Fractional Vice President of Sales Specializing in Scalable Growth Strategies – 45+ Years of Building and Elevating Brands

How It Works

Sales & Marketing

Learn the Brand

  • Selling points…the difference from the brands’ competition

  • What is its genesis

  • Passion behind brand

  • review mission statement,

  • Look at the companies’ failures and successes. Learn from the past

  • Channel placement strategy

  • What is the competition and what accounts are they in

  • Your Pricing vs competitors pricing

  • What are the competitors weakness and your strengths

Review Structure

  • Roles of current team members, associates, and sales help

  • Examination of current brokers and or sales team

  • Review sales deck and sales materials

  • Review and or create Delivered and FOB distributor pricing

  • Delivered and FOB Direct Pricing

  • Mass/Club pricing

  • SWOT analysis

Dive Into The Brand And Create A Plan

  • Review/create current “go to market” strategy…distributors, sales teams, brokers and company support/marketing and back-office support

  • Create target list of distributors and accounts and if needed brokers

  • Review current sales: active accounts with their current sales & projected sales. This will help me understand velocity and the category more

  • Develop Marketing/Sales support for the projections, which include OI’s, MCB’s, and slotting

  • Opening Promotions for new accounts are different than promotions for established accounts.

  • Discuss the possibility of future line extensions. Or if needed, SKU rationalization.

  • Examine the company’s capacity to grow.

  • Implement strategy

  • Help with quarterly reviews of brokers, sales and projections.

  • Continue to look at new channels of trade, new line extensions, competition, brokers, sales support and distributors.

Launched a fast grow brand

Successfully launched Brad’s Raw Foods in the newly created Raw Foods category. I took a different approach than any other Raw Foods in the market and placed the line into the produce channel, producing an overnight success. Brad’s Raw Foods became the #1 selling Kale Chip within the first year due to this different approach. Built distribution and direct chain warehouse sales from zero to over $18MM within three years. Placed and trained regional and national broker teams & put key distribution alliances in place. Then hired, trained, and managed regional sales teams to manage national and regional brokers in place.

Key turnaround

At Living Intentions, I took lines of over 30 SKUs and tweaked them down to what we called the Core 12. This addition of sales by subtraction of SKUs made the company more profitable, plus we were able to build sales by 30% year over year in the two years I consulted for them.

Category Disruptor

Recently at Ingrilli Citrus, I took an item with zero sales to market into a category that had existed for 40-50 years without any change. Within three years, Ingrilli Citrus became the fastest growing line of its kind in the produce channel. Then two years later, Ingrilli introduced another category disruptor line into the market, and within one year, it became the third fastest-selling SKUs of its kind in the concentrate category.

Accomplishments

Launched a fast-growing brand.

Michael acts as your Fractional Vice President of Sales representing you the manufacturer, not the distributor, not the retailer or broker.

MHBM specializes in strategies to help scale your product through building a solid foundational distribution platform with a hands-on approach. With over 45 years of building brands for zero sales to over $23M within a few short years for some brands.

I am not a broker, although I work with and manage brokers successfully.

MHBM comes on board as your Fractional Vice President of Sales to build a business plan and help execute that plan.

  • Evaluate what the company has in place now and what will be needed for the next 6-12 months to achieve its goals

  • Create the first and second round of targeted accounts/distributors and or direct accounts.

  • Develop targeted projections and sales strategy for current business and onboarding business.

  • Review what support is needed to pull product off shelf, through register and back on shelf.

  • Review what does the marketing spend look like to support the brand.

  • What is your current sales foundation: Distributors, e-commerce, B2C, etc

  • Discuss different distributors for different channels, natural, conventional, Mass, Club, C-store, direct warehouse.

  • Discuss additional brokers for new channels

  • Help place sales teams and brokers for current and new lines