks and what are they now?

Dominic Strada: I think the conversation in regards to dealing with the customer really hasn’t changed, the topic has changed. If you think about a historical relationship with the customer, you’d be going in there and talking a business plan from promotions, pricing, so on and so forth. When the pandemic hit and the mass buying started there was only one real focus, it was logistics. They didn’t want to promote, it wasn’t about dragging more consumers to my box which is really what most retailers want to talk about all the time. This was more about, “How do I make sure I have the most product I possibly can have so I meet the demand of my consumers that are walking in today?

Now we’re starting to go to phase 2, shopper behavior as changed as you referenced. What the consumer was looking to do six months ago is different from today, today it’s really about value and convenience. You now have 38 million + people who are out of work that weren’t six months ago so your conversation six months ago was premiumization. A lot of the conversation today is value and simplicity, “Get me in the store, get me the best value I can at the best price and by the way, I don’t want to have to come back to the store more than maybe once a week, once every other week.” I know from myself, from a personal standpoint I used to go to the store every couple days, whatever I felt like that day I was going to the store and buying. That mentality is changing because a lot of people want less physical contact or minimize physical contact and that has dramatically changed shopping behaviors along with the impact of supply chain.

The pressure on raw materials, ingredients is enormous right now, you see all the things in the news about beef and pork and so on and so forth, those trickle down to everything you buy. Your availability as a company to be able to source raw material that’s converted into your finished products is one of the other things that’s going to ensure supply and that’s still an ongoing conversation. First it was, “Ramp me up, meet my demands”, now we’re getting to, “How do we optimize?” We’re starting to see things simplify but there’s these certain categories or certain items that we’re seeing surge and staying. What’s our plan to address that and keep a higher level of inventory on those? Now as the consumer mindset is changing, how does our business plan need to change from what we built in January to what we need to build in July because consumer is different in July than they were in January? That’s really where the conversation has changed.

Fred Diamond: Someone said, “I’m not really familiar with the food distribution channel. What is the relationship typically like between a manufacturer such as Nestle and the channel?” Not online but typically I know you mentioned premiumization, you talked about things like that but is it a partnership, is it a tense relationship historically or is it teaming?

Dominic Strada: Most from a product supply standpoint is probably your most integrated relationships with your customers. There’s the commercial teams that are all about pricing differentiation, things of that nature but the logistics operations all have the same goals which is, “Let’s get the most product to the store, to the consumer so we meet all of our goals and satisfy the shopper.” Those relationships usually aren’t tense, there is pressure when as a manufacturer you’re unable to meet those needs. Then yes, because ultimately a consumer going to retail not finding what they want, there’s a high probability they’re going to leave and go somewhere else. Shopper goes somewhere else, has a good experience, there’s a good opportunity, they continue to use that channel for more other share of wallet than they did if they were able to find what they wanted in store #1.

That’s where the whole dynamic comes to play, if everything is operating and you’re meeting the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that you established with your customers from a supply chain, everything’s good. Fortunately as I said, we, because of our size and scale, put a lot of time and energy on logistics and it is and continues to be one of our separators. You and I talked to this before we got on, the world has changed, six months ago e-commerce provided a platform for anybody who wanted to sell something to be able to sell something, now the challenge is can you actually get the ingredients and raw materials you need to be able to build a sustained pipeline to meet the needs that I’m going to help you create? If you can’t answer yes to that, your access via an online platform doesn’t matter and that’s where I think you’re starting to see a shift a little bit too, it used to be, “Big companies are bad.”

There are benefits to big, there are benefits to small too, but it’s starting to come back to, “Big companies do provide value from a reliable supply chain with reliable ingredients tested in many different facilities to make sure they’re safe for everybody.” That’s helped us out tremendously in the last couple of months.

Fred Diamond: I want to also let people know that for a long part of your career you were running sales in North America for the Purina product line. What are you focused on right now? It’s interesting, when we started doing these four webcasts a week, the challenge was the pandemic. Everybody’s home, a lot of people weren’t used to working from home, we just talked about some of the global challenges, a couple weeks ago we’ve had some new challenges in our country as well and we’re having to be sensitive and different as business and sales leaders. How has that affected you and what are your priorities right now as a sales leader? Right now, this week of June 10th.

Dominic Strada: I don’t think it ever changes when you’re a leader of any kind, people are your #1 asset and I think situations like the last three months – and there’s two different situations we’re dealing with there, we’re dealing with the pandemic and then we’re dealing with some of the social unrest issues, and you’re dealing with everything in an environment that’s totally different than we used to have here. Not in an office environment, you’re remote, being in contact, keeping that cohesiveness, that is the biggest challenge for us as an organization. You went through phase 1, how do you deal with a different business dynamic which as we just talked about what was going on at retail, when your people are no longer able to communicate the way they used to either with the customer or internally?

They’re dealing with a lot of things on the home front that are completely different especially if you’re caring for an elder, a child, you have school aged kids, whatever. Then you have all the issues of the last couple weeks which bring some more social issues and what that does to part of your population that makes up your sales organization. We’re really focused on making our environment where people want to work. Ultimately we’re only as good as our people, it’s a time for organizations to actually prove that and that’s really what we focus on every day because nothing else matters. If I don’t have the team focused, committed and where they feel they can do their job, especially with all the noise that’s going around them, we’re going to fail.

Fred Diamond: Dominic, we have a question here from LinkedIn and the question says, “What’s been the biggest surprise for you or something that you’re most proud of that’s come out of the situation that we’ve been dealing with?”

Dominic Strada: I’m proud of the way our organization has stepped up and met the needs of our associates and of our consumers. I’m proud to say I work for Nestle, I look at all the different parts of our organization and Nestle has quite a diverse product lineup and you probably touch it every time you go up to every single aisle of a grocery store or of Walmart. We haven’t lost sight of who we are as an organization, we haven’t lost sight of our people and we haven’t lost sight of how we meet the needs of our consumers. I’m probably most proud of that. From a personal standpoint it’s being there for my team because again, you and I were talking about this briefly, this would not be the year I’d want to be a brand new people leader because you’re getting all kind of things thrown at you that truly challenge you as a leader to think, react and treat much differently than we probably would have historically.

If you look at things just from a pay perspective, we handle things where even if you had the most remote symptom, immediately you’re stay-at-home and it was paid stay-at-home for the extended period of time. It wasn’t about, “You’ve got to take your pay time off”, it was, “We want to do what’s right for the organization, we want you to be the safest because we want you back.” That to me is why I’m proud of to work for the organization that I work for because of the way they handle the people.

Fred Diamond: How have you changed as a sales leader in the past couple weeks? Have you seen an things that you’ve noticed how your interacting with people differently, how you’re leading the team, how you’re dealing with customers? Have you changed at all in the last couple months?

Dominic Strada: You can’t get comfortable in a style or a way of doing things, you have to be nimble and be able to react. I don’t think I’ve changed per se, the things I do and the way I may go about getting a result are probably different – in fact, they are because I’m dealing with a different dynamic with the way I interface with my customers and my team. The way you take a look at just assessing every day every moment of the day, “What do I need to do to win?” If you think you’re just going to keep repeating what you do day in and day out, you’re going to fail at some point so you have to be able to react. My old mentor used to always say – it’s a military statement – “No plan survives first contact with the enemy” and that’s just the reality. Anything you think about day to day you may think you’re going to go in and do X, things happen and when things happen if you’re not able to adapt and change, you’re going to fail. I think that’s been the mentality that I’ve had for years so the way I go about doing things may change but I don’t believe the way I’m approaching what needs to be achieved has changed.

Fred Diamond: The question comes in here, “What does Dominic expect of his salespeople?” Like you just said, the world’s changed, it’s different than it was and you said a couple of times that a lot of it goes back to a lot of the standard sales leadership strategies and techniques but again, you have a sales team around the country in North America. What do you expect from them today?

Dominic Strada: I expect the same thing I expect from them every day, do their jobs. How you do it in the time frame you’re able to do it, you have the flexibility. A lot of folks are now because of their childcare things working later at night doing things with their kids during the day, that’s fine. Make things work, all of us have things we’re responsible for, you get paid to do a job. I get paid to deliver very specific KPIs within the company, I have people hired to do very specific jobs with very specific KPIs, I still expect you to do it. Now, you may need different resources, you may tell me, “I need help here, here and here” that you didn’t in the past, we’ll work through that but the expectation of what the end game is doesn’t change.

We need to win in the market which means grow market share, we need to deliver against our growth numbers and you need to do that in a financially proper way while meeting the needs of our customers and our consumers. Those don’t change, those are like your commandments. The way you go about things can modify and change but I don’t expect anything different of them, I do expect my leaders to be a little more engaged, a little more hands-on because keeping that contact between the team and the cohesiveness is critical at a time like this.

Fred Diamond: How long has Nestle been around for? Over a hundred years, right?

Dominic Strada: Yes.

Fred Diamond: Well over a hundred, but again on March 12th all of a sudden everyone’s had to deal with new things. What has the company done or how have you helped your sales professionals? It was probably a pretty fast-paced intense experience to be a sales professional in your organization prior to this but now people have kids at home and we’re approaching summer time and every camp has been cancelled. Companies are starting to open the doors back to bring people in but there’s a lot of things out there. How are you helping your sales professionals deal with the additional stress or anxiety? They may not be showing them to you.

Dominic Strada: I think that goes back to some of the things we talked about, flexibility, empathy and trying to help out any way you can. I think it also exposes another thing when you look at it and you say, “What do we need to do going forward?” I think the work environment is going to be changed, I don’t know if we want to say forever because nothing in this industry is ever forever, but I think the dynamic of remote working from home or office-based, whatever office-based means is going to change at least for the next few years dramatically. I think as companies, everybody is evaluating that. What is the new norm going to be, what is the new level of flexibility going to be? Jobs that you thought were office-based or needed to be office-based, how has that dynamic changed if say, the key individuals can no longer come in because they’re dealing with things that you just mentioned?

I’ll be honest, that’s a challenge we’re all dealing with right now and I’ll give you an example. What we call our commercial development team is a link between the sales teams and the marketing teams and product supplies, so on and so forth. I call them the heart, all the information comes in and gets pushed back out. Not sitting in a hub with all those different disciplines nearby makes doing their job difficult because their job relies on communication between different groups and you’re seeing a stress of added conference calls. Because you’re not face-to-face you can’t have quick conversations to solve quick issues, they turn into 30 minute conference calls so the pressure on the time of your day because you have to add all these topics to get things done and they become more and more 30 minute calls layered on top of each other is going to be one of the things we’re going to have to tackle as an organization really quick. That for me is one of the major changes.

Fred Diamond: We have a question that comes in here which is, “What type of salespeople are you looking to hire right now?” We know that travel has decreased over the years and we know that people have been going more to virtual, everybody now at least understands virtual using Zoom and GoToMeeting, Webex, etc. If you were hiring new sales professionals – again, it’s the middle of June, 2020 – what would you be looking for in a sales professional moving forward?

Dominic Strada: I don’t think that would change, Fred, to be honest. The examples I may be looking to see how you would deal with something might change. For example, teamwork is one of the key things, working within team environment. That might change in the way we ask some of the questions in what we’re looking for because it may be, “How do you deal in a virtual team versus your personal interaction?” Customer communications, you’re going to have less time more than likely, at least in the short term, to be able to say, sit in front of Walmart and have a conversation. Everything we’re doing is like we’re doing today via video and you have less time to get your point across so your ability to communicate, you look at sales professionals, give me somebody who’s got the ability to work in a team, is driven, can think – thinking outside the box is an overused term.

What I like to say is, “If I give you a blank sheet of paper and I said I need us to win at customer X, could you fill in the plan or do you need the plan filled in and then you’re an executor?” I don’t want executors, I want thinkers, I want people who are passionate to win, committed to the company being better who can work in a team environment and can communicate. Those four things, they’re not going to change. I don’t think all of a sudden because of things that are going on skill sets, people you’re looking for, that doesn’t change. If anything, you could say, “Do the issues of the last couple of weeks put a little ore spin on diversity?” but as an organization that’s been a focus of ours for years. I honestly don’t see anything changing. I might want to pull very specific things out related to the new work environment when we actually get into an interview process.

Fred Diamond: Someone just sent me a quick question here and said, “How is Nestle practicing diversification?” You just mentioned a second ago that it’s not something you thought about three weeks ago, it’s something you’ve been working on for years. What are some of the things that Nestle is doing in that area? A little bit off topic here, but just curious.

Dominic Strada: I think if you’re in a major organization, if you haven’t been thinking about this it doesn’t mean you’re going to do everything right so let me be honest here. Does Nestle have room for improvement? Absolutely. Have we been actively engaged in trying to be better? Yes, we’ve made major leaps. For example, my old division in Purina started Women in Leadership which has become a hallmark of all of Nestle and you can see the number of women who have dramatically risen to higher levels in the organization because of programs like that. Our support for specific social causes and the way we as a company are loud and proud behind that. We can get into various debates whether that’s an area a company should be a part of or not but to be active to say, We want to look more and more like our consumer base so we have what’s important to our consumers built into our future plans” has been and will continue to be a key platform for us as an organization.

Fred Diamond: Someone asked a question here, I don’t know if it’s joking but I’ll ask anyway. “What are your recommendations for treating pets right now with products?” Again, I mentioned you led sales for Purina for a number of years and I feel so sorry for the dogs who are getting walked 6-7 times a day and it’s probably less now.

Dominic Strada: The pro of this was all the dogs were in shelters, from everything I’m reading most of the shelters are wiped out of dogs. I was with Purina for 28 years, my dog is a Pro Plan dog, I highly recommend Purina Pro Plan or Purina One for your dog. I think the new innovation that Purina just came out on the cat food side, Pro Plan Clear where if you’re allergic to cats this food will actually help either to lessen the severity or may eliminate that completely. You’ll see cat ownership be important going forward, I’m very proud of that organization and what they’ve done for pets and people for years.

Fred Diamond: Dominic, we have a question here. Again, you’ve been with the Nestle organization or the supply chain for close to 30 years.

Dominic Strada: 32 now, Fred.

Fred Diamond: I know that there was an acquisition at one point.

Dominic Strada: I was Ralston Purina for my first 12 years of the organization and then Nestle for the next 20.

Fred Diamond: We’ve got a question here from actually someone who’s from Saint Louis, where you lived for a number of years, thank you, Paul. The question is, “What are your recommendations for new college grads who want to go into sales as they execute their job search?”

Dominic Strada: I would say come on in. Go to the companies’ web pages, all of the jobs are posted. If you go to nestlecareers.com, we list all of our openings. Now, make sure you pay attention to what the requirements are, you don’t want to go out there and apply for a brand marketer job that requires an MBA and years of experience and think you’re going to get it. You’ve got to make sure you understand what are the entry level positions, I started out as a sales intern before my senior year in college and I came out and I did the district sales representative which in our organization now is a territory manager role or retail sales rep, depending which company you’re going to be in. Learn, come in at the ground level and you and I talked about this the last time, build your foundation properly, be patient.

You cannot go from kindergarten to senior year of high school, you have to make your steps along the way and those steps are different than they traditionally use t be. I’m not saying you need to follow a corporate ladder step, what I am saying is you need to build your base of knowledge. There’s a lot of things that go into selling today and I would say selling is a little bit of everything rolled into one. You need to know finance, you need to know product supply, you need to know a little bit of marketing, you need to be part psychologist because you’re dealing with people, you’re dealing with situations and you’re going to be in situations nonstop that require you to think quickly and come up with solutions quickly.

If you don’t give yourself the time to learn and develop and understand the fundamentals of what the consumer is looking for and how a store operates or an online platform operates, whatever the selling media is, you’re going to fail. That’s a challenge and I’ve got my sons in the organization, I’ve got two nephews in the organization. You have to start out at a jog, it’s like anybody who plays sports. What do you do when you start? Practice, usually jogging first lap, loosen up the muscles, then you stretch and then you go into whatever you’re doing. That’s the same mentality you need to bring when you’re coming out of college and starting the career, you need to learn what the heck your business is, you need to learn the company you’re working for, its strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and the same thing with the competition and of your consumer and customer. Give yourself time.

Fred Diamond: There are a couple questions that come in related to that. “Dominic mentioned habits.” Let’s be real specific, Dominic, what are some of your sales habits that you’ve inculcated over the years that you would strongly recommend that the sale professionals – I notice we have some people here who are not necessarily sales professionals but want to get better at sales. What’s a habit or two that you’ve deployed over the years that has helped you? Give us two or three habits that you’ve put into play to help lead to your success.

Dominic Strada: I think one of them I just gave you, don’t think sales is just about executing or one stream of knowledge. The more you know about the total operation, and I think this goes for any role whether you’re in sales, marketing, finance, it doesn’t matter, you have to be more of a general manager. In today’s environment to succeed you have to be more of a general manager than a one stream expert because your career is going to shift and the demands of your position are going to change based on things that are happening in the marketplace. Learn enough to be dangerous, I like to say, in all the areas. Know who to bring in when you need to have a more technical conversation in a specific area but you have to know those things so you can change your plan. This is something we talked about also earlier, do not come to work and think you’re going to just keep executing the same plan day in and day out. Very good book, and I’m not a big book reader, Who Moved My Cheese? is the easiest 90 page read that really just outlines what you need to do. Don’t be comfortable.

You have to go to work thinking, “Somebody is going to take 100% of my business away from me” every single day. What are you going to do to defend it and what am I going to do to grow it? Those are habits I bring to work every single day, you have to be thinking about your products, your customer and how you can service them better and how you can win. Unfortunately we live in a world where everybody wants to get a trophy for participation. For the new people coming out of college, you don’t get a trophy for participation in the business world, you either win or you lose, it’s very clear. So, you have to come to work every day with a winner’s mentality and a mentality that, “I need to do something today that reinforces my position” or take something from somebody else because if not, they’re trying to do it to me.

Fred Diamond: Someone asked here about marketing. Nestle is obviously a huge marketer, the Gerber product line, how are you now going to be marketing? I presume you do TV advertising and other places online, maybe you an talk for a second or two. I’m going to ask you for two final things that people can do today but how are you moving forward with the marketing? Again, you’re marketing to ‘mom’, typically, a new mom who buys a baby food. We’ve seen the commercials shift over the last 6-10 weeks and it was the same piano playing through almost every commercial for a couple of weeks there or the violin, potentially. So, talk a minute or two about the marketing of Gerber products for the next 3-4 months potentially and then give us your final thing of what people should do.

Dominic Strada: As I said, know a little bit to be dangerous. You’re asking me to be a marketer, that’s where it’s a little bit to be dangerous. I think marketing has changed dramatically in the last 5 years, the digital changed the marketing, started years ago. You see a move from TV to one-on-one personalization being able to communicate, for us, with ‘mom’ in a one-on-one situation so we’ve moved away from a lot of mass media into more digital targeted campaigns for years and that’s just as accelerated. It’s about being able to instead of shooting with a shotgun you can shoot with a rifle and then just accelerate it. I don’t see us moving away from that, I think you’re seeing a little bit of the mass media sprinkled in because you still need name recognition and you also have people buying your products.

It depends who you’re targeting too, so my Boost product line, that consumer still watches a lot of TV and reads the newspaper and things of that nature, we’re going to communicate to that consumer through traditional media. Today’s mom, millennials, early 30s, digital savvy. I don’t think they’ve ever looked at a newspaper, for one thing so they do things differently. Depending who your target audience is and if I’m a marketer know who you’re targeting and why and how you reach them, then make sure you have a message that’s compelling once you figure that out. It does no good to figure out how to reach them if when you do, your message doesn’t encourage them to look twice at your item, give it a try or understand why they should buy it, that’s the most I can give you on marketing.

Fred Diamond: Curiously, what is the message right now? What is the Gerber message to the young mother marketplace?

Dominic Strada: Our message hasn’t changed, it’s always doing everything for baby. In the short-term that was making sure our product was available for mom when she went to the store. You need that formula, we need to make sure it’s on the shelf. You need your baby food, we need to make sure that’s on the shelf so that doesn’t change. Now it goes back to, “Okay, what does mom want when she gets to the store? If she wants to be in and out quickly then we need to make sure we have the pack sizes that allow her to do that. Help her make her decisions with multi-packs and family-packs that have a wider assortment in there. She can go in and grab one and get out of the aisle as quickly as possible. Meet her needs online whether that’s through a retailer’s site or our site, she’s probably got a lot of questions and so on now that her home environment has changed, w have an online system where she can talk directly to one of our coaches and nutritionists and things of that interest. It’s all about being able to adapt and answer mom’s questions whether she’s in the store, dealing with a colicky baby at midnight, there’s a way for her to communicate with our company.

Fred Diamond: Dominic, you always give us such great information, you’re such a wealth of knowledge. Give us one thing that the salespeople watching today’s webcast or listening to the podcast in the future, give us one thing they should do today, specific, to be more successful as a sales professional.

Dominic Strada: The easiest thing you can do is a simple exercise, the old start, stop and continue. If you’re not taking that type of inventory of what I should be doing, what I should keep, what I should change, what I should modify, based on the new market environment you’re missing big time because it goes to what we talked about. If you’re not willing to change based on market conditions or whatever changes that day, you’re going to fail so you really need to take a look at it’s a new environment, consumers are shopping different, they’re looking for different things. You’re dealing with different things internally whether it’s on the supply side or the people side so what do I need to start, stop and continue with my products, my route to market, my customer communications, my customer interaction and my people interaction?

Fred Diamond: Dominic, thank you so much. To all the people who watched today’s webcast, thank you.

Dominic Strada: Thank you, Fred.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo

The post EPISODE 242: Nestle’s Dominic Strada Shares What Sales Professionals Must Do To Serve the Changing Consumer as Re-Openings Speed Up first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.

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EPISODE 159: Nestlé’s Dominic Strada Shares How Selling Brands Such as Purina and Gerber Has Dramatically Shifted

DOMINIC’S FINAL TIP TO EMERGING SALES LEADERS: “Never get comfortable. If you always have that mentality that either you don’t know enough or somebody can take away what you have today, you’ll lose your edge. Never think you have a problem solved long-term and never think you have all the relationships that you need in order to be successful.”

For the first time we’re interviewing someone from Nestlé.

We’re talking to Dominic Strada, he’s the Head of Sales for Nestlé Nutrition.

Prior to this role he was the VP for Pet Specialty and e-Commerce at Nestlé Purina Pet Care.

Find Dominic on LinkedIn!

Fred Diamond: We’re doing this interview today from the Nestlé headquarters just right outside of Washington DC, there’s a lot of buzz when Nestlé made their announcement they were moving to this area. I know people are very excited to hear your story, so why don’t you tell us a little more about you that we need to know?

Dominic Strada: I’ve been with the organization now for 30 years, it’s the only company I worked for. I started as a sales intern while I was still in college and have held numerous roles. More importantly, I’m a father to three children, I’ve got two sons, 25, 27 and a 13 year old daughter, all very successful in their own right. It’s a new chapter of my life as I moved to Arlington about 4 months ago to start running this business.

Fred Diamond: You said your son also works, you have people in the family who’ve worked at Nestle as well?

Dominic Strada: Yes, I actually have a son and a future daughter-in-law who both work for the organization and believe it or not, I have a nephew who works in the Purina division also. I’ve got quite a few family who work for the Nestlé organization.

Fred Diamond: Before I ask you what you specifically are responsible for – obviously I’m going to guess everyone listening to the podcast is familiar with the brand of Nestlé – but why don’t you give us a little bit of a scope into what the brand of Nestlé is and a summary of all the things that you guys sell?

Dominic Strada: That would take the entire podcast. I think whenever you ask somebody “Nestlé “, the #1 thing that comes to their mind is usually a candy bar. The interesting part is we don’t even own a candy business in the United States, that was divested about a year ago. Our biggest pieces of the business are our water division, our coffee division which would be under the Nescafe or Nespresso names, pet food is huge and that’s under the Purina banner, and then for example the division that I represent is known more for the Gerber brand or the Boost brand than it is for the Nestlé brand. Nestlé is a mix of many brands and the reality is you can’t go up and down the aisle of a grocery store without running into one of our products.

Fred Diamond: Why don’t you tell us specifically what you sell today and tell us what excites you about that?

Dominic Strada: I actually represent two different parts of our organization. I’m responsible for the Gerber Baby business and then on the flip side I represent Nestlé Health Sciences specifically representing their Boost line and Carnation Breakfast line of products. What’s exciting? There’s very few purchases within a grocery store, for example, a mass merchant store where there’s emotion tied to the category and I’ve had the ability to work in two of those. Working in the pet space or working in the baby space is much different than if you’re going down the canned vegetable aisle, so to speak, because you are truly responsible for making those decisions of what’s right and what’s not right for either the pet or for the baby of your family. There’s a little different emotion tied in that purchase and that’s what actually makes it very fun and exciting.

Fred Diamond: Again, you spent almost 30 years in the pet side. Most of the people we’ve interviewed on the Sales Game Changers podcast came from tech, media, professional services. Why don’t you tell us some things about selling pet food that we may not know?

Dominic Strada: I think for sales in general it doesn’t matter what you’re selling. You’re still confronted with the same business opportunities or a tax whether you’re selling widget A, B, C or D. You need to understand who your competitive set is, you need to understand what you’re solving from a consumer proposition, what’s that white space, the idea that your product is filling for the consumer? Once you have that, to me it’s an awful lot like sports. I grew up playing right through college, playing football and you need to understand the game, you need to understand who you’re up against, you need to understand their strengths and weaknesses and you need to know how to attack them. It’s the same basic philosophy whether I’m selling baby food, pet food or frankly if I went to any other company and sold item A, B, C or D.

Fred Diamond: We’ve interviewed people who’ve worked for big brands in technology: Oracle, Red Hat, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services. We recently interviewed a guy named Mike Williams who worker for Coca-Cola for a large part of his career. Tell us what it feels like to be a VP of sales for a big brand like Nestle.

Dominic Strada: That’s an interesting question because that really has changed over the last 5 years because the market dynamics have changed dramatically over the last 5 years. Over my 30 year career you could actually see the world of retailing in different phases. When I first started, it was really the transition from mom and pop or independent grocery stores into your big box grocery retailers – the ones that you go down and I grew up shopping in with my family. Then Walmart entered the space and that created a cultural change in the industry where there was much more focus on logistics, route to market, landed cost, things of that nature.

Then in the last 5 years, e-commerce has completely changed the dynamic of retailing. When you ask me a question, “What does it feel like to be responsible for a big organization” there’s pros and cons that come with that. In the “old days”, let’s say before 5 years ago, a lot of your competitive set was controlled because there was cost to enter. In order to get into Walmart, in order to get into a local grocery store, so on and so forth, there was a cost to doing business that only certain sized companies could more than likely foot in order to get on the shelf to be available to the consumer. That’s gone in the world of e-commerce.

What’s interesting in the world of sales the way I see it, getting to 95% of your goal is usually pretty easy. It’s that last 5% and then whatever accretive value you need to add if your company goal is grow 3%, 4%, 5%, whatever that number is. That’s where the difficult part happens. When you’re now up against hundreds if not thousands of competitors versus 3 or 4, if those small competitors just do a little bit of business it makes it much more difficult. There’s pros to being responsible for a big organization, there’s cons because you already have a big base you’re working off of. If you’re a small company, you’re working with a small base so any little wing you get has a dramatic impact on your sales year to year, you can say, “I’m growing 20%, 30%, 40%”.

When you have a base that’s $1, $2, $3 billion dollars or more and you’re fighting to grow that 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% there’s a different challenge. If the small company was sitting in front of you and says, “But you get access to people I don’t get because of your size and scale and your ability to influence”, yes. The flip side is there’s things they have and plays they can run that can generate very small gains that develop big wins for them that I can’t execute, because they have zero impact on my business.

Fred Diamond: Who do you sell to today? Again, you made the shift from pet food to health products to Gerber brand, if you will. Because of e-commerce and the shift and things like that, maybe 10 years ago or a big part of your career you sold to the food chains, the Kroger’s, if you will. Who do you sell to today? When you wake up every day, you have a large team of people around the globe, who do you sell to? Who’s your big customer?

Dominic Strada: Who do we sell to today in the world of Omni-channel? Everybody. If you looked at percentage business, yes, the big guys are still the line share of the business. We do a very large percent of our business at Walmart and traditional retail outlets. Specifically for baby food lines it would be grocery and mass retailer so Walmart, Target, the Kroger’s of the world, your local grocery store. For example in this market the Harris Teeter, Safeway and so on and so forth, but we do business everywhere. I’m also responsible for our across-border business. We have a large business that we do in places like China, we’re opening up Southeast Asia, India, Japan and South Korea this year. The world of retailing is changed, the consumer can buy anywhere at any time and my group needs to make sure our product is available anytime, anywhere at the value that consumer is looking for.

Fred Diamond: We’re going to talk about your sales career in a second but I just have a couple more quick questions. Again, you’re now responsible for the Gerber Baby brand, what is the Gerber Baby brand? Sure, everyone knows the Gerber Baby and those things, we’ve all probably eaten Gerber Baby food at one time in our lives. Tell us what that brand looks like and what are some things that we may not know about it when it comes to sales.

Dominic Strada: It’s an honor, actually to represent it because there’s very few brands that you could go and have a conversation with a customer and more than likely the person sitting at the other side of the desk ate your product at some point as they were growing up as a baby. In the early part of the Gerber lifecycle up until about 10 years ago, more than 8 out of every 10 dollars done in the category were in a Gerber Baby product. That’s very interesting, it’s humbling in a way, it’s challenging in a way because there’s only so much you can grow versus how much you can lose because of your market shares.

The Gerber brand today is in a state of transition, as we were moving our offices to here we were also looking at our brand heritage and what we need to do. Frankly, what mom’s looking for in today’s environment and what mom’s looking for today is dramatically different than what she was looking for 5, 10 years ago. We are dramatically changing our product offerings, our goal in Gerber is to always make sure we’re at the front end of innovation and providing mom with the product she wants today. We will be coming in with some exciting innovation over the next 6 to 9 months that will really meet the needs of today’s millennial moms.

Fred Diamond: Can you give us a little bit of insight into that? You said mom and I’ve taught MBA marketing classes for a large part of my career, I always tell the students that if it’s on a shelf it’s usually mom who’s making the purchase. You said mom has changed, the consumer has changed in the last 5 years. Is it organic, where are the changes coming?

Dominic Strada: Let me try and answer the first question, mom. I think I use the word mom where it can represent either mom or dad. That’s the other change with e-commerce, it’s not just mom going to the store doing the shopping because dad’s doing a lot of it at his computer also. That represents mom or dad – and I got off track and I forgot what your question was, I apologize.

Fred Diamond: Where’s the change, what has the change been? You said 5 years ago it was different than where it is today.

Dominic Strada: It’s really what they’re looking for, the dynamics of ingredient-based products. I think there’s a lot of information that is out there on the internet, some of it’s accurate, some of it isn’t accurate. As I talked at the beginning part, it’s an emotional category. They want to do what’s right for their baby and there’s buzz words out there right now that give people the impression they’re doing the best. For example, you throw out the word “organic” that to me is one of the most confusing words in retail space today, in marketing space today. “Organic” is going to tell you what’s being put on the fruit, vegetable, what the cow is eating, so on and so forth, it doesn’t tell you what’s in the soil.

Mom could be going to the store, buying an organic apple or banana, mashing it up and thinking she’s doing the absolute best thing for her baby not knowing that the heavy metals or other things that are in the soil that have transferred to that item are at a content level that’s really not good for her baby. That’s one of the things we pride ourselves on and as people look at it and say, “Big companies are bad”, I think they need to do the research to understand the safety mechanisms that big companies go to. Gerber has very limited suppliers we can go to to purchase our fruits and vegetables, for example, because of our standards. We actually deal with farmers who’ve been with us for 4 generations, so we have soil practices that are put in place. We know everything about not just what’s on it but what’s in it and why it truly is doing the best for your baby.

Fred Diamond: Let’s talk a little more about your career. Tell us how you first got into sales as a career.

Dominic Strada: That’s interesting because if you asked me when I was in college did I want to be in sales, I would have said no, I would have told you I wanted to be in marketing. Did I know what that was? I had no idea. I honestly had no idea what sales was until I did the sales internship job and then what I found out, it’s a little bit of everything. One of the things about sales is you have to be almost a general manager. You have to be able to create programming at customers or so on to sell your product, you have to understand the finances, you talk an awful lot about margin and profitability and things of that nature, you have to build sales plans, you have to work internally to identify what are the white spaces that we need to fill in our portfolio gap.

What I like about sales, two things: it’s a combination of multiple worlds and it’s different every day. That is the one thing in 30 years I can honestly say, I don’t think any two days is the same and never get comfortable thinking you’ve got something solved. You could have a great customer relationship and then all of a sudden the customer changes their structure or they get purchased by somebody else. You can never get comfortable, you can never think you have the solution.

What’s bad today could be good tomorrow, what’s good today can be bad tomorrow and you need to be constantly looking at what’s happening in your space and be in constant movement. That’s why I reference it’s a lot like sports, think of it like a soccer game. The ball’s in play, you better be moving and you better be thinking, “Where do I need to be now, with the next pass” so on and so forth.

Fred Diamond: What were some of your first few sales jobs and where did you go to school, by the way?

Dominic Strada: I went to school at the University of Rochester. My first few sales jobs, as I mentioned earlier, I started out as a sales intern for Ralston Purina. What they did is they gave you their introductory position which was a district sales representative, just in a much more scaled-down version. Came out of college, I went to work with Purina as a district sales representative and then progressed my career from there through account manager, team leader, so on and so forth. If I look back at my career and you ask me, I’ve done probably 18 or 19 roles in my 30 years. If I look at what’s been the most impactful, there’s those roles that really form the foundation of different competencies.

Being a district sales representative really taught you how important understanding your product and your competitor’s product is because you needed to understand how things fit on the shelf, you needed to understand what was important to store managers so you could build your stories. Understanding how the store worked transitioned to how I became a key account manager and then was able to develop the master plans for how we would win with that customer. Then you get into people leadership which is a whole different dynamic and there’s frankly no class that prepares you to be a people leader.

There are different things whether you’re talking professional, emotional, it’s just a lot of different things you have to deal with when you’re leading people. That first people leadership role, for me it was a district manager, really starts to give you an idea that not everybody can be managed the same and more importantly, you can’t manage people the way you want to be managed. You need to lead them the way they want to be led.

Fred Diamond: We’ll talk about the challenges in a few seconds but tell us about you specifically. Again, you said you held 19 different roles in your career with Nestle. Tell us what you’re an expert in, tell us what’s your specific area of brilliance.

Dominic Strada: I don’t know if I would ever call myself an expert in anything. I think what I bring and what’s been my strength is I like to say I’m dangerous in a lot of different areas. I know enough about things like logistics, finance and so on and so forth where I can go in and engage our customers. Frankly, I do more selling internally these days than I do externally. I can engage stake holders from multiple perspectives or provide a different view on how to attack an opportunity because I have a level of knowledge – not an expert knowledge, but a level of knowledge. The key is understand once you gain agreement in an area, then bring the people in who are experts. I think understanding that you don’t have to do everything and knowing how to delegate and who to involve is probably the greatest strength that I have.

Fred Diamond: Dominic, you’ve been with this company for close to 30 somewhat years, you must have had some amazing mentors especially with a company as globally successful as Nestle. Why don’t you tell us about an impactful sales career mentor or two and how they impacted your career?

Dominic Strada: I have to say one of the things that made me stay here for 30 years is I’ve been blessed to work for some incredible individuals who have taught me something along the way that made who I am today as a leader. If I had to look and say out of all the people I worked for, if I had to pick one, the person who used to be the Head of Sales for Nestle Purina for the bulk of my career, John McGinty. He was my mentor that I really tried to emulate and the follow up would be why. I think John was one of those people who truly cared about people. You hear that and you see that on too many vision statements or mission statements that people are our #1 asset, you don’t find a lot of people who walk the walk and truly believe people are their #1 asset. John not only tried to do each and every day what was right for the company, he truly did each and every day what was right for his team and the organization. To me, if you can put others in front of yourself, that’s a style in a leader that I like to emulate.

Fred Diamond: What are the two biggest challenges you face today as a sales leader? Again, you were in the pet specialty space for the large part of your career, you moved over into the Nestle Health Sciences and the Gerber Baby space about a year ago, I guess?

Dominic Strada: Yes, I moved over in April last year.

Fred Diamond: Just curiously, why did you make the move? Just wanted some new challenges?

Dominic Strada: When I looked at where my career was in Purina, there really wasn’t an opportunity to take that next step. Over the next 2 to 3 years, I had some opportunities outside of Purina but still within the Nestle world open up for me and I’ll be honest, the decision to switch probably happened 5 years ago when I made a move to go to Saint Louis. Where I said I would never live in St. Louis, that I would never work in the corporate office was things that I had said for years, the fact that I went to St. Louis and did a corporate job and loved both of them really opened me up to say, “Okay, I was wrong.” Instead of saying I won’t do something, let me go and do it because if I found out I loved this and I’ll probably love the next job, too. That opened up my opportunities within the Nestle world and things just worked out where there was a great opportunity to come be the Head of Sales. The interview process went well and 8 months later I’m very happy I made that move.

Fred Diamond: What are the two big challenges you face as a sales leader?

Dominic Strada: I think I mentioned one of them earlier, greatest challenge as a sales leader today is the market dynamic. E-commerce is changing the way we do business, so one of the things I need to be prepared for is to make sure my assets align with the new world. That’s not just a financial asset, that’s also making sure I have the human capital and I have my people trained to work within the new environment. That is by far the biggest challenge from a business perspective, the other one deals with people. You’re now seeing in today’s younger generation a different mindset.

What’s important to them today from flexibility, freedom, staying close to home, areas like that is different and they also have different expectations for what their career path should be. When you’re leading a people organization, meeting their needs because I’ve always found I have a very simple leadership style. It’s company, team, you, then me. Every decision we make better be for what’s best for the company so if you’re running one of my teams and you make a decision that’s good for your customer but it’s detrimental to the overall company, that’s not a good thing. Team comes before the individual, one of the things that’s lacking in a lot of organizations is the ability to have the fair and honest conversation. If you put the team over the individual, you’ll have those difficult conversations so that everybody is doing what they need to do for the team to succeed.

I’ve always been big on “you before me”, train your people, get them where they want to be and if your people are successful, A -they want to do a good job for you, B – by default, you will be successful. I don’t invest a lot of time into myself and the internal networking, I like to let my team’s results play out for how we lead.

Fred Diamond: Again, you’ve worked basically for the same entity for about 30 somewhat years and you’re working for one of the biggest brands on the planet. Take us back to the #1 specific sale success or win from your career that you’re most proud of.

Dominic Strada: I saw that question and I don’t know if I can nail that down to one. The reason I would say that is I never want my greatest sale accomplishment to be in the past. I always want to keep leaning forward and understand what’s out there, because my greatest one should be my next one. As I’m looking today at how we’re transitioning and transforming the Gerber business, we’ve had a few years of difficult sales. We’re completely transitioning product line up positioning so I’m in the midst of the last 6 months being out in front of every customer, walking them through our new journey.

To me, my greatest accomplishment will be delivering what I need to deliver this year and then my greatest accomplishment next year will be delivering what I need to deliver next year. I don’t get caught up on looking at anything in the past. There are things you’re always proud about, you always walk out and you’re like, “I feel good today.” I think what’s challenging is identifying did you win or did you lose in an environment as you go up the corporate ladder. It was easy when I first started out, I knew when I left that store, that account, did I win or lose today. Today I’m in a meeting, I may walk out thinking it was a great meeting, I may walk out thinking it was a horrible meeting. You really don’t know the results to that to 6 to 8 months later when you start to see did anything gain traction? Is anything being implemented? A lot of great things happen in meetings, there’s a lot of commitment made. Execution versus a good meeting are two totally different things.

Fred Diamond: Before we take a short break and listen to one of our sponsors, we haven’t touched on the Nestle Health Sciences side and you also are responsible for sales for the Boost product line and Carnation product line. When you go to any supermarket right now, there’s a whole row of protein, powders and shakes, all the competitors you talked about. You’ve been selling in a competitive space from day 1 but before we ask one final question and take a break, what can you tell us about the Health Sciences side that you also manage? The Boost product line or the Carnation product line.

Dominic Strada: I think it’s similar challenges. That space as you mentioned has got a lot of different variants coming in. The space that we really play in is more towards the older adult, so a lot of the protein powders and drinks are really targeting a little younger folk than what our Boost line is. We really go head to head with one other competitor in that space and the strength of that business is really done outside of the space I represent. It’s the medical detailing, we have a medical sales force that deals with the medical community and really talks about the nutrition and the value and what that product does for that older consumer that needs it.

That’s really the key anchor to the success of the Boost brand, and the other side of that business is Carnation, another heritage brand that everybody understands, recognizes. That’s under a dramatic transformation too, as you look at taking a brand that’s iconic in a singular space and is going to be brought in its reach as we go forward in the next 18 months. I think what you’ll see across all the Nestle divisions right now, there’s a focus on leading edge innovation and leading every segment that we compete in today versus being a fast follower.

That’s why you’ll see some of the acquisitions that we as Nestle have done in the last 18 months or so are all these cutting edge whether it’s in the coffee space, the pet space, the alternative protein space and frankly, in our baby space and health science space because health science made a big Atrium acquisition. There’s a lot of things that are happening to make sure we’re leading across our entire group.

Fred Diamond: Before we take a short break and listen to one of our sponsors, again you originally thought you were going to move into marketing. Did you ever question being in sales? Now that you’ve been involved for 30 somewhat years with some of the biggest brands on the planet, did you ever think to yourself, “It’s too hard, it’s just not for me”?

Dominic Strada: No, actually I have to say I’m very thankful every day that I chose the career that I did and again, I think it’s a challenge. The fact that I come to work every day thinking I know what’s going to happen and by the end of the day what I thought was going to happen may or may not… The challenges that sales has presented to me and the excitement to come to work every day is a decision I’m very happy I made which is why I’m still in it 30 years later and which is why I still love doing it.

Fred Diamond: Dominic, what’s the most important thing you want to get across to the junior selling professionals listening around the globe to help them take their sales career to the next level?

Dominic Strada: If I look at it today, I think first and foremost, come in with a willingness to learn and understand. Also, understand that you have as much to give your organization from day 1 as they have to give to you. I think that dynamic is totally different and what I mean by that is if you look at what we do from a sales and marketing perspective when we’re selling our product line, the media that they use is different than what I grew up on. It was easy, advertise on TV or in the newspaper or in magazines, right?

That’s not the case anymore and the new folks coming into the organization, especially the younger folks, they know more about the tools and vehicles that appeal to them than the leaders in our organization do today. I think the greatest thing you can do to advance your career is come in and question and challenge. Then also be humble enough to understand you don’t know what you don’t know. Take the time to learn from those who have been around on the things that you don’t know, but then also be prepared to push the organization on things that you do know. If you come in with that type of mindset, you provide an incredible amount of value to your organization from day 1.

Fred Diamond: What are some habits that you do to stay at the top of your sales game?

Dominic Strada: I think the greatest habit is be involved. Don’t get comfortable sitting behind your desk or listening to the same group of people. This is why I love when new folks come into the organization, it gives you an opportunity to question, learn and understand because one thing I’ve learned through the years, you can execute a play and a program and it’s great. You repeat it the next time, it’s still great, there’s a diminishing return so as the market understands what you’re doing, they either copy it or find a way to counter it. You need to be changing at least 20% of what you’re doing every three months. Likewise, you need to be thinking about things I would say 20% differently every month, and that’s the challenge. If you do that, A – it keeps it exciting but B – it keeps you at the top of your game.

Fred Diamond: What’s a major initiative you’re working on today to ensure your continued success?

Dominic Strada: Again, our initiative today is all focused on two things: one is integrating the new organization and staffing it for the future and #2, we’re completely renovating our line. It’s building that, “Why Gerber?” story with our key customers so they understand where we’re going not only for us, but why it’s good for them. Those are the two initiatives.

Fred Diamond: How long has the Gerber brand been around for?

Dominic Strada: I think like 90 years.

Fred Diamond: Isn’t that crazy? 90 somewhat years, this ubiquitous brand that anyone who’s a parent knows about, I presume and here you are going through all these changes and challenges in 2019 to continue to be successful.

Dominic Strada: I think that’s relevant in any brand that’s in the marketplace today. Coming from pet space, Purina had the same opportunity. Again, I think as you look at it, there’s different things happening, there’s different stories being merchandised to consumers. One of the challenges of being big versus small, when you say something as a big company, government looks at it. When you say something as a small company, not everybody’s looking at it or challenging it the same way. It makes us be very careful because you can expose your company to tremendous liability if you position something that’s not 100% positioned properly.

Fred Diamond: Dominic, sales is hard, we talked about a lot of the challenges. Your industry is being disrupted, of course there’s been huge shifts in the last 3 to 5 years about how the customer buys, where they go to buy, which has totally turned around your industry. Why have you continued? What is it about sales as a career that has kept you going?

Dominic Strada: As we talked earlier, it’s fun. I go to work every day looking forward to what’s in store. You break it down: is the work challenging? Yes. Is the work rewarding? Yes. Then, do you enjoy working side by side with the people you work with every day? And I’ve been blessed for 30 years to work with tremendous people and work for tremendous people where I don’t dread coming to work. Not a lot of people can say that.

Fred Diamond: Dominic, this has been a great interview, I could probably talk to you for another 3 to 4 hours. I used to teach MBA marketing classes and I’ve never actually spoken to someone with your company but it’s fascinating, the major shifts. I need to ask you one last question before we get your final thought. Again, for most of your career you’ve sold to physical places where your products were on shelf and of course now with the shift to e-commerce in a lot of ways, how do you sell to e-commerce platforms? How does that work versus selling to the Walmart’s, Kroger’s, Costco’s of the world?

Dominic Strada: Think about this. When you go into Walmart and you’re in the department, you’re in any department, what’s important to you as a consumer? This is a key to what anybody needs to think about today. How do you shop and what do you look for? That answers your questions for how you attack any opportunity. To that point, when you’re in the store it’s really your packaging, where it’s located, how you see it and what your packaging conveys. The same thing transfers to e-commerce, it’s just not a physical package, it’s digital content. The game is the same, it’s just the tools are different and you have to be able to understand what tools are at your disposal and how to utilize them to win.

That’s, again, what makes this fun because there’s some of the old because the attack strategies and understanding the consumer insight is where it all starts with. As long as you understand what’s really important to the consumer, then you need to make sure that you convey that to them in a way, a point of purchase that makes them understand your item meets that need better than anything else either on the shelf or on the digital page. That’s how you win.

Fred Diamond: Again, I could ask you 50 more questions here. In honor of our guest, people listening to the show around the globe, why don’t you give us one final thought? Again, you’ve given us so many great content here, we talked to Dominic Strada, Head of Sales at Nestle Nutrition. Dominic, give us one final thought to inspire the Sales Game Changers listening around the globe today.

Dominic Strada: I think the final thought is never get comfortable. If you always have that mentality that either you don’t know enough or somebody can take away what you have today, you’ll lose your edge. Never get comfortable, never be happy with what you are, never think you have a problem solved long-term and never think you have all the relationships that you need in order to be successful. Most importantly, don’t take advantage of your people. If your people are not aligned to you and want to win with you or for you, you will ultimately fail. Don’t just use those words, “People are our #1 asset”. Truly walk the talk with that.

Transcribed by Mariana Badillo
Produced by Rosario Suarez

The post EPISODE 159: Nestlé’s Dominic Strada Shares How Selling Brands Such as Purina and Gerber Has Dramatically Shifted first appeared on Sales Game Changers Podcast.