Meet the team: Terry Ziegler
Meet the team members who are helping create the best producer-to-consumer outcomes for a more sustainable future. Terry Ziegler leads our Revenue Growth Management product strategy.
Terry Ziegler, Director of Product & Sales Strategy on our Consumer Goods team, tends to build and improve on everything he encounters. His first work experience at his grandfather’s hardware store gave him the confidence, creativity and know-how to eventually co-found his own business, T-Pro Solutions, which joined Blacksmith Applications in 2019 and was part of its acquisition by TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods in 2021. His experience and industriousness also inspires his personal hobby – home remodeling – which served him well after he moved to rural Ohio, where he now lives with his family and two dogs.
Terry has over 20 years of experience in the consumer packaged goods (CPG) space including leadership and management roles at RJR Nabisco, Borden Foods and Dairy Farmers of America. With experience ranging from sales, consumer and trade marketing, finance and general management, he works to make sure our product design puts our customers’ needs first.
What is your role?
Essentially I work to make our customers’ jobs simpler, helping to get the right data and use it to understand the impact of their trade spend and make strategic improvements. I’m in charge of product strategy for all of our Revenue Growth Management solutions, which help track, analyze and predict our clients’ sales volumes. I spent a lot of my CPG career wishing I had solutions like what TELUS Agriculture & Consumer Goods provides, so I have the background to understand what we can do to develop our offerings to make them even better and make our clients’ lives even easier. Because I’m on the product strategy side of things, it’s important I understand what our users need, so I really focus on meeting with our clients as often as possible. Given that our industry is spread across time zones, a lot of my meetings are either before the sun comes up or after it goes down. But it’s worth it because I can take what I’ve learned from people all over the world and work with our development teams to build something innovative and truly helpful.
What drew you to this business?
I started out in sales and marketing and found I had a real affinity for food and consumer goods. I did graduate with a business degree, but practical experience is really what prepared me for this role. I spent my career building and leading teams that basically performed the work and analysis that the TELUS software does now, so it feels like a really natural transition. Really understanding what users do day to day and thinking like a customer, is the basis of every decision I have to make. Without the extremely detailed knowledge that experience gives me, I don’t see how anyone could give our clients the service they need.
What career advice do you have to offer?
Think like a customer first – approach everyone with empathy if you want to be able to help them. Think about what the client does day to day and where their working life can be improved. I feel that I was successful in my roles in technology because I was in the “industry” first as a customer and user well before I entered the software space. Having that perspective of the day-to-day challenges gives you the foundation of domain expertise that customers need.
What do you want people to know about our sector?
How much data matters! But data is really hard to manage and use because there’s so much of it coming from so many different sources and the sophistication of harvesting that data has grown significantly over the years. Harnessing the power of all that data by cleansing and harmonizing is not a simple task, but for companies, it’s vital to help answer key business questions, identify trends and predict outcomes to address consumer complexities and demand and drive overall business health and success. With technology and the right data, products can be delivered more efficiently at the right cost, with less waste.
What’s a fun fact you’ve learned about our industry?
Thanks to Happy Meals, McDonald’s is the largest distributor of toys. As they have begun including more books than toys in Happy Meals, McDonald's has sold more books to kids than are housed in the Library of Congress.
Since we’re talking about food and goods, what do you like to eat?
Nothing in the world beats a good smoked beef brisket.
