Promotions and innovations: measuring the real impact of your Foodservice action plans

Claire Brunaud
Feb 5
3 min read

As a Key Account Manager, you negotiate key commercial agreements every year.

Promotions, innovations, highlights, range expansions… on paper, the action plans are clear. The objectives too.

But once the agreements are signed, one question systematically arises:

What is actually being implemented on the ground, and what is the business impact?

The daily life of a Key Account Manager: many agreements, little visibility on the ground

In the foodservice industry, the complexity lies not only in the negotiation.

It mainly starts after .

Between the power plants, warehouses, and the diversity of end customers, it is often difficult to know if:

The references are indeed active.
The promotions are being rolled out correctly.
the innovations are actually being ordered,
The negotiated DN translates into concrete volumes.

Without reliable visibility, monitoring of trade agreements becomes incomplete. Management then relies on field discussions, perceptions, or incomplete indicators.

When sell-in is no longer sufficient to measure performance

Sell-in remains a useful indicator for monitoring the business relationship with the distributor.

But it does not allow us to measure the real impact of an action plan.

A sell-in spike can mask simple warehouse storage.

A well-referenced innovation may never actually be activated for end customers.

A promotion can be expensive without generating incremental sales.

For KAM, the risk is twofold:

👉 overestimating actual performance

👉 Lack of factual arguments during account reviews or renegotiations

Sell-out data: verifying the actual execution of agreements

In Foodservice, warehouse exit data is the closest to the reality on the ground.

It allows us to know what is actually ordered by end customers, beyond the negotiated agreements.

Thanks to sell-out, the KAM can finally answer key questions:

Did the promotion generate additional volumes or just storage?
Is the innovation truly adopted after its launch?
Does the negotiated DN translate into warehouse exits?
Which depots or zones are playing ball… and which are falling behind?

The discussion changes in nature. We are no longer talking about intentions, but about facts.

Measuring the ROI of foodservice promotions: from cost to value created

A foodservice promotion is not an end in itself. It's an investment.

Without sell-out data, it is very difficult to measure the real return.

With warehouse exits, it becomes possible to analyze the impact on volumes, identify incremental sales and distinguish what is a real activation from what is a windfall effect.

For the Key Account Manager (KAM), this reading is essential. It allows them to defend effective action plans, adjust others, and above all, secure the profitability of commercial agreements .

Innovations: tracking adoption, not just launch

Launching an innovation in Foodservice is always a gamble.

Listing does not mean adoption.

Sell-out data allows us to track the first weeks of a product's life, to understand where it is successful, where it is not, and with which end customer profiles.

This field-based analysis provides KAM with very concrete levers:

strengthen the activity where innovation begins,
adjust the sales pitch,
avoid drawing conclusions too late or too hastily.

Innovation is no longer judged on its launch, but on its ability to create value over time.

Regain control over the management of action plans

When sell-in and sell-out data are cross-referenced and made readable, the role of the KAM evolves.

He is no longer subject to field execution.

He pilots it.

Exchanges with distributors become more factual. Account reviews gain credibility. Discussions on future action plans are based on concrete, shared results.

This is precisely the ambition of KaryonFood: to centralize and activate sell-out data to give sales teams a clear understanding of the actual execution of agreements.

How data changes the daily life of a Key Account Manager

Measuring the real impact of promotions and innovations is not about multiplying indicators.

It's about having the right figures, at the right time , to effectively manage your key accounts.

By placing data at the heart of monitoring Foodservice action plans, the KAM gains legitimacy, efficiency and ability to anticipate.

Do you want to see in concrete terms how to track the actual execution of your commercial agreements and measure the ROI of your promotions and innovations?

👉 Request a KaryonFood demo and discover how to transform your sell-out data into a lever for commercial performance.