Product Manager
Pella, IA or Urbandale, IA (hybrid)
This highly visible leadership role collaborates with multiple functions and stakeholders across all levels of the organization in the following areas:
- Provides Marketing leadership to cross-functional divisional team in pursuit of: market share and revenue growth, operating profit and product line margin improvement, as well as customer satisfaction improvement.
- Developing key business strategies based on market and competitive research, internal core business competencies, and corporate strategies.
- Developing a strategic marketing agenda and applying creativity and flair to realize this agenda through promotions, literature and samples, advertising, and merchandising.
- Identification of product/market opportunities as well as development and implementation of key product line additions or enhancements. This includes guiding/managing multiple projects through the product development process to gain necessary visibility and executive approval.
- Operating as change agent and key leader on cross-functional corporate teams.
This position requires excellent project management skills, a high level of organization, strong communication skills, and sound business acumen. Equally important, this individual must have a good understanding of financial management and cost-based accounting in order to effectively evaluate the product category’s performance and find opportunities to optimize.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES include the following. Other duties may be assigned.
- Develop product line vision and long-term strategy
- Directly responsible for:
- Creating long-term sustainable vision for product line to drive revenue and market share growth, operating profit, and product line margin improvement.
- Price strategy and positioning of the product line considering both the internal product line logic, and our competitive positioning.
- Creating a sustainable competitive advantage in the marketplace for the product line with compelling messaging, content, and marketing claims.
- Creating and delivering on a strategic three-year plan for the product line that looks across all major marketing components (4P’s) while aligning with operational program needs (capacity, productivity, profitability, and quality).
- New Product Development
- Evaluate new product ideas and/or product enhancements for product category; determine those most viable and impactful based on consumer insights; work with cross-functional team to prioritize where resources are allocated.
- Stay attuned to competitive intelligence and report into the cross-functional divisional team.
- Stay up to date on building codes and regulations and work with our technical team to ensure we are developing products accordingly.
- Lead various new product development cross-functional teams from ideation to commercialization; serve as project and product manager on high-visibility projects and ensure those projects are brought to market in an effective and efficient manner.
- Launch product enhancements and/or new products in the product category on an annual basis.
- Business Review and Optimization
- Strategize and help implement channel specific strategies including direct sales, pro-dealer, and big-box; optimize with the help of sales and big-box partners; review and participate in creative for these different channels.
- Work with sales to identify opportunities to improve pricing and positioning within the market; implement with the help of sales leadership.
- Partner with logistics to evaluate and monitor product service levels; lead cross-functional team in driving improvement.
- Evaluate overall financials for product category and assess and capitalize on opportunities for improvement; work with other functions to put these improvements in play.
- Drive growth in the product category through promotional efforts, price management, and/or new product development to result in better capacity utilization.
- Responsible for growing the profit of the product segment by directing the team’s effort in implementing growth, quality and productivity projects. Together with finance, is responsible for tracking, analyzing and reporting product profit position as well as initiating and implementing programs to improve results in conjunction with manufacturing programs.
- Strong competitive knowledge and understanding, as well as consumer-focused mindset is a must. Responsible for analyzing competitive pricing and developing price strategies to maintain sales, share and profits. Responsible for pricing strategy and positioning for the product line and therefore recommending and executing approved pricing, including the accuracy of Pella's pricing in all databases.
- Support Sales in achieving our plan by presenting and educating customers about our products, creating educational webinars and/or other online educational platforms, assisting in major customer meetings, and other key interfaces with both our sales team and our customer base.
EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE
Bachelor's degree (B. S.) from four-year college or university; in Finance, Marketing, Engineering, Architecture or equivalent; prefer MBA; and 8-10 years minimum business experience, with 5-7 years in sales, marketing or product management; or a strong technical/engineering position.
COMPUTER SKILLS
Proficient in Excel, Power Point, Access, Project Management, and PowerPlay/Impromptu.