What are the biggest challenges you face in your role?

In my role as a merchandising representative a big challenge initially is gaining the trust of our customers. We explain that we are there to support the store and ensure availability at key times of the day, which over time leads to increased sales, but to begin with they are wary that you are trying to sell them something they don’t want. You have to be patient and build a relationship and grow the trust.

This year we have had challenges such as the soft drink industry tax. This required us to understand the tax and explain this to our customers, so that they in turn could explain it to their customers. It involved changes to the packs and cans sizes which also needs to be understood by us and explained.

In this year we had additional challenges with the heatwave which meant we had to work closely within our teams to ensure our customers could meet the increase in demand.

In the midst of this we had the biggest sporting event on the planet, the World Cup, of which Coca Cola was one of the main sponsors. We built displays in stores to promote special packs and took opportunities to agree space for drinks with ready meals and snacks, to offer additional sales potential to customers. And in the middle of this we had a shortage of CO2 to carbonate our colas and flavours such as Fanta and Sprite. This gave us supply challenges across our range. Again, teamwork across our business and collaborating with my colleagues helped us meet these challenges head-on.

A challenging year indeed and there is still three months of the year to go, and Christmas to come. Big challenges but it is very satisfying to work through them and deliver positive outcomes just the same.

Thank you Phillip, really fascinating to hear all this in such detail!