Your sales team is busy. Is it growing?
Sales training and fractional sales leadership for food service suppliers, distributors and the technology that serves them. Built by someone who has run the teams, not just trained them.
Busy, but not growing.
Most food service sales teams work hard but reactively: taking orders, fixing drops and chasing price, while margin leaks and accounts quietly downtrade.
New business depends on one or two people
No shared way to prospect, open conversations with operators, or turn a tasting into a listing.
Existing accounts are under-worked
Share of wallet sits well below potential, and nobody spots a downtrading customer until the account has gone.
Price is the default lever
Reps discount to win and keep business because they cannot show value in the operator's terms: GP, labour, consistency and menu.
Managers manage numbers, not people
Little structured coaching, call review or development, so good habits never spread across the team.
Generic sales training rarely fixes this. It is built for other industries and fades within weeks. This programme is built for food service, and built to stick.
Win. Grow. Protect. Lead.
The programme mirrors how food service suppliers actually make money. Win new accounts, grow share of wallet, protect margin and retention, and lead a team that does all three consistently.
Win
- Prospecting and pipeline
- First conversations
- Discovery around the operator's GP, labour and menu
- Proposals that land
Grow
- Account planning
- Range extension
- Value selling
- Trusted advisor status
Protect
- Downtrader and uptrader routine
- Handling price objections
- Negotiation
- Cost to serve
Lead
- Call and visit scorecard
- Coaching cadence
- Targets and pipeline
- Performance reviews
Most sales training stops at Win. In food service, most of the value sits in Grow and Protect, and none of it lasts without Lead.
Ninety days, four phases.
Training is one phase, not the whole programme. Every engagement is built on your accounts, your range and your objections.
Diagnose
Leadership interviews, call reviews, ride-alongs, and a look at pipeline, accounts and margin. You get a Sales Capability Report and a tailored plan.
Deliver
Two full-day, in-person workshops for up to 12 delegates. Workbooks, tools and an action plan for every person.
Embed
One-to-one coaching for each delegate, coaching for your managers and live call scoring, so the standard holds.
Measure
The diagnostic is repeated against the baseline and results are reviewed with your leadership team.
Measured against your baseline, agreed at the start.
- Call and visit scorecardWhether skills have changed in front of customers
- New accounts openedWhether the team is winning, not just servicing
- Share of walletHow much of each customer's spend you capture
- Lines per accountWhether range extension is happening
- Downtrading accountsHow many are declining, and how fast they are caught
- Gross marginWhether sales growth is profitable
An operator, not just a trainer.
I'm Gary Goddard. I've spent more than 25 years in food service, premium food, wholesale distribution and the technology that supports them, most of it running sales teams and carrying the number. Before sales, I spent a decade as a professional chef, so I know the business from the operator's side of the counter as well as the supplier's.
Progressed from a £5m sales area to the full sales function for a £35m depot, then a £350m division. Built the team that turned a depot losing £250k a month into profit within 18 months, and helped build the organisation-wide sales training programme.
Took revenue from £0 to £500k in six months by moving suppliers to a paid model. Retrained a 15-person sales team and personally closed a supplier deal worth £20k a month.
Set up a new department from scratch, built a sales team and telesales function, and scaled a home delivery business to 500 cases a week at its peak.
Ran a £1m-a-month business with a team of 50, with full P&L responsibility.
MBA with Merit, University of Liverpool · Accredited coach and NLP practitioner · Facilitator and keynote speaker to rooms of 200 to 300
Start with a diagnostic. Go as far as you need.
Sales Diagnostic
A full review of your team, pipeline and accounts, with a Sales Capability Report that shows where the growth is and what is holding it back. The fee is credited if you go on to the programme.
Sales Excellence Programme
The diagnostic, a programme designed around your business, two full-day workshops for up to 12 people, and a one-to-one for every delegate.
Programme with Embed and Measure
Everything in the programme, plus manager coaching, live call scoring, follow-up one-to-ones and a day-90 results review against your baseline.
Need ongoing sales leadership rather than a programme? I also work as a fractional Commercial Director, up to three days a week, flexed around your business.
Find out where your sales growth is hiding.
A 30-minute call to talk through your team, your customers and what you want the next year to look like. No pitch deck, no obligation.
- Book a 30-minute call at a time that suits you.
- We agree whether a diagnostic makes sense for your business.
- You get a clear, costed plan for your team.
Not ready to talk yet? The Health Check takes five minutes and scores your team across Win, Grow, Protect and Lead.