Wednesday, November 04, 2026

If sales only happen when you are in the room, you own a job, not a system. Five parts and a five-day plan to build a sales process your team can run without you.

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.

Friday, October 23, 2026

31.7% of small business owners have never taken a full week off. Here's the handover document that actually fixes it, and how AI turns a week of writing into an afternoon.

Friday, October 23, 2026

Four in ten small business owners say they discount often, and a third still report sales down anyway. Here's the SPIN Selling framework that gets you to full price without the price cut.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

When offers look alike, price is all that is left to compare. What New Zealand telecoms teach SME owners about escaping the price war.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Get more from the link that limits your growth before you spend a dollar on it. A 14-day, no-new-spend plan for SME owners.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Score eight links in your business from 1 to 5 and the weakest, earliest link is usually your constraint. A 20-minute self-check for SME owners.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Referrals just became small business owners' #1 source of new customers — up from 65% to 83% in a single year. Here's the Dream 100 system that turns word of mouth into a repeatable growth engine.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Roughly one in four founders report loneliness and isolation running their business. Here's what a coach actually does differently, and why the first session is rarely about strategy.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

NZ small business sales rose 8.6 percent this quarter, but growth ranged from 2.9 to 16.3 percent by industry. Here's the three-number check that tells you whether your growth is actually yours.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Only 30 percent of business change efforts fully succeed. Here's the three-part diagnosis, borrowed from strategy academic Richard Rumelt, most owners skip before fixing anything.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

Close to six in ten of this year's US holiday shoppers are already buying, in October or year-round. Here are three sales moves to make this week before Black Friday arrives.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

77.6 percent of US consumers used AI to help with a purchase decision in the past six months. Here are three moves that make your small business visible when customers ask AI about you.

Thursday, October 22, 2026

54 percent of US business owners have no real plan, and only 11 percent have anything detailed. Here's the one-afternoon exercise that gives your business a sharper three-year direction than any spreadsheet.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

Before you spend another dollar on ads, staff or software, find the one step that limits your growth. Here is a one-hour spend-gate test you can run this week.

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

ActionCOACH began in Brisbane, Australia. What does its story tell US owners about where good growth ideas come from, and how to test an outside idea in your own business?

Wednesday, October 21, 2026

SME owner confidence is climbing, but for most, revenue isn't following. Here's why time isn't your real constraint, and the three-step framework that finds the one that is.