The Role:
The role is responsible for supporting, maintaining, and developing close working relationships with designated customers to deliver profitable and sustainable sales growth in line with the company’s objectives. To support the Business Development team for all commercial interaction from the Category Insight, Innovation and NPD, through to delivering excellent customer service, forecasting and cost saving initiatives. The role will need to manage internal resources as well as the customers’ expectations.
Job Description:
Duties and Responsibilities
· To support the Business Development Manager and understand the customer, the category they operate in, their strategy, and to align the business to deliver growth in line with the customer strategy.
· To work both commercial and NPD and understand the end consumer through engaging and understanding current and future food trends and data analyses relevant to the customers.
· Support the Business Development team in managing all commercial issues with designated accounts. This will include managing the New Business tracker, creating commercial proposals, forecasting, and managing day to day pricing of existing and new product lines.
· Support the Business Development team in negotiating pricing in line with contract periods to ensure that the profitability of the account is maintained.
· Within a set of accounts, defend existing sales whilst constantly seeking opportunities for further growth in line with agreed budget and targeting scalable opportunities either ‘going after the competition’ or ‘NPD opportunities’.
· Working closely with the NPD department to drive pro-active development.
· Be a commercial support with internal departments to ensure excellent customer service levels.
· Support the Business Development team to co-ordinate and drive multi point interaction with customers across such disciplines as Purchasing, Supply Chain, Development and Technical.
The Person:
The candidate should be a real foodie. The ability to work collaboratively within a team and demonstrate excellent interpersonal skills is essential to this role, as well as the ability to communicate effectively at all levels. Individuals must be able to prioritise their workload and work effectively when under pressure, as working to tight deadlines is part of this role. You must have excellent organisational skills and have good knowledge of category insight, data analysis, risk assessments, negotiation and influencing skills. As this is a role that will require time with customers so you must hold a full driving licence and have a flexible approach to working as you will be required to travel extensively around the UK if required.