Leader As a Challenger !

Its been a while , thought off penning this down for ages , however the "will do later " feeling always was over bearing :) Here we go however ::

So when one walks into a strong leadership market , one has  the following choices , continue slow growth which might be  happening , defend against attacks or  go for accelerated growth , go for bust against the attackers ,there by set a new wave of growth !

Here is an account off the approach taken to set the new wave of growth .

Start Listening to your Partners /Trade /last mile warriors-- ACT 

common feedback was that there was no connect with brand and trade , high handiness  and frequent changes in policies was a given , this was not a great a situation to be in , and had to change , we must have done atleast 150 or more trade , distributors and last mile warriors( salesmen)  meets for recognition , feedbacks etc in the past 2 years , trying to build back confidence , slowly .

Pricing was perceived to be premium -- PLAY PRICING SMARTLY 

this was tricky , dropping pricing was the easiest route to take , with business impact  , however taking challengers head on in terms of pricing in certain markets , and positioning one as a value giver in other markets  , was the route route taken , so play it differently in different markets , and play it smartly

Correct your execution Gaps -- FIX IT 

look at all gaps in the markets that became  obvious playground for brands competing with you , as a leader , u cant afford to have these  luxury of gaps  , if you want to grow  faster and out beat them  , we discovered that market coverage vis a vis competitors was not optimal , we had distance issues , we had not necessary outlets selling our products , distribution of products was relatively weaker than competitors  , we needed  partners who were hungrier for business , wherever we thought trade response was not changing , we went direct and created our own channels too ---- planning and going behind fixing these gaps was the single biggest impact creator on ground

Delayer your market performance -GO AFTER THE OUTLIERS

if  you are doing well , its easy to get complacent  ,  the next opportunities for growth can come from the outlier correction , so dont go by the averages , go AFTER the outliers and see the impact happen

Be a lot more Visible -- BE PRESENT EVERYWHERE 

as a leadership brand , its easy to take the pretext off , why spend etc and not needed to be visible route on ground , this again is a sure shot way off giving space to other brands , don't give an inch , if you are the leadership brand , do dominate the share off visibility

Get a team who started believing in Behave like Challenger Mantra -- ITS NOT EASY --WILL TAKE TIME 

finally we needed a team which believed in the Mantra that we are Challenger in a leadership markets and have to go out and fight every day to Win , this was a slow burn , it had heart burns , tiffs , fights , celebrations  ,  the best motivation for any team is WINNING , and once the wins started pouring in the beliefs became more stronger . getting  the right people for right markets and give them right directions by leading from front , take care of them  when needed  .was the ways of getting the people part right 


Getting the above acts right , and believing the fact that you were doing the right things , sometimes with hard messaging , all led to MAGIC happening , glad  that the MAGIC continues , still , challenger brands are struggling big time and the growth rates are much much accelerated for the leadership brand , it can only get better , if the mindset continues as a challenger brand !

Learning from this experience  --in a strong leadership market , if you want to sky rocket growth , behave like a Challenger brand by doing most of the above mentioned points and sticking to basics , and start with the assumption --  don't give any space to any other player  !