Executive Search Success Story: Building a Revenue Growth Management Function From the Ground Up for a $2.6B Packaged Food Company

How JRG Partners executed a confidential, multi-role North American executive search strategy that equipped a publicly traded packaged food company with the revenue growth management, pricing, trade promotion, and revenue analytics leadership required to replace blunt list-price increases with disciplined price-pack architecture and promotion strategy, recovering margin without sacrificing volume.

The Challenge

A packaged food company had taken three rounds of list-price increases to offset input cost inflation, and volume had fallen 9% as retailers resisted, private label gained share, and consumers traded down. Trade spend had grown to 22% of gross sales with no measurable return, promotions were planned by sales teams without analytics, pack sizes and price points had not been redesigned in years, and the company had no revenue growth management function at all. The board had made margin recovery without further volume loss the chief executive’s top priority. Executive leadership identified several critical vulnerabilities threatening the business:

• Volume down 9% after three rounds of blunt list-price increases
• Trade spend at 22% of gross sales with no measurable promotion return
• No price-pack architecture strategy across channels with different price thresholds
• Promotions planned by field sales without analytics, guardrails, or post-event evaluation
• Private label and trade-down eroding share at key price points
• No revenue growth management function, capability, or executive ownership

Recognizing that margin recovery required a disciplined revenue growth management capability, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Commercial Officer engaged JRG Partners to recruit a Vice President of Revenue Growth Management, Director of Pricing & Price-Pack Architecture, Director of Trade Promotion Management, and Director of Revenue Analytics & Insights. The company required an executive search partner with deep revenue growth management expertise and access to leaders who had built the function at leading consumer companies.

Why They Chose JRG Partners

Revenue Growth Management Practice Focus

JRG Partners maintains a dedicated practice recruiting revenue growth management, pricing, trade promotion, and commercial analytics leadership for consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, consumer health, and durable goods companies. This focus ensured an immediate understanding of price-pack architecture, promotion effectiveness, trade governance, and the leadership profiles that recover margin without losing volume.

Function Build Experience

Our firm has extensive experience recruiting executives who have established revenue growth management functions from scratch, with a clear understanding of how to sequence capability, tools, and organizational change against commercial calendars.

Multi-Role Commercial Execution

Our team specializes in running coordinated revenue growth management leadership searches in parallel, ensuring the vice president and directors are selected as a complementary unit aligned to a single margin recovery plan.

Our Executive Search Strategy

Phase 1 — Margin Recovery Plan Alignment

Our consultants partnered directly with the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Commercial Officer, and Chief Financial Officer to review pricing history, trade spend data, promotion performance, channel economics, and the organizational gap, defining four leadership profiles aligned with the margin recovery plan.

Phase 2 — Talent Identification & Mapping

Our research team performed an extensive talent mapping initiative targeting revenue growth management, pricing, trade promotion, and analytics leaders at food, beverage, and consumer packaged goods companies and consumer analytics firms who had built documented functions and delivered margin outcomes. Over 360 executives were systematically assessed across these sectors.

Phase 3 — Candidate Engagement

Priority during outreach was given to leaders with a documented history of building revenue growth management functions, redesigning price-pack architecture across channels, implementing trade promotion optimization with measurable return, establishing promotion guardrails with sales organizations, and delivering revenue analytics to the executive team. Only candidates meeting these strict performance baselines advanced.

Phase 4 — Selection Process

Finalists presented margin recovery plans to the Chief Executive Officer and executive committee, completed structured leadership assessments, and underwent reference verification focused on quantified margin, trade efficiency, and volume outcomes.

Key Outcomes

• 360+ revenue growth management, pricing, and trade executive profiles mapped across North America.
• Successfully placed a synchronized leadership tier spanning revenue growth management, pricing, trade promotion, and analytics within six months.
• Reduced trade spend from 22% to 18.5% of gross sales with improved promotion lift.
• Recovered 4 points of volume through price-pack architecture.
• Improved gross margin by 320 basis points within eighteen months.
• Improved share at three of the five largest retail customers.