Account Manager

Account Manager

Job Summary

Responsible for driving sustainable profitable sales and market share growth by identifying the customer needs and opportunities, establishing solid customer relationship, leading, coordinating and reporting IFF activities and promoting relevant solutions aligned with corporate strategy. For a defined territory, category, coordinated or global account: Ensure financial targets are met and business performance is constantly monitored and reported; develop and maintain sustainable relationships with internal and external customers; prepare account plan and report relevant market information; collaborate with internal departments to explore innovations and new concepts related to customers’ products and on-going projects; monitor market development in terms of competitors, products, and trends; partner with operation team to ensure customer satisfaction in terms of service, quality, and supply.

Responsibilities/Description

• Understand specific market and customer ecosystem including activities, strategies, brands, markets, consumers via different sources
• Develop multi-level cross-functional customer relationships with key customer decision makers/influencers
• Contribute/lead commercial negotiation(e.g., core listing, annual pricing, payment terms, rebates/cost savings agreements, supply contracts)
• Maximize potential advantage to IFF while delivering optimal solutions to customer (GP improvement, catalogue optimization, complexity reduction, etc.)
• Ensure customer supply chain requirements, processes and KPIs are well communicated to IFF Operations to ensure we meet customer needs
• Understand customer regulatory requirements/changes and update data to GRA and input to project management system
• Acts as the main customer point of contact in all matters
• Demonstrate IFF Culture Principles and live our values
• Manage and/or mentor junior team members/peers, and onboard and coach new team members
• Influencing stakeholders to align on shared objectives
• Lead projects through effective communication, and collaboration with key external and internal stakeholders(CI/Marketing/Creative Teams/formulation etc.)
• Ensure objectives are aligned to the business and personal development plans are in place
• Proactively solicit and give feedback to nurture high performing teams
• Demonstrate leadership courage by challenging the status quo and holding self and others accountable to always doing the right things
• Develop commercial strategy for allocated customer portfolio
• Build and execute account plans successfully
• Responsible for setting clear commercial targets (Sales/GP/New Win/Grow Market share) with the manager / Achieve new wins / grow market / market share aligned with account strategic plan
• Define and suggest the required account resources, investment, and relevant service model to support the account
• Effectively communicate the account plans with stakeholders including internal and external team members
• Review/update the progress of account plans versus KPI targets
• Ensure accurate monthly sales forecast to allow for effective operations planning and financial analysis
• Conduct retrospective reviews on projects wins and losses
• Review brief and ensure all objectives and parameters are clear
• Influence customer brief definition to IFF’s advantage
• Organize a formal commercial kick off with relevant stakeholders and finalize action plan, objectives & timelines with clear deliverables and key milestones and update Project Management System
• Liaise with Global/Regional/Category stakeholders on overall plan, strategy, and deliverables
• Evaluate and decide on final submissions with Scent Design Group and Creative teams
• Effectively promote the most appropriate IFF product solutions / portfolio aligned with the brief
• Generate proposal/price aligned with category margin guidelines or pricing officer
• Prepare presentation materials and staging submissions with stakeholders that maximizes IFF commercial advantage and resources
• Monitor and ensure cost-to-serve of projects adhere to guidelines
• Communicate project results and conduct retrospective reviews on projects wins and losses
• Update Project management system and issue adoption report in a timely manner
• Manage volumes/timing expectations and liaise with Operations to ensure supply chain readiness
• Defend and grow accounts whilst actively scouting for new customers, transforming leads into profitable business opportunities
• Accurately forecast and update sales forecast tool (SFT) to capture performance vs budget, business risk & opportunities, new wins
• Monitor & Provide Account sales performance (monthly / quarterly / annually) and provide strategic project updates to Manager
• Implement price increase in line with country/region strategy
• Lead internal and external teams to win projects

Experience

• Approximately 5-8 years of experience in sales, sales service, product development, or marketing preferably fragrance, cosmetics, FMCG, flavors, chemical or ingredients industries
• Strong track record at a similar level with a passion to succeed in commercial

Skills

• Customer centric with B2B management experience
• Analytical with the ability to deal with financial concepts/processes(pricing/margin/forecasting)
• Strong interests in product development, consumers, and market understanding(Marketing/R&D/CI)
• Sound fragrance knowledge and olfactive skills or skin care and biochemistry knowledge, where applicable
• Creative and innovative thinking
• Project management with effective collaboration and orchestration skills
• Strong communication, presentation, storytelling, and negotiation skills
• Understanding of digital marketing and ecommerce environment
• Effective business English with a global mindset and ability to work with different cultures
• Digital savvy with an ability to leverage online resources
• Ability to gather and leverage competitive market intelligence

Training / Certifications

• Essential: Bachelor’s degree
• Preferred: Concentration in Business, Marketing, Chemistry.

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