Customer Business Manager

Winland Foods is seeking a Customer Business Manager to manage customer performance, revenue, margin, and satisfaction across its private brand, control brand, and branded businesses. The role manages customer relationships, forecasting, annual operating plans, trade spending, sales and pricing initiatives, strategic account planning, and cross-functional customer growth efforts.

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for the day-to-day customer relationship and is the primary contact for customer buyer
• Where applicable, provides management and oversight to the Winland broker network
• Sells the Winland value proposition proactively and customizes the value proposition for the customer​
• Accountable for accurate demand plan (Forecasting) and addresses gaps to Customer Annual Operating Plan (AOP)
• Owns all business inputs to the creation and delivery of the Customer AOP at a category level
• Accountable for delivering the customer and region AOP
• Develops the customer and region Sales and Pricing initiatives aligned to Winland’s key business initiatives
• Enhances/delivers Winland’s profitability goals at the customer / region level
• Works closely with Insights and Analytics to identify Whitespace opportunity and to develop annual plans to address these opportunities
• Works closely with Winland’s commercialization team to identify innovation, packaging and assortment opportunities for the CBM’s customers and regions of responsibility
• Clearly defines and communicates customer requests to organization
• Analyzes Customer data and identifies actions to drive positive business performance for Winland and the customer​
• Develops and executes customer trade spend strategy
• Understands and works effectively in Winland’s Integrated Planning System (WIPS) to manage the company’s Trade spend
• Provides strategic/financial recommendations for bids, trade management and total customer growth
• Collaborates cross-functionally to facilitate customer plan delivery
• Develops and delivers bid strategy and execution for best customer/Winland outcome​
• Works with the Customer Data Specialist (CDS) to create and enter product opportunities into our Product Portfolio Management System (PPM) ensuring customer’s expectations are clearly defined
• Delivers business improvements against customer-supplier scorecard metrics
• Engages director/commercial leadership to support customer initiatives
• Proactively identifies opportunities to reduce/eliminate Damages, Distressed or Donated products (DDD), and understands key drivers to help mitigate future risk of product obsolescence

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance or related field required
• Minimum of 5 years of business experience in sales or related field required
• Broker or Key Account Management experience with large or multiple accounts; ability to influence third party partners to achieve profitable results required
• Category Leadership experience
• Ability to transform insights and analytics into customized strategic account plans for deliver growth
• Excellent oral, written, interpersonal communication skills and effective relationship building
• Excellent business analytical skills – use of data to drive product and pricing strategies, and their impact to production forecasts
• Solid financial acumen - Understanding of P&L and price implications to optimize customer bid strategies and management of trade funding
• Fluency in Power BI, SAP, SharePoint​, MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint)
• Strong customer interaction and negotiation skill capabilities
• Strong management skills with demonstrated problem solving ability, skilled at multi-tasking, prioritization, and communication of AOP performance to stakeholders at varying levels of the organization
• Strong cross-functional and team coordination / collaboration skills
• Creative problem solution abilities; ability to be resourceful to improve long-term customer relationships
• Capable of building strong internal and external relationships to achieve desired customer outcomes