Why the Decision-Maker in a CPG Brand Is Not Always Who You Think

One of the most common mistakes in B2B outbound targeting CPG brands is contacting the wrong person. Not because the list is inaccurate, but because the decision-maker for external service vendor relationships shifts significantly as a brand grows, and most service businesses use a one-size approach to targeting regardless of where the brand sits on that curve.

Understanding who controls the decision at each stage of a CPG brand's growth changes who you reach out to, what you say, and how quickly a conversation can move toward a close.

Why this matters more in CPG than in most industries

In many B2B industries, the buying committee is relatively stable. A software purchase at a mid-market company goes through IT, finance, and a department head in a predictable sequence. The titles are consistent, the process is documented, and the path from prospecting to contract is legible.

CPG brands, especially in the emerging and mid-market segments, do not work this way. The organizational structure at a brand doing $3 million in revenue is fundamentally different from the structure at a brand doing $30 million. The same title, "founder" or "head of sales," means entirely different things at different stages, and the person who controls a service vendor relationship at one stage may have delegated that decision to someone else entirely eighteen months later.

Research from Gartner on B2B buying behavior has found that the average enterprise purchase involves six to ten decision-makers. For mid-market CPG brands the number is smaller, typically two to four, but the underlying principle applies: a single point of contact in a growing organization is a fragile position.

Stage 1: Early-stage brands ($0 to $5 million in revenue)

At this stage, the founder is the business. They handle sales, operations, vendor relationships, marketing strategy, and most of the day-to-day execution. There is no buying committee. There is no approval process. The founder decides, and the founder decides quickly when something makes sense for the business.

Targeting the founder at this stage is correct. But the founder of an early-stage CPG brand is also the most time-pressured, least reachable person in the building. They are at trade shows, in co-packer visits, managing retail relationships, and handling customer service simultaneously. A message that requires them to carve out mental space is a message that gets deferred.

Outreach to early-stage founders needs to be extremely concise, extremely specific to their current stage of growth, and designed to make the next step as frictionless as possible. Long emails, complex asks, and generic value propositions get ignored not because the founder is not interested but because they are overwhelmed.

Stage 2: Growth-stage brands ($5 million to $20 million in revenue)

At this stage, the founder has usually hired one or two senior people, typically a VP of Operations, a Director of Sales, or a head of marketing. These hires often absorb a portion of the vendor relationship management that previously sat entirely with the founder.

The complication is that the allocation of decision authority varies significantly between brands at this stage. In some cases, the VP of Operations controls all service vendor relationships. In others, the founder still signs off on anything above a certain spend threshold. In others, a newly hired CFO has stepped into the role of vendor evaluation.

Targeting at this stage benefits from a multi-threading approach: reaching both the founder and the relevant senior hire with context-appropriate messages for each. A message to the founder about pipeline and growth. A message to the VP of Operations or VP of Sales about the specific function you serve. The two touches reinforce each other without being redundant.

Stage 3: Mid-market brands ($20 million and above)

At this stage, the organizational structure has matured. The founder may still be involved in major vendor decisions but has typically delegated operational service relationships to functional leaders. A VP of Sales controls broker and distribution relationships. A VP of Operations controls co-manufacturing and 3PL decisions. A CMO controls agency relationships.

The founder at a $50 million CPG brand is often the wrong first contact for a service vendor pitch, not because they lack authority but because the decision-making has been distributed and going to them first can slow the process down. The functional leader whose budget and remit covers what you offer is the right starting point.

Outreach at this stage should target the relevant functional leader directly, with language that speaks to their specific priorities rather than the company's overall growth story.

The gatekeeper reality

At every stage there is a version of the gatekeeper problem. At early-stage brands, a part-time operations hire or an assistant may screen inbound communication before it reaches the founder. At growth-stage brands, an executive assistant or a newly hired chief of staff may filter what the founder sees. At mid-market brands, the functional leader's team handles initial outreach responses before escalating anything worth the leader's attention.

Knowing this changes how outreach is structured. Messages that clearly explain what the company does, who it serves, and why the outreach is relevant to the specific person being contacted have a higher probability of passing through. Messages that lead with a generic company overview or a list of services give the gatekeeper nothing to work with.

The title trap

Job titles in CPG are inconsistently applied. "Head of Sales" at one brand might mean a solo operator doing outbound with no support. At another brand it might mean a team of six with a broker network. "Founder" might mean the primary decision-maker for all vendor relationships or someone who has fully stepped back from operations.

Relying on title alone without understanding the organizational context leads to mismatched outreach. A message about growing your pipeline is relevant to a solo founder. It is irrelevant to a founder who has hired a full sales team and is focused on retail strategy. The same title, different situations, completely different messages.

How to identify the right contact

LinkedIn remains the most reliable tool for understanding the actual organizational structure of a CPG brand. Company pages, employee listings, and recent hire announcements reveal the real decision-making structure more accurately than any purchased data source. Tracking when a brand makes a key hire, and which role they hired for, also signals which function is currently getting investment.

For smaller brands where LinkedIn is sparse, trade show exhibitor directories, brand press releases announcing key hires, and trade press profiles often surface the names and titles of the people controlling major vendor decisions.

The bottom line

CPG brand decision-makers are a moving target. The right contact changes as the brand grows, and the wrong contact means that even a well-crafted message lands nowhere. For service businesses building outbound campaigns targeting CPG brands, understanding the organizational structure at each stage is not a research exercise. It is the foundation of a sequence that converts.