Sales Strategy Consulting For CPG Manufacturers and Brokers
About John Clevenger
John Clevenger is the founder of Trundy Point Consulting, the culmination of his 30+ years in the CPG industry. In leadership positions on both the client and service sides, John has consistently focused on techniques for achieving brand objectives through retailer engagement.
John started his CPG career at Pepsi, building a broad marketing foundation in Brand Management, National Account Sales, Channel Strategy and New Product Development. In Seattle as Regional Director of Field Marketing, he worked side by side with the sales team and realized that winning at retail combines a marketer’s strategic, insights-driven approach and the pragmatic activation bias of a top sales organization.
That realization became John’s focus as an early hire of Meridian Consulting Group, one of the pioneers in the emerging field of category management. Meridian believed that winning in a category management relationship would take more than filling out the forms that suppressed company and brand distinctiveness; success would come by selling using the same consumer-centric, fact-based approach. John eventually rose to Managing Director, forging long-term winning relationships with clients as diverse as Diageo, McCormick, Valvoline, Kodak, the National Pork Board and Havas.
As Client Insights Executive at global market research leader Information Resources Inc (IRI), John transformed his team from “data waiters” to strategic advisors supporting the world’s largest privately owned CPG company by integrating multiple data sources to deliver insights and guidance beyond the expected data reporting.
As Managing Director of the Strategic Advisors group at Acosta Sales & Marketing, John took the concept of insights-to-activation support to a higher level by combining insights-rich strategy with the largest retail activation force in the country. The power of selling smarter benefitted industry powerhouses like Starbucks, P&G and Nestle, mid-tier companies like Ken’s Foods and Pompeian, and start-ups such as Blue Apron and Fresh Pet.
John Clevenger