Vice President, Sales Strategy and Capabilities

BEL•Chicago, IL

21d•Hybrid

About The Position

Bel, makers of iconic brands including Babybel, The Laughing Cow, Boursin and GoGo squeeZ, is a growing global company that values your contributions, strives to create a sense of belonging for everyone and offers career growth and development opportunities, as well as competitive total compensation and meaningful well-being benefits from day one. For All, For Good, our company signature, reflects Bel’s commitment to PurposeFull Snacking which unlocks nourishment, joy, and the future of food by providing fruit, veggie and dairy goodness - for all. The company has headquarters in Chicago (Bel USA) and New York City (Materne North America) and operates 4 manufacturing plants in Little Chute, WI; Brookings, SD; Traverse City, MI; and Nampa, ID.Job Description Summary 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.

Requirements

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
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.
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.
Strong analytical skills to identify challenges and/or opportunities; Utilize data to act.
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.
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.
A solid cross-functional partner who will build outstanding partnerships internally with Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Customer Service, Demand Planning, PMO & Human Resources.
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.
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.

Nice To Haves

MBA preferred.

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.