In a Brand Manager role, you'll need to influence sales, trade, finance, and other teams that don't report to you. How do you typically build effective working relationships with them?

Situation

As a Brand Assistant, I had to coordinate with the trade marketing team to execute monthly promo cycles, but they were often overwhelmed with requests from multiple brands.

Task

I needed them to prioritize our brand's promo set-up without any direct authority or executive escalation.

Action

I started by scheduling a quick coffee chat with the trade lead to understand their capacity and pain points. I then created a shared timeline with clear milestones and ownership, which I co-developed with them. To make their job easier, I pre-prepared creative assets and a promo brief with pre-computed discount levels. I also made it a point to personally thank them and share positive sell-out data from the field to show the impact of their work.

Result

Our brand's promo materials consistently got deployed on time the next three cycles, and the trade team proactively approached me for input on category-level planograms, indicating a strong rapport.