Sponsored by Run the Numbers Consulting. Run the Numbers Consulting loves to partner with CPG brands to strengthen operations, sales, and data through fractional leadership and data-driven insights that support confident decision-making and sustainable growth within grocery retail. Their consultants work alongside brand teams across sales, operations, data analytics, finance, and deductions.

Hiring a sales leader is one of the most important decisions you’ll make as a founder.

It’s also one of the easiest to get wrong.

Founders should 100% lead sales for brands starting out. You’re managing retail conversations, chasing distributor opportunities, working with brokers, handling tradeoffs between growth and margin, and trying to keep the rest of the business moving. Eventually, that approach stops scaling. You need someone who can take ownership of sales and help build a more disciplined path forward.

That’s when many brands decide it’s time to hire a Head of Sales or VP of Sales.

But hiring the right sales leader is not just about finding someone with retail relationships or a recognizable resume. It’s about finding someone who understands your stage, your economics, and what your business actually needs next.

Here’s how to make the right hire for your CPG brand.

Start with the business need, not the title

A lot of founders begin by saying, “We need a VP of Sales.”

But that title can mean very different things depending on the company.

Do you need someone to open new accounts? Manage brokers and distributors more effectively? Improve velocity at existing retailers? Build reporting and accountability? Create a better promotion strategy? Hire and lead a team?

Those are all different jobs.

The strongest hiring decisions start with clarity around the actual problem. If you don’t know what this person is meant to solve, it becomes very easy to hire someone impressive on paper who is wrong for the role in practice.

Before starting your search, define what success looks like over the next 12 to 18 months. Be specific. Maybe that means building a distributor management process, expanding in a focused channel, or improving profitability across existing retail partners. Once you know the mission, it becomes much easier to identify the right candidate.

Hire for your current stage, not the company you hope to become

One of the most common mistakes emerging brands make is hiring too far ahead of where the business actually is.

A candidate coming from a large legacy brand may have led big teams, managed huge trade budgets, and worked with top retail accounts. That experience can sound attractive, but it does not always translate well to an earlier-stage business.

Most brands under $10 million need a sales leader who can operate in ambiguity. Someone who doesn’t just direct the work, but actually does the work. Someone who can think strategically while still being hands-on with buyer prep, distributor follow-up, broker management, and sales planning.

And for brands moving into the $10 million to $50 million range, the challenge often shifts. At that stage, you may already have meaningful distribution, but the business still lacks the financial visibility needed to make good commercial decisions. You may be growing, but not always in the most profitable way. That affects the kind of sales leader you need.

The right hire is not necessarily the most senior person. It’s the person whose experience matches the realities of your stage.

Make sure they understand the financial realities of retail

This is where many hiring processes fall short.

Founders often evaluate sales candidates based on network, charisma, and account experience. But in CPG, strong sales leadership also requires a solid understanding of the costs of doing business in retail.

A candidate may be excited about getting your brand into a new retailer, but do they understand what that expansion will cost? Can they think through promotions, deductions, distributor fees, trade spend, and the time it may take for that account to become profitable? Can they distinguish between a good opportunity and an expensive distraction?

That matters even more for young brands, where every decision has an outsized impact on cash flow.

This is also why many founders benefit from getting clearer on their financials before making a senior sales hire. A partner like Run The Numbers Consulting can help brands better understand retail costs, profitability, and where opportunities actually make sense. That kind of visibility can make it much easier to define the role correctly and hire a leader who aligns with the business instead of simply chasing every possible account.

It’s a subtle but important shift: the best sales leaders don’t just help you grow. They help you grow in the right places.

Interview for how they solve problems

When you interview candidates, push beyond general answers.

Ask them to walk through specific examples. Have them describe a time they entered a new retail account, turned around underperformance, managed a difficult distributor relationship, or built a promotional plan that improved results. Ask what metrics they relied on, how they judged success, and what they would have done differently.

You want to understand whether they can connect sales activity to business outcomes.

This becomes especially important as brands scale. Once you have more accounts, more SKUs, and more promotional complexity, you need someone who can look at performance data and make smart decisions from it. Which retailer needs more support? Which promotion is actually working? Which SKU is worth defending? Where did margin improve, and where did it disappear?

Those are commercial questions, not just sales questions.

Define success before they start

One of the biggest reasons sales hires disappoint is that expectations were never clearly aligned.

If a founder expects the new hire to triple revenue, but the business lacks the pricing, trade budget, or operational support to do that, frustration builds quickly. The same thing happens when candidates are hired into vague mandates like “grow the business” without a clear scorecard.

Before making an offer, define what success looks like in year one.

That may include revenue growth, but it should also include operational and financial markers such as improved account performance, better distributor management, stronger forecasting, clearer promotional planning, healthier margins, or more disciplined retailer prioritization.

Then clearly communicate those exact expectations. A sales leader can only succeed if the role is grounded in reality.

Final thoughts

Hiring the right sales leader can change the trajectory of your brand. The right person brings structure, accountability, and momentum, but only if the role is built around what your business actually needs today.

That starts with clarity. Before making a hire, founders need a strong understanding of their stage, their sales priorities, and the financial realities behind growth. When you know which accounts, channels, and investments are actually driving profitable traction, it becomes much easier to hire a sales leader who can help you scale in a smart, sustainable way.

That’s also where Run the Numbers Consulting can be a valuable partner. They help CPG brands strengthen operations, sales, and data through fractional leadership and data-driven insights, giving founders a clearer view of retail costs, profitability, and commercial opportunities. That kind of visibility can make all the difference when you’re deciding who to hire and what success should look like in the role.

If you’d like to learn more about how Run the Numbers Consulting can support your brand, click the button below.