Cheri Moran, vice president of Sales at Universal Robina Corporation (URC), is used to breaking barriers to advance in the tough and sometimes cut-throat retail industry.

She was the first female to hold a pivotal position at URC, which is among the country’s biggest food conglomerates. She made history as the first female sales director at Coca-Cola Philippines.

Moran was part of the inaugural batch of winners of the Mansmith Sales Masters Awards, the marketing industry’s first sales awards. Moran makes the strategic decisions and initiatives that directly influence sales growth and market positioning at URC.

She started as an executive assistant which Moran said trained her not to be afraid of rolling up her sleeves to do the hard work and understanding the needs of others.

“This role built my muscles to find my voice even when there are louder voices in the room,” she explained.

As she came from the ranks, she knew the importance of building genuine connections as she reasoned “Nobody gets to where they are alone.”

“We all need the right people around us to be our mirrors so we can always be better. That’s my first advice, never live in a bubble because not only is that lonely, it is extremely difficult to achieve bigger things on your own. If a dream can be delivered by one person, then a dream is not big enough,” she explained.

Moran also believes that being an anchored leader requires modeling your authentic self, “whether in posture, gesture, or words, to communicate calm and grounded optimism.”

Also, don’t be afraid to admit faults, she said.

“There is power and freedom in owning your mistakes, voicing your ideas, and staying true to your individuality and integrity that resonates with people. One thing that will set you apart is your authenticity, you have to recognize yourself and like who you see in the mirror to stay true to your identity,” Moran explained.

She believes in the power of visualization. “When I was little, I would imagine myself presenting in a board room with top executives and I being in a big arena talking about some directions. I didn’t know what that job would be but I thought to myself I liked to be that. Over the years, God opened doors where I could be in those situations and even when it was terrifying, I would prepare, visualize scenarios and go for it. Miracles come in cans not in cant’s,” she added.

While there is joy in achieving much, Moran said there’s a bigger fulfillment in bringing others with you, seeing them become better versions of themselves and watching them achieve dreams.

“Be happy for their success and celebrate with them. I genuinely find joy in creating a space where everyone feels valued and heard and that I have the privilege of having to play a part in their future,” Moran intimated.

As a key contributor in reversing a three-year decline in URC’s key account business particularly from the pandemic downturn, achieving record-breaking numbers.

She values being grounded in reality and having the courage to pivot. Even as nobody knew what the country could be up against in those years of lockdown, when we were forced to be disconnected from each other, URC tapped its intentional connection — with its people, teams and customers and partners. She continued: “All of them are facing similar yet varying degrees of challenges and we had to understand that deeply so we can face our joint realities, accept the brutal facts and pivot our way to recovery and ultimately growth.”

Another practical lesson from her is that showing up in times when it is needed is half the battle won.

“Many of us, given our nature to fix things, would prefer to engage when we already have a solution at hand but the pandemic is something nobody had a playbook for therefore to understand the unique customer needs, we increased our level of engagement internally and externally to be overt in sending the message that we can figure things out together. We chose to be there, we chose to be present,” according to Moran.

People is a valuable asset, thus a need to put people first. Caring for people will care for others and will care for the business.

“Our team’s overall health is always a priority. While we are expected to deliver a set of key performance metrics, we do not see members of teams as mere numbers who deliver numbers, we see them as human beings who have immense value on and off work. We see ourselves to be in a business of people who in turn build our business,” she added.

Detox working environment

Ensuring we have a positive, non-toxic environment is not something we put on paper but we live by everyday.

The measure that Moran goes by on the morale of her URC team is that “on Sunday evenings, we are excited to go to work on a Monday.”

“And that’s why even though our work arrangement is hybrid, you would see that our office spaces are full with lots of engagement because we like being with each other. “

“Complex problems become digestible when simplified. We employed the discipline of being clear on driving brilliant basics to fix things and be consistent at it. We believe that by keeping our fundamentals in check everyday, every time, we will have the capability to solve complex problems and execute at a higher level. We constantly revisited our cadences and the way we tracked our performance to ensure we are able to catch anything we needed to adjust. By doing so, we get to connect how far or close we are to the goal, our realities to the vision we have then we calibrate,” she explained.

Of course, the digitalization thrust must be maintained to serve ever developing habits of Filipinos. The digital route to market was redefined, via new partners, enhanced ways of working, new channels, new programs, and new services to develop closer relationships with the Filipino consumer.

One of the significant digitalization transformation efforts undertaken was developing a digital loyalty program for sari-sari stores.

“URC employed measures to drive traffic, visitors and conversion in the sites we were present.”

To sustain this, we will continue to be clear on the role of this channel for us in our whole consumer push objectives and distribution play relative to the categories we are in.

Driving sales is also a function of visibility which Moran said was a priority in her previous job at Coca-Cola.

“Ingrained in all of us in Coca-Cola is the aim for a Coke in every hand. The insight during the inception of the Beverage Solution Center was that this category is not usually on the shopping list of a supermarket shopper,” he said.

Shoppers would put essentials in the list and will buy a Coke on impulse when the shopper sees it.

“We realized that it’s not a destination item but rather mostly purchases on impulse. Because of this insight, we were able to provide a category story to our partners to transfer the carbonated soft drinks aisle from its current location at the back of the store to the front to increase visibility from the moment shoppers enter the store and be reminded before they check out.”