Four Cultures, One Number
The Situation
PepsiCo created a new $300 million direct sales division by combining the foodservice and vending sales forces of Frito-Lay, Quaker Foods, Gatorade, and Tropicana. On paper it was obvious: one salesperson, one relationship, four portfolios.
In practice it meant merging four company cultures with genuinely different levels of sales sophistication, four sets of customer relationships, and four groups of people who each believed their way of selling was the right one. The division was organized into four regions, all attempting the same integration simultaneously.
What Was Done
Co-led the Southeast region — a $300M P&L with five direct reports and 55 sales professionals — through the integration. The work was less about strategy than about making a merged organization function: establishing common selling processes across the four legacy groups, building shared account planning, and putting in place the performance monitoring that let leadership see what was actually happening rather than what was being reported.
Volume, trade spending, and selling expense were forecast to 98% accuracy — which mattered because in the first year of a merger nobody trusts the numbers, and a forecast people believe is what allows decisions to get made at all.
What Changed
- The only region of four to beat plan in the first year
- Volume up 11%
- Profit up 14%
Relevant if: you are integrating sales organizations and discovering that the synergy case assumed people would simply start working together.