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Food, Beverage & Consumer Goods

Leading with Revenue: Annual Planning for Food and Beverage Leaders

As we enter the second half of 2024, food and beverage (F&B) companies are gearing up for their next round of annual planning. This cross-functional process—typically driven by Finance or Planning functions—seeks to create a viable annual operating plan to deliver revenue and profitability growth via various strategies and tactics. These include capital investments, pricing strategies, product/SKU management and capacity planning.

While corporate goals, headcount projections and sales incentives get a lot of attention, it’s crucial for commercial leaders to review their current model and adjust growth strategies accordingly. As market dynamics and consumer preferences shift, go-to-market (GTM) organizations can stray from their true north. Reconfirming your strategy and evaluating your GTM engine’s ability to hit top and bottom line (EBITDA) targets is essential and highlights necessary investments to bridge the gap to achieving optimal performance. Investments might include specialized roles, sales technologies and enablement tools, all aimed at delivering ROI. This alignment, often called the sales plan, is the backbone of a strong commercial framework.

Too often, planning starts with operations and finance—focusing on production, packaging and pricing—without truly understanding customer needs. To drive strategic conversations centered on what will produce commercial success, Alexander Group recommends using our proven revenue growth framework to assess how well your revenue growth model delivers sustained success and customer-centric results.

This framework starts with the strategic pillars and then addresses the structural and management elements required for comprehensive growth:

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Alexander Group, Inc. Revenue Growth Model

Customer Revenue Segments:

Understand the evolving needs, purchasing behaviors and lifetime value across different criteria— such as the buying process for national accounts versus independents. Prioritizing digital engagement strategies tailored to each segment’s preferences and opportunities identified through data analysis—ultimately understanding how to move products in the most efficient and effective manner (e.g., e-commerce).

Value Propositions:

Define unique selling points that give your products a competitive edge within each segment. Ensure promotional strategies and messaging effectively communicate these value propositions to capture the attention of end-consumers and achieve the desired in-store or online outcomes.

Revenue Motions:

Evaluate the effectiveness of current sales, marketing and customer service strategies by customer segment. Align commercial activities—both digital and analog—to enhance customer engagement and satisfaction and adopt technology to efficiently scale service levels.

Channel Coverage:

Optimize the use of direct, inside, digital and indirect (broker) channels based on segment needs. Establish clear accountability measures to ensure each channel contributes effectively to overall sales objectives.

Organizational & Job Structure:

Identify necessary roles and skillsets aligned with product offerings, customer needs and operational processes. Define future organizational structures that support strategic goals for the upcoming year.

Sizing & Deployment:

Determine the optimal number of resources needed for each role type and channel to effectively serve customer segments and deliver revenue goals. Optimize territories that balance opportunity, workload and customer needs.

Leveraging these Strategic Pillars

These structured discussions regarding strategic pillars and structural elements lead to informed decisions about commercial investments for the coming year. By prioritizing the sales or commercial strategy as the focal point of planning—rather than starting with operations or finance—organizations can better align resources with market opportunities and customer expectations. This is the foundation for F&B companies that beat their competition year in and year out.

Addressing the management pillars is also critical, including ensuring quotas stretch the sales team but are also fair and attainable and that compensation plans align to key growth plays. While these can be key pillars within the Revenue Growth Model™, addressing them may fall outside of the annual planning process.

Alexander Group - Growth Plays for Marketing, Sales and Service

To enhance these efforts, many F&B organizations are also investing in a dedicated Revenue or Sales Operations function. This function collaborates with sales leadership, leveraging data-driven insights to craft, socialize and implement strategies that drive meaningful commercial outcomes. Not to be confused as an offshoot of finance or insights, when properly designed, Revenue Operations acts as a true partner to sales by bringing a level of science and data to decision making.

Revenue Operations Honeycomb Model - Alexander Group, Inc.

In conclusion, as F&B organizations embark on their annual planning journeys, adopting a strategic framework that emphasizes customer-centric strategies and operational alignment is key to achieving sustainable growth and a competitive advantage in a dynamic market landscape. Before heading into planning discussions, understand what critical levers are at play to deliver growth for the upcoming year by examining your organization through the lens of our revenue growth model.

Need a Fresh Approach?

For more information, please contact Alexander Group. Let’s navigate this complex landscape together and drive success for your brand!

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