Sales Director-Snack

About Kerry

Kerry is the world's leading taste and nutrition company for the food, beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Every day we partner with customers to create healthier, tastier and more sustainable products that are consumed by billions of people across the world. Our vision is to be our customers' most valued partner, creating a world of sustainable nutrition. A career with Kerry offers you an opportunity to shape the future of food while providing you opportunities to explore and grow in a truly global environment.

About the role

The Sales Director role holds full accountability for leading and directing all sales strategies for the Snacks and Bars Channel in North America.  The role will drive the development and execution of the commercial go to market strategy and will be accountable for delivering sustainable top line & bottom-line growth to the business with new and existing customers through a team of best-in-class sales professionals.   The role will work collaboratively with the marketing, business development and RD&A teams to bring leading innovation and solutions to customers. 

Key responsibilities

• Lead and manage a team of account managers with commercial responsibility and leadership across a defined customer base in North America
• Commercial P&L ownership & delivery against key performance measure aligned to Kerry’s growth pillars of Taste, Functional & Clinical backed ingredients and Plant-Based Technology
• Create an empowering and engaging environment that attracts and retains the best talent and enables them to perform at their best while developing their own career path interests
• Peer to Peer and across Channel team communication and leadership to drive a leading strategy, insights sharing & execution approach. 
• Commercial contract & long-term supply and innovation agreements ownership and negotiation to manage margin and create clear avenues for profitability.
• Directly owning and building senior level relationships across stakeholder functions at each of the customers and internally with the key senior leader’s cross-functionally
• Deliver on a pipeline of sustainable growth for Kerry through a deep understanding of customers and their business strategies, their functional & technical requirements and delivery of a business review process and framework that drives Customer Experience
• Develop and execute commercial strategies through the framework of robust account planning.
• Proactive focus of pipeline development & execution that builds a margin appropriate project pipeline delivering year on year and long-term growth platforms.
• Maintain an external bias with a strong knowledge of customer needs, market trends and consumer preferences within the dairy & plant-based dairy category to enable prioritization of Kerry’s investments to drive growth.
• Connectivity & building of relationships into new emerging and early-stage companies in the dairy and plant-based dairy channel and interconnected channels. 
• Ensure that appropriate resources and actions are recommended to address customer-based issues including competitive threats, product and service complaints, and information discrepancies.
• Deep knowledge and understanding of the dairy and plant-based dairy industry networks, partnerships and co-packers (ie Foodservice, Direct to Retail, Private-label) to drive business directly or indirectly across channels & routes to market.
• Ownership of annual sales budget targets.  Meet budget objectives and take appropriate action to achieve and/or exceed sales budget targets.
• End to end business model understanding of the dairy and plant-based dairy channel, distribution & overall industry ecosystem.

Qualifications and skills

• Bachelor’s Degree from an accredited institution required with preference in Business, Communications, Food Science, Chemistry or related discipline.  MBA preferred.
• 10+ years progressively responsible, post baccalaureate experience in related Sales, technical or R&D roles within a food company
• Experience in F&B / CPG industry, with existing relationships within retail categories where our Snack centric technologies would be present & applicable.
• 60% or greater travel required for this position.