Regional Sales Director at Firmenich

Job description

PURPOSE / MISSION:

Commercial lead and team management at affiliate

MAIN TASKS:

• LEADERSHIP
• Team management
• Strategic / external communication:
• Implements corporate commercial strategies (currency, packaging, transport, payment, pricing, margins, etc.)
• Develops and sustains productive customer relations; at all levels
• Leads both internal and external customers including communication via visit reports
• Contributes feedback to management on the market needs for future strategies
• Leads submission of wining fragrance
• TEAM
• Build a successful team according to business objectives and needs, including recruitment, on boarding and team development
• Motivate, coach and support sales team in their account management role, both with clients and internally
• Define objectives, measure results and give feed-back (Progress reviews/CPIs, IPM), manage individual development plans and career evolution
• Generate a strong team spirit, team interactions and cross-fertilization
• Communicate corporate and division information to the team
• Share the business dynamics with internal partners, especially management and creation and development. Motivate partners
• CUSTOMERS
• Have a strong strategic vision of business, identify business potentials, competitive landscape and new business opportunities
• Manage commercial agreements and working processes with co-packers located in the affiliate/area
• Define the agents & distributors needs and network and manage it for the affiliate/area
• Lead client long term relationship, influence clients’ decisions, establish Firmenich as key partner
• Negotiate contracts and commercial agreements
• Lead important client projects both internally and externally
• Drive process to maximize business vitality and drive innovation in all fields of customer interaction
• Oversee the entire value chain: product life cycle management, demand planning, customer care and supply chain to ensure highest customer satisfaction and maximum value extraction
• Provide ongoing customer support and follow up to ensure customer satisfaction
• Builds and maintains strategic account plans for customer area of responsibilities
• BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
• Lead all commercial activities in the respective field of responsibility
• Optimizes sales force customer coverage in line with local, BU and Global accounts requirements
• Define strategies for the affiliate/area, establish priorities and action plans for the team to reach objectives
• Manage budget and expenses
• Continuously seek improvement opportunities: revenue and profitability vs. objectives (incl. profitability improvement programs, portfolio rationalization projects...)
• Ensure good sales and pricing practices, in line with corporate and division policies & guidelines – incl. commercial data
• Achieves the sales related financial targets for the affiliate / area
• Participate/contribute to local management team
• Lead Capex when necessary
• Accountable for the P&L results

KEY SHARED ACCOUNTABILITIES:

• Shared with Development:
• Ultimate decision of winning fragrance and educates clients regarding the company’s products and technologies and provides client category plans and decides investment in testing
• Shared with CMI and Sales Excellence:
• Maintains and builds knowledge of customer’s industry, products and markets to target opportunities
• Shared with Supply Chain:
• Works with customer service initiatives e.g. consignment stocks, B2B, and manages clients quality or delivery issues
• Shared with finance:
• Ensure on time payment of account receivables
• Shared with Commercial team
• Margin improvement plans
• Works with enablers (legal, corporate compliance,…) e.g. contractual agreements. Also with PRSA to ensure safety of submissions
• Work with GBU counterpart as needed
• Ensure strategy on D&A is applicable as agreed with D&A team

KEY INTERACTION:

• Clients (all functions and levels)
• Firmenich management
• Sales Team, Pricing
• Creation and Development (all functions)
• Customer Care
• PSRA
• Finance
• Supply chain
• CI/market research
• working with GBU counterparts as needed

FORMATION / EDUCATION LEVEL :

Bachelors or Masters degree or equivalent (business administration, economics, marketing, science...) + Leadership & Management Training

PREVIOUS PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCES:

6+ years of successful flavor/fragrance/ingredient sales experience, ideally international, with multiple clients, and with some management experience

COMPETENCIES:

• Planning & organizing
• Leading through vision and values
• Building a successful team, including coaching and team management
• Building partnerships, internally and with clients
• Strategic decision making
• Aligning performance for success
• Business acumen
• Facilitating change
• Ability to develop successfully client relationship, influence clients and position Firmenich as a key business partner
• Advanced Sales and Negotiation skills
• Ability to drive successfully business vitality and results vs. objectives
• Flexible and willing to travel