Beyond the Distributor: Indirect Trade Planning in CPG – Episode 2

Planning trade activities through indirect channels has always been complex.

For many CPG organizations, that complexity is structural: fragmented data, multiple intermediaries, limited visibility into execution, and internal teams working with different assumptions and timelines. 

Despite these constraints, decisions still need to be made. 

This session is an expert-led conversation for CPG Revenue Growth, Trade, and Commercial leaders working with distributor-and broker-led routes to market. The goal is not to present a new methodology or a “better way”, but to share how experienced leaders approach these challenges in practice. 

Terril Germscheid, Trade Marketing Director at E.A. Sween Company, will share her perspective on navigating indirect trade planning, how decisions are approached when information is incomplete, how alignment is built across teams and partners, and where trade-offs are unavoidable. The discussion will be guided by Rajeev Prabhakar, Chief Product Officer at Visualfabriq, and structured around real-world situations drawn from indirect trade planning. 

This session is designed to help attendees reflect on their own planning and decision-making, using industry experience as a reference point. 

The conversation will touch on: 

• Planning with limited visibility: How leaders assess fragmented inputs, decide what information is sufficient to move forward, and manage uncertainty as a normal part of indirect trade planning. 
• Internal alignment challenges: How Sales, Trade, and Finance priorities can diverge, and what it takes to keep teams moving in the same direction despite different incentives.
• Execution through indirect partners: Working with brokers and distributors, maintaining consistency, and understanding where execution risk typically emerges.
• Downstream implications for ROI and risk: How early planning assumptions can influence later outcomes, without attempting to oversimplify financial complexity. 
• The role of technology and AI today: Where new technologies can support decision-making and preparation, and where human judgment and accountability remain essential.

This session is most relevant for professionals who: 

• work with indirect or distributor-led routes to market 
• are responsible for trade planning, RGM, or commercial decision-making 
• want to hear how peers approach the same constraints they face 

The session includes time for live questions, allowing participants to raise topics from their own experience and hear how an industry peer would think about them. 

👉 Register to join the conversation and hear a grounded, experience-based perspective on trade planning in indirect channels.