CVS Health’s Sansone discusses alignment at Elevation Forum

WOONSOCKET, R.I. — “We are in a new era of business where leaders create results through networks and communities, rather than through direct lines of command. We all must learn to become comfortable building our businesses with leaders, advisers and specialists outside of our own company.”  That was one of the key messages conveyed by Dan Mack during the most recent Elevation Forum, held on Sept. 18.

The forum community, keynote speakers, CVS Health’s SVP of merchandising and retail pricing Judy Sansone and her team — comprised of Grant Pill, George Coleman and Maly Bernstein — discussed how to elevate relationships with CVS. Sansone shared with the forum members a number of deeper insights into personalization, store and category clustering, and the identity of CVS’s best partners.   

Sansone has been leading the merchandising organization for the last three years, and her team has created or refined more than 80 store clusters and 8,500 unique planograms grounded in their customer data. Sansone said, “Personalization works great with brands that have developed strong consumer loyalty, or that suffer from consumer awareness challenges and are in need of constant consumer reminders.” 

Grant Pill, CVS Health’s VP of consumer healthcare, PATH and quality assurance, added: “Manufacturers that silo off their marketing teams do not optimize their organizational alignment.” The best organizations, according to Pill, create one-on-one marketing relationships with their customers and are utilizing the CVS Extra-Care asset. Sansone continued, “Our best partners support our larger picture purpose focusing on improving consumer health outcomes and vision. They also bring larger global (category or emerging) research and insights while being grounded in CVS’s core consumer.”

The forum stared with a robust presentation and discussion on how to recognize and eliminate dysfunctional leadership behaviors within organizations. Mack opened the discussion with a Richard Branson quote, "It’s nice when people agree, but if everyone thought along the same lines all the time, nothing would ever change. Every company needs mavericks. The people who really make a difference are often those who don’t quite fit in, and often don’t act in the same way as everyone else, and don’t follow the status quo.”  

Mack said, “If that is true, we must think different about how we recruit and lead our organizations.”       

The next Elevation Forum will be held on April 24, 2015 in West Palm Beach, Fla. The forum team will continue the vision of uncovering unique insights and discussing the best practices engaging the industry. Mack founded the Elevation Forum for senior executives in 2008; the group serves as an incubator for many emerging growth brands and includes sales leaders and marketing leaders from larger health, beauty and wellness companies looking for an edge. 

Dan Mack is the Founder of Mack Elevation Forum and author of “Dark Horse: How Challengers Companies Rise to Prominence.” To learn more, visit www.MackElevationForum.com or call Dan Mack at (630) 607-2774.