Use when selling through retailers or distributors where joint plans, trade spend, and in-store execution decide the number.
Instructions your experts follow when using this skill.
Use this when selling through retailers or distributors where joint business plans (JBPs), trade spend, and in-store execution decide the number.
The retailer or distributor, the joint business plan if one exists, the trade budget and promo calendar, sell-in and sell-out data by store or banner, and the audit or compliance scorecards (perfect-store audits, chargebacks, return-to-vendor claims).
Build or refresh the joint and customer business plan: shared growth target, the sell-in story that earns the order, the sell-out plan that earns the reorder, and dated commitments on both sides with compliance tracking.
Plan trade spend like money, because it is: budget by lever (promo, feature, display, revenue-growth-management actions), expected ROI per lever, and a dated promo calendar. Every promo has a success metric before it runs. Every incremental dollar goes to its highest return: harmonize point-of-sale, inventory, and third-party data, and bid levers against each other.
Track sell-out to store level on daily store and item point-of-sale data, not weekly rollups: green, amber, or red by store or banner, with the driver named (availability, price, visibility, assortment). Read each promo against a pre-built baseline with a causal overlay (weather, events, seasonality). Amber gets a dated fix; red gets a fix plus a review date. Monitor promos in-flight and reallocate mid-cycle when the read says so.
Close every promo with post-event analysis before the next calendar locks: actual versus baseline, root cause of over- or underperformance (price, display size, location, seasonality, timing), and realized ROI per lever. Feed the read into the next promo plan: replicate and scale the winners, change or stop the losers. Promo forecasts miss often and by a wide margin, so the loop is the forecast improving, not the first guess being right.
Hold the shelf standard: assortment, merchandising, and visibility targets per store, verified by audits not by hope. Failed audits get a dated correction with a named field owner.
Manage the money after the sale: replenishment against sell-through, receivables on terms, chargebacks disputed with evidence, and return-to-vendor claims inside policy. A deduction without evidence is a dispute, not a cost.
Read launches, space changes, and e-retail sell-out as their own lines: what shipped, what sold, what the next buy looks like, and the date it is decided.
Output: joint business plan with dated commitments, trade budget with promo ROI, store-level sell-out read, post-event analysis feeding the next calendar, audit corrections, and a receivables and dispute log.
No sell-out data means you work from shipments labeled INFERENCE and ask for the retailer portal or report that closes the gap. No joint business plan yet means you draft the one-page plan and get internal yes before the buyer sees it.
Approval gate: nothing goes to the retailer and no trade terms, promo funding, or price is promised without your explicit yes.
Phrases that help your experts find this skill.
When the user wants to create or update their product marketing context document. Also use when the user mentions 'product context,' 'marketing context,' 'set up context,' 'positioning,' 'who is my target audience,' 'describe my product,' 'ICP,' 'ideal customer profile,' or wants to avoid repeating foundational information across marketing tasks. Use this at the start of any new project before using other marketing skills — it creates `.agents/product-marketing.md` that all other skills reference for product, audience, and positioning context.
When the user wants to research, profile, or analyze competitors from their URLs. Also use when the user mentions 'competitor profile,' 'competitor research,' 'competitor analysis,' 'profile this competitor,' 'analyze competitor,' 'competitive intelligence,' 'competitor deep dive,' 'who are my competitors,' 'competitor landscape,' 'competitor dossier,' 'competitive audit,' or 'research these competitors.' Input is a list of competitor URLs. Output is structured competitor profile markdown files. For creating comparison/alternative pages from profiles, see competitors. For sales-specific battle cards, see sales-enablement.
When the user wants to conduct, analyze, or synthesize customer research. Use when the user mentions "customer research," "ICP research," "talk to customers," "analyze transcripts," "customer interviews," "survey analysis," "support ticket analysis," "voice of customer," "VOC," "build personas," "customer personas," "jobs to be done," "JTBD," "what do customers say," "what are customers struggling with," "Reddit mining," "G2 reviews," "review mining," "digital watering holes," "community research," "forum research," "competitor reviews," "customer sentiment," "PMF survey," "product/market fit survey," "customer interview questions," "interview outreach," "Sales Safari," or "find out why customers churn/convert/buy." Use for analyzing existing research assets, mining online sources, AND running primary research (interviews and surveys). For writing copy informed by research, see copywriting. For acting on research to improve pages, see cro.