Trading and engaging effectively and profitably with your retail customers starts with asking the right questions.

Customer planning season is in full swing. Across the FMCG sector, commercial and customer teams are mapping out their priorities for 2026 – negotiating targets, aligning cross-functionally, and building engagement strategies for retail customers.

Before the decks are built and the numbers are crunched, there are questions that deserve slower attention – questions that help clarify where your customer is headed, what role your business plays in their growth, and whether your internal teams are set up to deliver against the plan.

In a market where pressure on trade spend is intensifying and customer engagement is more competitive than ever, planning effectively with your retail customers requires clarity on their strategic priorities, your value to them, and your own internal alignment. Otherwise, even well-resourced plans can fall short.

Here are three questions worth asking before your next plan goes to sign-off – and some thoughts on where the answers might come from.
 

1. Do you know what your customer’s 2025 performance signals about where they’re headed?

The best customer plans start by understanding each retailer’s performance and priorities – what their numbers are saying, understanding how they are trading, where they’re investing, and what their growth bets reveal about their strategic direction is essential groundwork for winning customer plans.

For example, did you know that Checkers has now outperformed Woolworths Food on total turnover for the sixth consecutive year? Or that one of the six corporate retailers opened nearly as many stores in FY2024 as the other five retailers combined?

What do signals like these mean for your business?

Knowing the details provides the commercial context you need to guide trade investment decisions and build plans that reflect your customer’s reality and agenda.
 

 

How to get the answers you need? Ti’s Corporate Retail Comparative Report gives FMCG teams a clear, comparative view of each retailer’s performance and strategy – essential input for trade investment planning and effective customer planning. Ti’s Retailer Trade Profiles add depth on each retailer’s financials, strategic focus areas, shopper profile, shopper marketing and their private brands strategy – helping you build a more tailored and relevant customer plan.

 

2. Are you clear on how your business creates value for your customer?

In an inflationary context with intense promotional activity and format evolution in play, the supplier-retailer relationship is under increasing pressure to deliver growth. Planning for growth starts with knowing where you’re positioned to deliver it – and where the opportunity lies.

Many supplier teams struggle to quantify their opportunity at a customer level:

• Where are we adding value across their formats or categories?
• Are we a margin partner, a growth partner, a penetration partner – or all three?
• How does our performance compare to peers in the same aisle or basket?

If you can’t clearly articulate your value from the retailer’s perspective, you may find it harder to get buy-in for your plans.
 

How to ensure you craft winning customer business plans? Ti’s Growth Opportunity Analysis and Customer Centricity (modern trade and independent trade) workshops help supplier teams assess the opportunity within each retail customer – and articulate where and how they create value. The process also supports internal alignment around how to turn that opportunity into action.

 

3. Is your internal team aligned – and ready to win?

 

Many customer plans fall short not because of flawed thinking, but because of fragmented execution. When teams aren’t working from the same view of the customer – or don’t agree on where to prioritise – that misalignment plays out in pricing discussions, shopper strategies, innovation launches, and commercial conversations.

It slows you down. It dilutes your message. And it puts you on the back foot before the conversation even starts. Customer engagement starts with getting your own house in order.
That means you need an aligned retailer view and data across your Sales, Trade Marketing, Category, and Marketing teams. And it means building a plan that’s not just a deck – but a playbook everyone believes in.
 

Ti’s Growth Opportunity Analysis Workshops are designed to bring multifunctional teams together around a shared view of the customer – and a sharper plan to grow with them.

 

The clarity to engage. The confidence to win.

Channel precision is a commercial imperative – but so is customer precision. And in a market that isn’t standing still, smart suppliers are investing in both.

Whether you’re building a plan for Boxer, SPAR, PnP or Clicks, the same principle applies:
Strong plans are built on a deep understanding of your customer’s direction – and your role in it. Insight-led plans drive better decisions, stronger conversations, and more effective execution.
Trade Intelligence partners with leading FMCG suppliers to bring insight, structure, and strategic alignment into customer planning. Our reports and workshops are designed to help you turn performance data into planning advantage – and trading complexity into customer clarity.

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