Reflecting on my time at PepsiCo

Tomorrow marks my last working day for the FMCG giant that is PepsiCo and while I have a new journey on the horizon, I thought this was an appropriate juncture to sit back and reflect on the last 5 years. I've written this for two reasons 1) because I think it's important to regularly reflect on where you are, where you've been and where you are going and 2) hopefully this article will give somebody else who is about to start their career at PepsiCo or in FMCG a good insight as to what their next few years can look like.

I say 5 years because it was February 2012 that I was travelling up from Exeter University to PepsiCo for an assessment centre and I feel like I’ve been a part of the company ever since. PepsiCo offers one of the most intense, challenging and engaging internships in the market. While a good portion of the internship is centred on sales fundamentals i.e. “here’s a van full of porridge, now go and sell it” you also get a huge amount of exposure to pretty much every function across the business. Something I probably didn’t appreciate at the time. Of course, like all things at PepsiCo, a large part of what made the internship great was the people that you work with and I made some life-long friends who I still see regularly. The best thing about it for me was that I felt like I finally knew what I wanted to do after University. I realised I was target orientated, business minded and enjoyed building up customer relationships. FMCG sales ticked all those boxes and offered a great starting point for my career. 

After the Internship I was invited to a further assessment centre, after which I was offered a position on PepsiCo’s new graduate scheme dubbed the Accelerated Career Programme (ACP), a 3 and a half year rotational as well as progressional plan to give you a range of critical experiences; six months out in the field earning your stripes and then three one year placements in Grocery, Impulse and Category/Insights.

Following on from my Graduation in the summer of 2013, I began the Grad Scheme working in Wembley selling crisps into a call base of around 200 stores from the back of my beautiful Vito. I soon found out that you typically get 3 types of retailers in Wembley: 1) The type where if you spend longer than 15 seconds explaining your proposition you’ve lost the sale. 2) Those who see you as a good opportunity to have a cup of tea and talk to you about everything under the sun - apart from crisps 3) Some that are prone to unprecedented mood swings and will without warning chase you out of their store. All in all it’s a tough gig selling crisps in Wembley but there’s no better place to get a good grounding of both the FMCG market and sales.

I managed to make it through my time in the field and was plunged into the very different world of working as an Account Exec on a grocery account. This was different to anything else that I had been used to. Suddenly the challenge became about keeping myself on top of a work load that could quickly get on top of you, not to mention an environment where negligence can have a serious impact on the business. In this position I learnt how to be highly organised, how a gold standard account should be run (with plenty of exposure to some really good account managers/controllers) and lastly the importance of getting off your ass and going to speak to someone rather than sending an email. I had an immediate affinity with commercial and quickly figured out that this was a part of sales I wanted to spend a good portion of my career in.

One of the perks that I really enjoyed about working in FMCG with PepsiCo was that I got to go to a lot of events/work functions. These become run-of-the-mill once you’ve done them a number of times but when you are 22 and just out of university going to a League Cup Final in hospitality, England Football games, Rugby Premiership Finals, Gala Dinners, Conferences etc. etc. to name a few in my first year, felt pretty surreal. In a time where budgets are being squeezed, companies need to recognise that little things like this can be the difference between making you stay or go. 

While I knew that my future would have me return to commercial sales I began to appreciate that getting some wider experiences in Category/Shopper Insights would stand me in good stead for future roles. I spent the first half of that year working in Shopper Insights where I probably had my toughest spell at PepsiCo. I learnt that there are two types of jobs, those where the work is provided for you and those where the work is self-generated. In this time I also learnt that the latter type of job is a lot harder than the former. I threw myself into the role and I developed my understanding of how shoppers behave in supermarkets and how subliminally influenced we all are. I was a long way away from what attracted me to FMCG sales and I felt like I was back at University but this time studying psychology. I was well and truly out of my comfort zone talking about the different parts of the human brain. While I got a tremendous amount out of the role, I will admit that I gave a sigh of relief when it was decided that the Shopper Insights team was going through a re-structure. I wouldn't have to worry about what on earth a Homo Economicus was any longer as I was being moved across to work in Category Management.  

It’s safe to say that I was thrown in at the deep end during my time in Category Management. I was working with a big customer, who is particularly complicated to work with due to the fact they range their stores in what seems to be a million different ways. In my second week I attended an all-day immersion meeting, with a number of other suppliers, where I had an hour slot at the beginning to give my steer on the market, on a category I hadn’t worked on before. I think the phrase “deer caught in headlights” springs to mind. Of course it was fine on the day and all in all I quite enjoyed my time in Category as I got a lot of experiences like this. In the end I became quite accustomed to the headlights and in fact rather enjoyed it. In this role I began to learn how to handle high pressure situations, became far too familiar with Nielsen product hierarchies and how to pull together a half decent presentation. I really enjoyed working in category and again I was alongside some really good operators who I was able to absorb a lot from.

For my final position on the Grad Scheme I was given my own team of Sales Development Representatives to manage across London in the Impulse Channel. I had always had my eyes set on this role since the moment I joined the business so for me it was a major milestone, but at age 24 I was pretty daunted by the prospect of people management. 

Fortunately I was given a brilliant team and it couldn’t have been more of a pleasure to manage them. In this year I was put into some of the most surreal and unexpected situations that can only come about by working as a manager in field sales. I had to self-motivate, work independently, make a lot of decisions and, for the first time, achieve results through other people (as a control freak this was hard to handle at first). Like anything though you quickly pick it up and you become accustomed to management. I also learnt how to work with HR – hiring, firing, disciplinary meetings, investigations and career discussions are all valuable experiences and at one point or another I did them all. There's a knack to managing people and a book that helped me develop my leadership skills was Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People". I'd recommend this to any new or even existing people managers.

I can honestly say I have never had a more rewarding yet stressful time in my life when during my time as a Sales Manager I got involved in managing our summer sales internship. We brought in 12 interns for 10 weeks to give them exposure to what a career would be like in FMCG sales. The first time I stood up in front of them to present what they would be doing for the next 10 weeks was a surreal moment considering I had been sat where they were sat just 4 years before. I’ve never worked longer hours but it was genuinely worth it and I loved seeing the interns go through a transformation throughout the summer. They were a great bunch and I'm sure they will all have successful careers whatever they turn their hands to. It was at this stage that I learned one of the most important lessons I learnt in my time at PepsiCo... How to be a duck!... in other words paddling frantically with your legs while maintaining a look of calm and control on the surface.

One thing that you can't underestimate in any job is the importance of a strong team around you. I had the opportunity to work with an incredible group of people this last year which are the other regional sales managers. I was initially nervous to join this group – between the 10 of them they had well over 200 years of experience with PepsiCo! I will hopefully remain friends with all of them and it was a genuine privilege to work alongside such a great group of people who were always there for me and always ready to support me at the drop of a hat when I needed it. Ann Baker and Luke Spiller hired me into the company 5 years ago and have remained great friends/coaches ever since. I owe a massive debt to both of these guys and I am incredibly grateful to them. 

A new opportunity has come along and I'm really excited to take on the challenge. But I owe a massive amount to PepsiCo, not only from a professional point of view but also personal, having met some of my best friends through working at at the company. PepsiCo ticked off 5 critical experiences in a very short amount of time; direct field sales experience, commercial in a top 4 grocery account, category management, shopper insights and people management. All the while working with some fantastic brands. I would never have believed I’d have had all of those experiences by the time I was 25 and it’s because of that reason that I am, and always will be, hugely grateful to PepsiCo.