Vice President Sales Insights & Strategy (JH15541)

Vice President Sales Insights & Strategy (JH15541)

Our client is a rapidly growing $2B+ iconic global branded personal care products company whose culture is fast paced, entrepreneurial and enables the opportunity make a significant impact and contribution to the betterment of the organizing. If you’re motivated by challenge, having a seat at the leadership table and the ability to collaboratively work with very skilled people across all stakeholder functional verticals, this may be the opportunity you’ve been hoping for. 

Title:              Vice President Sales Insights & Strategy (JH15541)

Reports to:   VP US Sales / BD

Location:      Chicago, IL

Position Overview

The Vice President Sales Insights & Strategy is a highly visible position central to the continued growth and profitability of the Company’s US personal care/cosmetic products business at retail. This person will be a vanguard within the transformation of the company through the delivery of solutions that are re-writing the companies play-book. Will lead the organizations efforts to anticipate, and/or outpace current industry trends and help create strategies that will guide the company through the rapidly changing consumer landscape and position the organization for long-term and sustainable success.

Leveraging deep CPG domain knowledge; and their full breadth and depth of insights and category management solutions, the Vice President of Commercial Insights and Strategic Solutions will lead the next level effort at the companies’ top 5 Mass and Drug retail relationships, but will also develop a strategy to identify targets and win Omni, Grocery, Dollar and Alternative Channel customer opportunities.

With innate interpersonal skills, tested industry relevance, exceptional executive gravitas and presence, this position will work across all levels and functions of the organization to craft and execute winning strategies. He/she will have the operational and financial acumen to meaningfully connect the companies’ solutions to retail customer ROI in an audience-relevant and impactful manner. While exceeding revenue/profitability targets is essential, success is equally defined by the extent to which he/she assumes the role of trusted advisor to the internal commercial team and retail customer stakeholders.

Provide strategic leadership and direction to drive the Company brands sales and profits, with an emphasis on leading the relationships with the internal and external business partners for all US Region customers.  The primary focus of this position is to lead the sales insights, strategy and category management process that develops a fact based approach of business analytics which includes evaluation of promotion effectiveness, brand & category trends, Nielsen & IRI analysis, customer POS, trade marketing analysis and translates the analysis into key insights and recommendations for the company and the customer. Responsible for identifying short and long range growth opportunities based on in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape, marketplace dynamics, and the company and customer strategies.

Develop and review sales forecasting then translate the customer, consumer, category and product level data into actionable tactics, making recommendations on product assortment, product placement, and promotions accordingly in order to enhance sales.  The position will build upon the relationship with the US Region retailer’s buyers, positioning the Company as a go to partner for category knowledge and insights.  Position will manage a team to implement all aspects of category management for the Company business with US Region customers.

Duties and Responsibilities:

·      Develop high-level, strategic sales insights and strategies that enable the company to penetrate retail customers.

·      Deliver analytic capabilities to not only understand the company offerings and competitive advantage, but also how these differentiators translate to business solutions for internal stakeholders and customers alike.

·      Manage two Sr. Business Analysts, Manager-Retail Execution Management, and Manager-Business Analysts (overall team of 24 professionals).

·      Focus on developing relationships that enable an understanding of the critical business drivers and issues facing the company and retail customers to assess business opportunity and propel company initiatives.

·      Incorporate information about the company strengths/benefits versus those of the competition into new business pitches to differentiate and create competitive advantage.

·      Leverage a deep industry understanding of what retail customers and consumers want to aggressively pursue to inform the decision making process.

·      Develop high-level strategies (e.g. resources, financial investment, go/no go, etc.) for each quadrant (Mass, Drug, Grocery & Alternative Channel) of the segmented targeting matrix.

·      Continuously questioning data, asking deep dive questions and pursuing answers that might not be readily apparent.

·      Proactively assess trends, analyze data and identify key customer opportunities to help build Customer Business Plan.

·      Utilize internal sales data, syndicated data and customer-specific POS to develop actionable insights, strategies and tactics.

·      Work with Marketing for new item distribution proposals and programs by supporting expenditure with volume, profit and payout analysis.

·      Attend customer meetings to provide fact based support to VP’s and Directors/CBMs of Sales.

·      Participate in and provide insight leadership in planning meetings to develop targeting matrix for existing and potential new customers.

·      Lead development and presentation to customer buyers, and Divisional Vice Presidents, of periodic business reviews, category overview and line review.

·      Provide retail customer perspective to field sales and marketing/product management for both current product improvement and new product development.

·      Lead the space management team to ensure modular execution dates are achieved, both internally and with the customer.

·      Manages the Permanent Cabinetry and Space Management P&L for the Business Unit.

·      Lead the development of the annual business forecast process by analyzing trend data on base products and assigning appropriate forecast for new products.

·      Perform comprehensive analysis and interpretation of category performance and provide qualitative and quantitative assessments to sales team.  Keep customer team informed on the status of plans vs. goals; changing conditions, attitudes and requirements in the marketplace; competitive activity; and issues and/or accomplishments that might affect sales results. Responsible for developing and presenting fact based business analytics for our customer/team including promotion evaluation for effectiveness and efficiency, Nielsen analysis, brand trends, marketing plans, analysis/objectives, customer POS analysis. 

·      Provide value-added analysis, opportunity identification and interpretation of sales results for the customer through weekly reporting to both the Company and Customer business leaders.

·      Create Market Basket, Seasonality and Opportunity Gap Analysis and Summarization. Prepare analysis for ad-hoc requests by sales and marketing.

·      Provide leadership for team to ensure category knowledge, expertise, and skills are at the highest level in order to take full advantage of all sales opportunities.

·      Provide strategic and tactical direction so direct reports are working toward a common agreed to plan.

·      Provide direction in annual objective setting, ongoing and formal performance feedback and development plans for team.

·      Collaborate with US Region leadership and Human Resources to develop the organization’s capacity. 

Experience/Skills Required

• Minimum 10+ years CPG Sales Insight & Category Management experience driving new business in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry with the application of market insights and strategies.
• Demonstrated skills to leverage strong CPG industry contacts and reputation as a thought leader/expert in contemporary/future CPG trends.
• Proven experience coordinating, driving delivering quantifiable business results.
• Exceptional team and interpersonal skills and a track record of developing talent.
• In-depth understanding of market information solutions and services (customer POS systems, Shiloh technologies, ACNielsen, Data Analyzer, dunnhumby Consumer Data, retailer loyalty database, Space Planning software. analytics, and consumer panel), business functions and capabilities such that recommendations can be framed as relevant business solutions.
• Ability to manage industry trend application and knowledge, planogram development and optimization, and a complete understanding of the category management process.
• Exceptional ability to partner with and influence multiple internal resource groups.
• A successful and proven track record of creating, communicating, demonstrating and delivering a company and customer value proposition that maximizes long term growth, differentiation and profit.
• Proven forecasting experience with Mass, Drug and/or Grocery
• Must be able to take initiative in working in a flexible, fast-paced team environment.
• Ability to interact with and present to all levels of Management.
• Agility in determining and managing priorities is critical.
• Creative and detail-oriented in ambiguous situations is a MUST.
• High energy and self-motivation are needed.
• Must have strong interpersonal (presentation, written and verbal), organizational and analytical skills.
• Advanced Excel (including pivot tables, macros, and V lookup), PowerPoint, Space Planning, Nielsen and retailer POS systems are necessary. 
• Detail Oriented and execution driven focus.

If you or anyone you know are qualified and meet the requirements outlined in this announcement, please send your resume to research@huntsearch.com for consideration. Please Note: this is intended to provide a brief overview of the position described above and is being shared with numerous potentially qualified individuals and organization leaders within our network. We receive hundreds of referrals and inquiries daily from multiple sources.

Regretfully, we are unable to respond to every individual. Please know we will give careful consideration to all inquiries.
 
All candidate communications will be held in the strictest of confidence. For ethical reasons, we are unable to represent individuals currently employed by any of our protected clients without the client's written authorization.