Description:
The Opportunity: The Manager, Foodservice Sales is responsible for the commercial performance, growth, and viability of protein products across all categories and customers in their portfolio. This individual is a highly entrepreneurial leader, passionate about customers, and brings a proven ability to build meaningful relationships and partnerships with large customers. The Manager knows how to successfully connect customer strategies and needs with Maple Leaf’s capabilities and objectives to build winning solutions.
Snapshot Of a Day-in-the-Life
- Lead selling efforts in Toronto– both existing and new customers.
- Manage and deliver P&L objectives including Volume, Sales, and Gross Profit. Inclusive of monthly/quarterly/annual reporting and forecasting against key metrics for the business.
- Develop a deep understanding of the customer’s strategy and oversee the development of joint customer business plans that support the broader Foodservice strategy and objectives. Inclusive of volume, GP, trade spend, promotional plans and business development plans.
- Work collaboratively with cross-functional teams to deliver business objectives and align priorities and resources across functions to support business strategies and priorities. These teams include Marketing, Distribution, Finance, and Supply Chain.
- Build and maintain knowledge base of competitors and operator/customer trends in the marketplace/industry and integrate this information into strategic recommendations.
- Develop a detailed database of opportunities by customer, competitive landscape, financials, and timing.
- Be part of building a growth culture, rooted in discipline and fundamentals, that delivers winning customer partnerships, by instituting operating rhythms and practices for awareness and alignment of priorities within the team.
- Forecast and deliver budgets for the function with control of direct trade spend.
- Other projects/duties as assigned or needed.
What You’ll Bring:
- Diverse perspective that complements the skills, strengths and opportunities of the team.
- At least 5+ years of progressive sales experience managing customers, strategies, and business.
- University degree in business or related area.
- Excellent business and financial acumen.
- Consistency in delivering results focusing on overall profitability.
- Track record of simplifying complex situations, including financials, to develop executable and profitable solutions.
- Ability to synthesize data, insights and inferences into a coherent and logical chain that others can execute on.
- Deep industry and market knowledge.
- Ability to understand ML and customer goals and translate into clear and concise customer strategies with effective action plans.
- Ability to influence and leverage cross-functional resources (dedicated and/or shared) to identify and solve strategic issues.
- Exceptional story telling and communication skills (written and verbal).
- Strong negotiation skills including listening, probing, identifying interests, and mutually solving problems.
- Excellent relationship building skills (in a direct and virtual environment). Track record of leveraging relationships to maximize benefit for both parties (Maple Leaf Foods and customers)