Sales, brand management, business planning, and category management
WillOver 2 decades of experience in sales and brand management
Relevant Skills
Driving profitable growth, Creating sales planning teams, Utilizing market data and customer insights
Expertise Summary
Will, MBA, has 25+ years of experience in sales, brand management, business planning, category management, merchandising operations, consumer insights, sales planning, P&L management, customer engagements, and innovation–industries: CPG, Independent Hardware Wholesale & Retail, and Cannabis.
Will is a roll-up-your-sleeves leader who leverages a diverse and successful background to ensure results.
He has enjoyed several wonderful experiences, ranging from finding innovative ways to drive profitable growth for iconic brands to helping 4,000+ independent hardware stores be more relevant to their shoppers.
He enjoys building and leading high-performing, cross-functional teams in pursuing business opportunities across new consumer segments, product categories, and retail channels to help improve market share and profitability.
Will overhauled the sales forecasting process at a premier cannabis company by identifying key factors contributing to significant forecast bias and developing a cross-functional business intelligence gathering process.
He also created unique demand planning and sales planning teams, which improved forecast accuracy by 50 points, and enabled active management of a $75M R&O list—which will save $20M in E&O.
Will initiated the assortment and velocity insights work of a nascent cannabis market, utilizing market data and customer insights to strengthen and deploy a field sales playbook, resulting in a new item acceptance rate of greater than 50% compared to a competitive new item acceptance rate of less than 25%.
Will created the key account sales team at a wholesaler responsible for activating merchandising priorities with relevant sales collateral, key account sales calls, and development of a new business evaluation tool that resulted in $4M of incremental sales during the first 6 months.
He also implemented a structured product line review process, reducing the cost of goods sold by 8% and negotiating an additional 3% in vendor support across the portfolio while also creating a library of relevant retail assortments that doubled the number of POGs placed in company retailers.
Will also devised a trade promotion excellence initiative, strengthening management of the trade marketing budget.
He developed retail execution road maps for sales and brokers and presented compelling annual trade plans to customers to improve the the trade promotion by $8M in retail sales.