Crisp Team Spotlight: Samantha Schend

As Crisp’s VP of Sales, Samantha guides the Emerging Brands team with authenticity and empathy to help brands unlock the power of data. 

Meet Samantha

Role: VP of Sales
Lives in: Lake Oswego, Oregon
Favorite grocery store product: Dark chocolate

Samantha’s 15-year career in sales can be summarized in one phrase: people-first. This philosophy led her to grow and lead successful sales teams in the retail and healthcare industries before jumping into the CPG world with Crisp. We spoke with Samantha about her passion for relationship-building and data, and how Crisp’s platform connects the two for emerging brands in the CPG industry.

Building teams begins with the individual

In her role as VP of Sales, Samantha leads Crisp’s Emerging Brands sales team, creating scalable processes designed to foster success for team members and customers alike. Before joining Crisp, Samantha’s sales career included eight years at Inmar, a pharmaceutical reverse logistics and solutions provider, and Nordstrom, where she came to appreciate a customer-first approach to business.

When the global pandemic grounded Samantha and the Inmar sales team from traveling in 2020, she found herself longing for a career path that combined her passion for understanding human behavior, data, and food. A quick Google search led her to Crisp, where the same people-first approach to sales has shaped the way she leads her team.

“Sales is really about relationship building, spending time with people, and understanding what makes them tick — which is just fascinating to me. In sales leadership, it’s all about understanding your team and knowing that not everyone learns or communicates the same. As a sales leader, I create guidelines and guardrails, I don’t create rules.” 

Samantha applies this strategy of “coaching teams the way they want to be coached” to customers as well – something she believes is critical to being a great salesperson.  “I think two of the biggest things often missing in sales are authenticity and empathy,” she reflects.

“In sales leadership, it’s all about understanding your team and knowing that not everyone learns or communicates the same. As a sales leader, I create guidelines and guardrails, I don’t create rules.”

Samantha Schend

Changing the game in CPG 

When she first got to Crisp, Samantha noticed that the CPG industry was not all that different from the healthcare space. While both fields are filled with creative people, there’s always room for improvement and efficiency to accelerate growth.

“What struck me—particularly with emerging brands—is that our customers are so close to the product and their business. It’s fun to talk to passionate people that have national distribution, but three years ago they were selling out of their garage. The customers that we get to work with are pretty incredible, ” she says.

On top of the customers, Samantha loves seeing the game-changing impact that a product like Crisp can offer to the CPG space. She explains: “People in this industry are so innovative and creative, but the industry as a whole has a lot of challenges. It hasn’t been a norm in the industry to drive your business and accelerate it with data because it’s typically been so siloed. But data is accessible and actionable if you can get it in a digestible format. That is the power of Crisp for emerging brands.”

“It hasn’t been a norm in the industry to drive your business and accelerate it with data because it’s typically been so siloed. But data is accessible and actionable if you can get it in a digestible format. That is the power of Crisp for emerging brands.”

Samantha Schend

The Emerging team’s sales process starts with identifying the problem: siloed, manual data processes that impede a brand’s ability to manage the ever-changing retail landscape. But Samantha can also see that the industry is evolving. “The pandemic showed us some things that needed to shift. It forced people to see that you can’t run a business without data,” she explains. She notes that the same is true on the sales side of CPG. Brands can no longer show up to a buyer meeting the way they did five years ago; they need to build a data-driven sales story.

Samantha’s interest in building a captivating story through data fuels her drive for helping customers: “The power of Crisp for emerging brands is to have valuable data in an accessible and digestible format within seconds and minutes, not hours and days.”

The power of collaboration

For Samantha, life at Crisp is all about collaboration and problem-solving. Although, as she explains, it’s pretty easy when the entire team is united by the company mission to reduce food waste.

“The people at Crisp are pretty incredible across the board. You can always connect to someone on the team because you’ve all got that common denominator of the mission.”

When Samantha isn’t collaborating with her sales team to bring the power of data to emerging CPG brands, you can find her exploring the picturesque Pacific Northwest with her husband and friends, or channeling her inner fitness enthusiast as a barre instructor. At home, she loves to cook and spend time with her two cats, Poblano and Pepper.

To those considering a career path in sales, Samantha shares a few words of wisdom. “Early in your career, always say yes, even if you think you’re not going to be good at it. If something scares you and it’s a change, you should do it!”

To join Samantha and the Crisp team, view our open positions. To see how Crisp can help your brand unlock the power of data, contact us for a demo.