Wednesday, November 04, 2026

Riding a feast-or-famine sales cycle with no idea who to chase? The CLV/CAC method turns a quiet month into a plan, not a panic.

Your sales team didn't lose that account. Your customer didn't switch to a cheaper brand down the aisle. They just started eating less — and there's a good chance nobody in your business has put that into a single planning meeting this year.

New data from McKinsey's State of Grocery North America 2026 report — based on a March 2026 survey of nearly 5,000 grocery shoppers and an April 2026 survey of more than 40 grocery executives across the US and Canada — puts a number on something FMCG and SME owners have been feeling without being able to name it: 16% of grocery shopping households now report someone in the home is currently using a GLP-1 medication (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and similar), with another 7% reporting past use. Among households currently using these medications, 48% say they're buying smaller portions and 46% say they're buying fewer snacks and indulgent items.

That's not a marketing problem, a pricing problem, or a private label problem. It's a straight reduction in how much of your category actually gets eaten — and most ranges were built and priced for a market that's already shifted underneath them.

Why Your Range Planning Is Still Fighting the Wrong War

When sales go soft, most owners run the same three checks: pricing, competitors, marketing spend. All reasonable. All can miss the real story entirely.

Grocery's own decision-makers are already responding to what the data shows. According to McKinsey's State of Grocery North America 2026 report, close to 90% of grocery executives expect to expand high-protein shelf space over the next two to three years — not because protein is a passing trend, but because it's where a genuinely changed shopper is spending. Units per trip fell across nearly every retail channel in the 12 months to June 2026, and over half of shoppers report cutting back specifically on impulse purchases — the exact category most exposed to reduced appetite.

If your last range review didn't ask "has consumption itself changed," it wasn't a full review. It was a pricing exercise wearing a strategy hat.

The Appetite Audit: A Three-Step Range Check

Kevin runs this framework with every FMCG and SME client before a range or NPD decision goes to market:

1. Exposure Check. List every SKU and mark which sit in the categories most exposed to reduced consumption — snacks, large-format packs, indulgent or "treat" positioning. These are the lines most likely to be quietly losing volume for reasons that have nothing to do with your marketing.

2. Format Response. Test smaller pack sizes and portion formats against your current best-sellers. A shopper eating less isn't choosing to abandon your brand — they're choosing the format that matches how much they actually want now.

3. Category Reallocation. Shift a defined share of your NPD pipeline and shelf-space negotiation toward where consumption is genuinely growing: fresh, protein-forward, and wellness-adjacent lines. Don't wait for the retailer to tell you; bring the data to them first.

"Kevin has some amazing ideas around marketing, things we would have never thought of ourselves. He also helped us through the process of getting into supermarkets. He has gone above and beyond what he needed to!"

— Amy Nixon, Icehouse Coaching Programme

The Execution Gap

Most owners who see this data will nod, agree it's real, and change nothing for another two quarters. Not because they don't believe it — because there's no system forcing the question onto the agenda. Range reviews happen annually, GLP-1 usage keeps climbing month on month, and by the time it shows up as a clear sales trend, a competitor with a smaller-format or higher-protein alternative has already taken the shelf space.

The real obstacle usually isn't insight. It's sequencing: no owner has built "consumption shift" into their regular planning cadence, so it only gets attention once it's already cost them a quarter of flat or falling volume. That's exactly the kind of system gap coaching exists to close — not by telling you what to think, but by building the cadence that makes sure you ask the right question before the market answers it for you.

Quick Wins

Three things you can do this week, before a full range review:

  • Pull your last 12 months of unit sales by SKU and flag anything in a snack, indulgent, or large-format line that's down on units even where dollar sales held or grew.
  • Ask your top three retail buyers whether they're seeing category-level softness beyond your own brand — it tells you whether this is a you problem or a category problem.
  • Check your smallest current pack size against what a GLP-1-adjacent shopper would actually want. If your smallest format is still built for a bigger appetite, you're already behind.

Key Takeaways

  • 16% of grocery households now include a current GLP-1 medication user, with another 7% having used one previously, per McKinsey's State of Grocery North America 2026 report.
  • Among current users, 48% buy smaller portions and 46% buy fewer snack or indulgent items — a genuine consumption shift, not a pricing or loyalty issue.
  • Nearly 90% of grocery executives expect to expand high-protein shelf space over the next two to three years in direct response.
  • Run the Appetite Audit — exposure check, format response, category reallocation — before your next range or NPD decision.
  • Build consumption-shift review into your regular planning cadence, not just your annual range review.

If your range hasn't been stress-tested against this shift, that's the conversation worth having before your next planning cycle.

...and you become the owner who spots the shift in your range before the shelf does.

Monday, October 12, 2026

64% of marketers can't tell competing brands apart. Here's the one-sentence positioning formula that makes sure your customers always can.

Monday, October 12, 2026

Most SME owners already know their real edge isn't price. Here's why benchmarking competitors kills that edge, and how first-principles thinking builds a strategy around it instead.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Coach, consultant, mentor or advisor? How the four roles differ, which one suits an established NZ business, and the questions to ask before you pay.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Gallup's 2026 data shows global employee engagement fell to 20 percent, even in the best-performing regions. Here's the three-question check SME owners can run this week to find out where their own team really stands.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Everyone agrees December is too close to Christmas to prospect. One sales agency's own client data says the businesses that kept going saw 19 percent more leads the following January.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Most SME owners can describe next year's budget in detail and go quiet the moment you ask about year ten. A UK study of over 1,000 companies found that gap predicts success almost on its own.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Most SME owners build their people plan around courses. The research behind the 70-20-10 model says courses are the smallest lever you have, and it is worth knowing how shaky that research actually is.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

A lead called within five minutes is up to 100 times more likely to be contacted and 21 times more likely to qualify than one called 30 minutes later. Almost nobody does it.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Most SME owners think a logo is a brand. The agencies behind the world's biggest brands have never worked that way. Here is the five-layer model they actually use.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Nearly half of SMEs have run a SWOT analysis in the last two months, yet most cannot say it changed a single decision. Here is the simple matrix that turns the list into action.

Sunday, October 11, 2026

Burger King once sold a one-cent Whopper only to people standing next to a McDonald's. Here is the under-$5k version any SME owner can run, and what a 1760s potter teaches about removing buying risk.

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Most small business owners feel confident about their sales pipeline right now. New research shows that confidence is measuring the wrong thing entirely.

Saturday, October 10, 2026

Rising revenue and a shrinking bank balance usually mean the same thing: one account doing the job of four. A simple account split fixes it before it becomes a crisis.

Saturday, October 10, 2026

A coaching style that worked in your first month can quietly become the wrong one by your twelfth. The best coaches change how they coach you as you change.