Vice President, Sales Strategy and Capabilities

The Vice President, Sales Strategy & Capabilities leads the commercial strategy (development and execution) for the Bel US Cheese organization.  As the conduit between field sales and headquarter functions both locally and globally, this role is accountable for the development of sales strategies that align with overall business objectives across all retail channels, out-of-home, and e-commerce. This role is the lead for channel strategy development and the creation of specific channel growth plans, ensuring each channel effectively contributes to the company’s goals. Execution of the commercial strategy will be focused on distribution opportunities, best-in-class shelving, merchandising, pricing and promotion, and retailer activations. This individual and their team will be accountable for leading sales strategy & planning activities and for achieving best-in-class sales fundamentals (assortment, shelving, pricing, promotions), delivering sales reporting, obtaining category captainship, and being a strong partner with Sales Finance to drive a holistic approach to revenue growth, ensuring all commercial levers- pricing, promotion, trade, and assortment—are aligned to support sustainable topline and margin expansion.  They will be focused on building strong cross-functional collaboration for themselves and the team across Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, PMO and HR. 

This hybrid role, based in our Chicago US HQ office, reports directly to the U.S. Chief Commercial Officer and is part of the U.S. Sales leadership team.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

• Leads the development, management, and execution of sales strategies—including assortment, pricing, promotional activity, display, and visibility—while creating and owning strategic channel and customer management frameworks that align with organizational objectives and maximize growth.

• Drives category development initiatives to position Bel Brands as a category expert with our customers, supporting mutual growth for our business and retail partners.

• Represent sales in the innovation / Co-Dev process to ensure planned innovation meets customer timing, pricing, and channel requirements.
• Responsible for advancing key sales strategic projects (e.g. visibility, channel development, customer segmentation, sales transformation, etc.).
• Partners cross-functionally with Sales, Finance, and the Chief Commercial Officer to advance the commercial process by developing and implementing robust Revenue Growth Management (RGM) strategies. This includes:

• • Designing and executing effective pricing strategies to maximize profitability and competitiveness across channels.
  • Establishing and refining trade strategies that set clear guardrails for trade spend, drive disciplined investment, and deliver higher ROI.
  • Analyzing promotional programs to enhance efficiency, optimize spend, and improve incremental sales performance.
  • Developing assortment strategies that balance customer needs with margin objectives, ensuring the optimal mix of products and pack sizes by channel and customer.
  • Leveraging data and analytics to identify revenue growth opportunities, model potential outcomes, and make actionable recommendations.
  • Monitoring RGM metrics and KPIs to track the impact of initiatives and inform ongoing strategy adjustments.

• Lead channel performance and business performance analysis, insight generation, and action development.
• Leads the development and execution of tools and processes for category management, analytic reporting, trade utilization, and trade management.
• Joint ownership of the sales forecast in close partnership with the field sales teams, ensuring that forecasts are not only informed by market insights and real-time customer feedback, but also reflect both strategic objectives and frontline realities.  Active collaboration with Supply Chain, Finance, Marketing, and field sales leaders—to drive rigorous forecast accuracy, anticipate demand shifts, and proactively address gaps or opportunities.
• Represent customer/field sales in providing critical customer perspective to the marketing and internal teams in support of development and implementation of marketing plans and strategic initiatives.
• Develops and delivers selling stories that translate the brand’s strategies, plans and initiatives into winning propositions for our retailer partners.

• Supports field sales team with insight-based selling tools anchored on category and consumer data that are consistent with the commercial priorities.
• This role is a critical connector between commercial strategy and operational execution, providing short term business performance, proactively identifying risks and opportunities, and continuously drive gap closing process ensuring the organization is well-positioned to achieve its short- and long-term growth targets.

• Lead for sales for annual integrated business planning deliverables such as key lessons learned, strategic plan development, annual budget setting, in-year budget gapping sessions, etc.
• Analyze, manage and report expenditures of the sales department to conform to budgetary requirements to include food shows, 3rd party contracts, broker commissions, sales meetings, etc.

Qualifications and Competencies

Minimum education and experience required:

• Bachelor’s degree and/or equivalent experience; MBA preferred.

• 15+ years of experience in food or CPG industry in a category sales planning and/or customer-facing field leadership with demonstrated sustained success and exceptional knowledge of U.S. retail and foodservice channels.
• Strong Category Leadership experience both in tool management and insight-based storytelling
• Trade Strategy development and management experience

 Specific competencies required:

• Visionary & Strategic Leadership
• A strong, visionary leader that can develop, inspire, and motivate others.
• A transformational leader who exhibits and models a strong sense of ownership and accountability throughout the entire sales process (origination, follow-through, and delivery).
• A solid background of creating and executing growth strategies across all critical commercial levers that have delivered profitable volume and share growth.
• People Leadership & Development
• A motivated leader committed to the development and growth of the team, function, and self, with strong leadership and coaching skills and a proven ability to build, manage, and inspire a high-performing organization.
• An energetic team leader, able to challenge the status quo, ask the right questions, empower the sales team, with clear expectations and solid articulation of strategies and action plans.
• Analytical & Commercial Acumen
• Strong analytical skills to identify challenges and/or opportunities; Utilize data to act.
• Adaptability & Resilience
• Demonstrates resilience and effectiveness in navigating complexity and ambiguity, thriving in a fast-paced environment that combines high levels of support and challenge.
• Demonstrates agility and can adjust plans as needed, driving the organization to pivot and implement changes in a timely manner when required.
• Continuous Improvement
• Demonstrates a continuous improvement mindset with a proven ability to critically assess processes, strategies, and team performance, implementing transformational changes that drive achievement of organizational goals.
• Partnership & Collaboration
• A solid cross-functional partner who will build outstanding partnerships internally with Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Customer Service, Demand Planning, PMO & Human Resources.
• Communication
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to adapt to a variety of audiences to drive desired results, while leading through ambiguity by creating clear objectives and vision. 

Physical & Travel Requirements

• Must be able to work in standard office conditions in a hybrid office environment.
• Must be able to travel via airplane within the U.S. and Internationally
• 30% travel required throughout the year.

Performance Expectations: Quality, accuracy, timeliness, reliability, and thoroughness of work performed; ability to gain the trust and respect of management, co-workers, brokers & customers; maintain the integrity of confidential business and product information; ability to communicate effectively and develop good working relationships with other employees is essential to accomplish goals and objectives of the department.

Working Conditions: Work is performed largely in a hybrid (2-3 days/week in office) office environment.  The hours of work will generally be during regular business hours at least 40 hours a week.  At times there will be some variation in work hours due to special projects, deadlines, and other concerns.  Position requires up to 30% of travel.

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.