About the Role:
The Data Analyst - Sales Planning is responsible for transforming data into actionable insights that drive category growth across key grocery retailers. This role partners with Sales, Marketing, and cross-functional teams to support strategic planning, optimize assortment, and respond to both real-time analytics and long-term trends within the grocery industry.
Key Responsibilities:
- Analyze category and competitive data using IRI and internal systems to identify growth drivers and whitespace opportunities.
- Create and deliver insight-driven recommendations for key retail partners (e.g., Walmart, Kroger, Publix, Albertsons) to inform shelf placement, brand blocking, pricing, and promotion strategies.
- Lead insights development for category line reviews and customer presentations, using compelling, data-backed storytelling.
- Monitor shifts in consumer behavior, market conditions, and emerging food trends to inform business strategy.
- Build and maintain performance dashboards and scorecards to track market share, velocity, distribution, and competitive dynamics.
- Collaborate with Sales, Marketing, and Innovation teams to align insights with commercial objectives and retailer-specific strategies.
- Serve as an internal subject matter expert on food and grocery shopper behavior, macro trends, and category performance.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Economics, or a related field.
- Strong analytical, critical thinking, and communication skills, with the ability to distill complex data into clear, strategic narratives.
- Proficient in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint; experience with Power BI is a plus.
Experience:
- 2–3 years in one or more of the following:
- Category analyst or associate manager role at a CPG company or agency
- Shopper insights, consumer research, or trade marketing
- Exposure to syndicated data (Nielsen, Circana, SPINS) or retailer POS tools (Walmart Scintilla, 84.51°, etc.)
- Excel skills should include: VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP and INDEX-MATCH for data merging and lookups, proficiency with PivotTables for summarizing large datasets, data cleaning using formulas such as TEXT, LEFT/RIGHT/MID, TRIM, and SUBSTITUTE, conditional formatting and dynamic tables for visualization, IF, SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, and other logical/statistical formulas, creating and maintaining dashboards using charts, slicers, and named ranges.
- PowerPoint skills should include: Designing insight-driven presentations tailored to internal and retail-facing audiences, creating clean, visually compelling slides using charts, graphics, and iconography, building storytelling decks for line reviews, Joint Business Planning (JBP), and exec