Principal Program Lead, Sales Channel Strategy & Growth

The Hospitality & Service Experience (HSE) Team purpose is to grow occasions to care by nourishing Customers with easy and enriching experiences that are unique to CFA. Hospitality and Service Experience is a differentiator for Chick-fil-A in a cluttered industry that is growing with direct and indirect competition, of which Chick-fil-A is experiencing some for the first time. Additional internal and external complexities present new challenges to current hospitality and service models – increase in sales channels, shifts in Team Member behavior norms/desires, increase complexity of team member role, competitor imitation, digital customer expectations and unknown customer of the future.
 
The Hospitality & Service Experience team is a sub-team of the Restaurant Experience group, which is a sub-department of the Marketing department. This role reports to the Director, Sales Channels in HSE. Hospitality & Service Experience work impacts 3,100+ domestic Restaurants, including 25+ international Restaurants (3+ countries), 500 Non-Traditional Restaurants (Licensee formats, food trucks, mobile kitchens) and additional sales channels such as Catering. This role will partner across the business including Customer& Market Insights, Restaurant Performance Insights, Field Operations, Digital Transformation & Technology, Restaurant Development, Customer Digital Experience, Learning and Development, Corporate Communications and more.
 
Principal Program Lead, Sales Channel Strategy & Growth requires a motivated innovative professional to lead sales channel strategy, develop resources and equip staff and Operators to make the best decisions to optimize sales channel customer satisfaction and sales goals. This individual will partner across the business to guide holistic channel strategy, define gaps and opportunities, identify new sales channels, and gain alignment on a multi-year pipeline of channel resources and Restaurant tools to power good decisions at the enterprise and Restaurant level. The output generated by this role will be heavily
leveraged by other SMEs across the business to shape innovation and priorities. This role will leverage data and insights generated by multiple partners across the business.
 
This work will help Chick-fil-A remain a QSR leader, aggressively pursuing our destination while maintaining our originality and brand health. This role will directly impact our ability to “reignite the experience” strategic choice. 
 
Success in the role requires an exceptional strategist, influencer and communicator, with the ability to make decisions and present insights, strategies and recommendations to senior leaders across the organization.

Our Flexible Future model offers a healthy mix of working in person and virtually, strengthening key elements of the Chick-fil-A culture by fostering collaboration and community.

Day-to-day, this role:

• Leads development of multi-year growth strategies for our sales channel portfolio, understanding the interdependencies and unique value of each channel.
• Champions and delivers the communication and distribution of sales channel strategies, insights and resources to equip cross-functional staff teams across the enterprise to optimize business decisions, impacting both current and future solutions (service process, channel offerings, new innovations)
• Equips and enables staff and field consultants to support the best Operator decisions in maximizing the impact of sales channels and channel mix (ie., training, tools)
• Develops multi-year pipeline for All Channel resources and tools (Performance & Availability Dashboards, Scorecards, Sales Channel Guide, consulting tools)
• Defines insights and resources needed to power sales channel optimization decisions for Staff and restaurants.

The ideal Principal Program Lead has a strong track record in leveraging insights to develop strategies and roadmaps. The position requires the ability to lead multiple workstreams in assignments and vendor partnerships. The model candidate is self-motivated, a strong communicator and presenter across varying size audiences and leadership, and able to lead productively as a cross-functional leader and consensus builder.

This person should have a track record of delivering significant business results, including:

• Proven track record of strategy development and implementation
• Ability to leverage Customer, operational and financial insights to define multi-year approach to grow occasions to care
• Strong communication, storytelling and presentation skills
• Strong influencing and collaboration skills
• Strong analytic and conceptual thinking capabilities
• Strong data literacy and ability to translate data into meaningful insights that fuel decisions
• Experience with market analyses and industry sales channel knowledge
• Ability to build effective relationships with Chick-fil-A staff, Operators and partners

Skills and Abilities

• Emotional Intelligence: Ability to listen, learn, empathize and act accordingly to ensure progress is made while also bringing others along with a sense of shared ownership.
• Communication Skills: Ability to tailor message and influence decision-making across a variety of departments and levels. Consistently displays ability to write clearly and succinctly in a variety of communication settings and styles; can get messages across that have the desired effect.
• Customer Focus: Is dedicated to meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external customers; gets first-hand customer information and uses it for improvements in products and services; acts with customers in mind; establishes and maintains effective relationships with customers and gains their trust and respect.
• Strategic: Relentlessly search for solutions, elements of strategy to tweak, and taste patterns in an audience –finding key learnings for the brand as a result. See the necessity and power of advertising to grow business. And adjust and adopt new practices as needed and quickly.
• Problem Solving: Uses rigorous logic and methods to solve difficult problems with effective solutions; probes all fruitful sources for answers; can see hidden problems; is excellent at honest analysis; looks beyond the obvious and doesn't stop at the first answer.
• Excellence: Gives personal best every day; demonstrates positive attitude and confidence; sets high standards and meets self-expectations; pursues everything with energy, drive, and a need to finish; is committed to and works actively to growing and developing capabilities and capacity; seeks feedback on performance and acts upon feedback received; practices accountability
• Drive for Results: Can be counted on to exceed goals successfully; is constantly and consistently one of the top performers; very bottom-line oriented; steadfastly pushes self and others for results.
• Planning: Accurately scopes out length and difficulty of tasks and projects; sets objectives and goals; breaks down work into the process steps; develops schedules and task/people assignments; anticipates and adjusts for problems and roadblocks; measures performance against goals; evaluates results.
• Tenacious: Proven ability to get results through mastering the operation. Acts assertively as an owner of the business with a sense of urgency.
• Critical Thinking and Analytical: Critical thinker with strong analytical and proactive problem- solving skills. Displays discernment in decision-making skills and proven track record of balancing what's right for the Customer and the Chick-fil-A brand. Exhausts multiple options before narrowing to one conclusion.
• Versatile and Savvy: Enjoys the blend of being skilled at production, relationships, communication, and innovative thinking; an enthusiastic bridge builder across disciplines, groups and personalities. Consistently displays a range of both technical and creative skills. Proven business and organizational savviness, demonstrating strong enterprise thinking.
• Collaborator: Ability to bring diverse groups across internal and external teams together to work across multiple disciplines, and successfully lead those SMEs toward a common outcome with ease. Able to work independently or in a group, adapt to shifting priorities, and enjoy identifying and implementing new initiatives.

• Minimum 6+ years of professional experience in strategy development, restaurant operations or innovation.
• Bachelor’s degree
• Educational excellence
• Strong strategy development experience
• Extensive communication, presentation and project management skills
• Ability to work in a highly collaborative environment in a matrix organization, with a team approach to accomplishing objectives
• Strong influencing and consensus building skills
• Ability to build effective relationships with Chick-fil-A staff, Operators and vendors

• 10+ years of experience
• Sales channel strategy experience
• Continuing education edits and/or professional certifications demonstrating a lifetime-learner