Director of Sales - West

About the role

The Director of Sales - West role is accountable for delivering annual operating plan results through effective customer-based and fact-based selling strategies, development of winning relationships with the retail community, alignment and adherence to a disciplined net revenue management process, and effective management of distribution and broker partners. This is an individual contributor leadership role with significant cross-functional and broker influence.

Responsibilities

• Net Revenue Management: Help implement and execute a disciplined management process that optimizes the gross sales-to-net sales equation. Assist in building customer-specific annual plans including trade calendar development, assortment, merchandising, pricing, promotion, and all aspects of trade spending. Adhere to trade spend budgets and meet overall P/L goals via this net revenue management process.
• Category Leadership: Lead the continued development of our category leadership strategy, which includes fact-based selling story development and collaboration with business insights team to optimize sales and profitability.
• Winning Customer Relationships: Develop win-win customer relationships that position our company as the category expert and consultant for their business.
• Sales & Operational Process: Execute the S&OP process built by sales and executive management in partnership with the supply chain and finance functional teams. This includes executing against a team approach to trade planning, forecasting, managing inventory, customer service, and issue resolution.
• Communication: Develop strong lines of communication internally with the rest of the sales team and cross-functional colleagues, and externally with broker/distributor partners and others to ensure alignment across the business.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree preferred in related field (Business or Marketing)
• 5+ years of experience in CPG sales, key account management, or retail leadership
• Significant experience managing Albertsons Companies, Inc. as a key account, with proven success in net sales growth, distribution expansion, and trade spend optimization
• Experience in natural/specialty foods, plant-based, or CPG categories strongly preferred
• Remote within the Western U.S., with ability to travel: 40%
• Preference for candidates located in major Western hubs (e.g., CA, WA, ID, TX)
• Initiative: Self-starter who identifies and acts on opportunities to accelerate results
• Strategic + Creative Problem Solving: Ability to define the issue/opportunity, gather the facts, develop the range of solutions, sort out the strengths and limitations, and arrive at a recommendation that best meets the needs of the business
• Project Management: Strong project management skills; demonstrated ability to manage project from start to finish, including coordinating activities across multiple functional groups with non-direct reporting resources
• Budget Management: Proven ability to effectively manage trade spend/selling expense budgets through a well-defined set of processes and methods
• Selling Story Development: Proven ability to proactively identify business opportunities/issues; mine the data, define the insights and build fact-based selling tools that support communication to customers
• Business Relationships: Must have strong "people" skills, ability to develop strong internal and external relationships and bring to bear your influence across our organization and externally to our customers
• Written and Verbal Communication: Highly developed written and verbal communication skills; ability to communicate status, plans, issues, and updates effectively, appropriately, and in a timely manner
• Organization and Execution: Highly organized; proven ability to effectively plan and execute to accomplish objectives
• Positive, supportive attitude. High level of integrity and professionalism. Experience working in a startup, high-growth company, or similarly fast-paced environment
• Systems: Proficient in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint
• Data: Familiarity with IRI/Nielsen, SPINS, Shopper 360, etc. data sets

Qualifications

• Custom Customer Service Dedication: Dedicated to listening and understanding customers, anticipating their needs, and giving top priority to customer satisfaction
• Collaboration: Working effectively within the organization to accomplish the mission, understand the values and vision, and integrate into all functional areas of the business
• Team Influence: Using appropriate interpersonal styles and methods to inspire and guide individuals toward goal achievement; modifying behaviors to accommodate the tasks, situations, and people involved
• Development: Willing and able to develop skills and competencies to support current and future jobs
• Individual Leadership (Influence): Using appropriate interpersonal styles and methods to inspire and guide individuals (customers, peers, and superiors) toward goal achievement; modifying behavior to accommodate tasks, situations, and individuals involved
• Maximizing Performance: Goal ownership oriented and open to coaching to optimize individual and company performance
• Strong Team Member: Focused on organizational goals, understands the importance of blending into teams and supporting strong morale and sense of purpose within the team. Understands why groups do what they do. Picks up intentions, needs, positions, values and motivational triggers of fellow team members
• Flexibility / Adaptability: The ability to readily modify, respond to, and integrate change with minimal personal resistance
• Resourceful: The ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties