Sue Nicholls, Founder & President CMKG

Embracing the Joy of Learning and Teaching. Hi there! I'm deeply passionate about training and learning. Since the pioneering days of category management at P&G in the '80s, I've been fortunate to embark on a journey of teaching and inspiring others. My career has been a delightful tapestry woven with long-term collaborations with major retailers and CPG executives, contributing to industry standards, and sharing insights at numerous conferences. I'm thrilled to have had the opportunity to shape minds as an Adjunct Professor in Marketing, focusing on consumer behavior.

150 Hours of Knowledge and Countless Moments of Insight. Creating over 150 hours of online curriculum and leading hundreds of instructor-led sessions has been an enriching experience. I've had the honor of collaborating with diverse professionals across the globe, adapting to an ever-evolving industry. The goal? To forecast the future and equip our learners with the skills to thrive and stay relevant.

Learning: A Collective Adventure. I believe learning is a dynamic journey that encompasses individuals, teams, organizations, and yes, even us training professionals. It's not about rigid methods but nurturing a continuous, evolving process. My aim through this blog and other platforms is to share my wealth of experience and encourage open, ongoing dialogues. Together, we can enhance any team's ability to implement effective business strategies and realize their strategic goals. Let's embark on this learning adventure together, growing and evolving with every shared experience! Happy learning!

Recent Posts

Savvy Category Management Executives: Master Your CatMan 2.0™ Game Plan

Category Management Executives (including Directors, VPs and Managers) Face a Common Dilemma How to get from where you are, to where the industry is going … Here’s what you need to know:
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Advance Your Category Management Approach. Don’t Get Left Behind!

Category Management has become more sophisticated. It’s now CatMan 2.0™ — Are you adapting to more advanced approaches? Are you keeping up with competitors? the industry? Category management has been evolving and changing since its launch in the late 1980s. The changing Shopper, blurring channels, omni-channel, the Internet & digital media and more advanced data & technology are the key drivers that have continued to change category management. It’s not that all of these changes are necessarily NEW, but all of these changes have all recently been captured in one place — in a new advanced approach which is creating buzz, questions, and uncertainty. In this blog, I’ll cover: Why CatMan 2.0™ is important (and more importantly, why you should care), Where some of the biggest changes are, and Next steps to help you plan your 2017.
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Are You Practicing Category Management Principles in a Non-Category Management World? You might be, and you’re not alone …

“We don’t practice category management in our company / region / industry.” It might surprise you that I’ve heard a version of this statement several times in the past few weeks. But the bigger surprise is that even in non-category management worlds, the principles of category management are being used, even though they could be improved for the benefit of both Retailers and Manufacturers around the globe. Whether you call it category management or not, you might be missing the boat if you answer YES to any of the following questions:
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Shopper Insights and Shopper Marketing ARE Part of Category Management

Category Management and Shopper Insights/Shopper Marketing have parted ways in many organizations. Shopper Marketing reports to Marketing. Category Management reports to Sales. According to new industry standards, this is not the best way to set your organization up for Shopper success.
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Injecting Shopper Into Your Category Management Foundations

Many of us “forget” the Shopper in our category reviews, business reviews, assortment reviews, space planning, sales presentations, internal presentations … So why should we incorporate "Shopper" into just about everything that we do? According to the CMA’s recent “CatMan 2.0” initiative,
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Category Management Training Improves ROI on Your Data Investment

Data investments can be in the millions of dollars for organizations. ROI requires using it wisely — here’s how: If you’re like most organizations, you are purchasing more data than ever before, sometimes making decisions on what to purchase without creating necessary standards on when or how to use it to your advantage, but proudly adding it to the portfolio of data that your organization now has access to. Are you maximizing big data? Read on to discover the 4 requirements for Retailers and Suppliers / Manufacturers to maximize data investments.
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Where are your biggest collaborative opportunities internally? externally?

In this week’s podcast blog, the focus is Collaboration (also known as joint business planning). Today, we’ll define collaboration and why it’s so important to be successful as the future of category management unfolds. Plus, you’ll take away some key considerations to prepare for collaboration. So why does strategic collaboration in category management matter and what’s your status?
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Interpreting Index Numbers: Proceed with Caution - Category Development Index and Fair Share Index

Common (Mis)Interpretations: Category Development Index in Category Analysis There is significant emphasis on deriving effective and strategic insights in category management. With all of the incredible data sources available to both Retailers and Suppliers / Manufacturers, there are certain measures that are consistently used to derive these insights. For some of the commonly used measures, there’s also a tendency to generalize the interpretation of the numbers, or not scratch below the surface and think about what the numbers really mean. Examples? Category Development Index (CDI) and Fair Share Index (FSI) …
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Retailer Market Share as a Strategic Benchmark

When using data and analysis, the numbers on their own don’t tell the whole story. By applying thought and strategy to the interpretation of the data, you will come up with better category solutions. One of my favorite examples of this is the use of the “Retailer Market Share” number in category management. If you’ve ever heard, “You are underdeveloped in a brand, subcategory or category, and you need to fix this!”, then read on …
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The Future of Category Management (Part 2): Shopper & Omni Channel

My last podcast/blog identified areas in category management that need to change, driven by developing trends in the retail industry, the Shopper, their path to purchase, and more complex data and technology. This week I talk more about how Shopper influence and the Omni-Channel are changing, and the implications that each has on category management.
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