Sales Manager

Sales Manager

Requirements

• Post-Secondary Education with a focus in Business, Science or equivalent preferred
• Experience in the chemical distribution business, in a sales capacity, with a minimum 2 years of relevant leadership experience
• Proven Management competencies, including a track-record of achieving strong sales growth and delivering against business objectives
• High school diploma; BSc/BA in office administration or relevant field is preferred

Responsibilities

• Effectively communicate the sales strategy, related tactics and expectations for the assigned territory or industry
• Pre-define and communicate service levels, payment terms etc. – in alignment with defined guardrails (customer segmentation, ComEx)
• Establish Gross-Profit targets and set both team and individual targets / KPIs
• Motivate the sales team to achieve Regional targets and KPIs (both quantitative and qualitative)
• Ensure all Account Managers create, maintain, and present a robust sales plan, incl. mid-term objectives/ action-plans for priority customers
• Guide team to focus sales activities on the right customers (e.g., utilizing CRM classifications)
• Help team to prioritize new customer leads or customer projects and manage campaign initiation and execution
• Facilitate effective collaboration with cross-functional internal teams and Industry/ Product experts, who can support the delivery of increased product baskets and solutions for customers; Ensure Product Management are utilized effectively to create growth opportunities
• Take responsibility for dealing with under-performers; interview & recruit new sales team members
• Push people development incl. training and coaching (for details, see training and coaching below)
• Conduct deployment/staff planning, taking into account vacation/sick leave and resulting temporary replacements
• Ensure all commercial activities within her/his area of responsibility are conducted in line with Brenntag’s codes, guidelines and local and international legislation
• Maintain an up-to-date level of market, product, technical, and application knowledge, e.g., via training
• Identify/ Derive growth opportunities/ trends and exchange with Product Management
• Support Product Management in supplier relationship management, e.g., through participating in business reviews
• Derive the optimal sales strategy for the team of Account Managers, taking into account customers/products/ market developments and overall strategy
• Develop customer retention strategies
• Be part of the Sales Management leadership team and jointly shape the future sales direction
• Hold weekly and monthly one-on-one review meetings with each Account Manager (physical or virtual) to discuss activities and upcoming visit/call plans
• Hold regular coaching sessions (minimum quarterly, but ideally monthly) with each EAM/IAM and provide immediate feedback (Note: These coaching sessions can take place after joint customer meetings)
• Hold regular (min. quarterly) meetings with the sales team, to review team performance, discuss market-changes, refine commercial tactics, agree on new actions, share best-practices and facilitate team building
• Arrange and carry out further sales training (with external providers), in order to continually develop the Account Managers
• Ensure appropriate data administration and documentation of all customer interactions and business cases in the local CRM system (e.g., post processing of visits, customer potential, customer projects, outstanding actions)
• Review team performance by reading CRM reports, monitoring the status of outstanding actions, measuring performance against sales campaigns and commercial excellence (e.g., price & margin management initiatives etc.)
• Complete sales and revenue-related reporting and develop respective actions
• Proactively manage and push EAMs/IAMs into the digital transformation in sales (Brenntag Connect)
• Act as a first escalation instance
• Provide pricing guidance with regards to price differentiation
• Push Account Managers on pricing excellence (e.g., margin management)
• Review prices set below min. threshold

Preferred Qualifications

• Post-Secondary Education with a focus in Business, Science or equivalent preferred
• BSc/BA in office administration or relevant field is preferred