Account Manager-Dairy

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

Kerry develops, manufactures, and delivers the largest and most innovative portfolio of Taste Building Blocks and Nutritional Actives & Functional Solutions for the global food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries. With revenue exceeding $7.5 billion annually, and customers in 140 countries, we help develop products that delight and nourish consumers across the globe.

The Account Manager – Dairy & Plant Based Dairy Beverages holds full accountability for leading and directing sales execution against a defined set of customers aligned to the channel growth strategies. The role will drive the development and execution of the commercial go to market strategy and will be accountable for delivering sustainable top line growth and margin expansion to the business with new and existing customers. The role will work collaboratively with the marketing, culinary and RD&A teams to bring innovation and improved solutions to customers.

 

Key responsibilities

• Commercial responsibility and leadership across a defined segment of Dairy & Plant Based Dairy Beverage customers. Customers include emerging brands/medium CPG/co-manufacturers.
• Assigned customer’s sales P&L ownership & delivery against key performance measure aligned to Kerry’s growth pillars.
• Commercial contract & long-term supply and innovation agreements ownership and negotiation to manage margin and create clear avenues for profitability.
• Directly owning and building key relationships across stakeholder functions at each of the customers and internally with the key cross-functional colleagues.
• Deliver on a pipeline of sustainable growth for Kerry through a deep understanding of customers and their business strategies, their functional requirements and delivery of a business review process and framework for driving Customer Experience & Satisfaction.
• Develop and execute commercial strategies through the framework of robust account planning.
• Leading a clear and proactive pipeline of customer engagements to build a margin appropriate project pipeline to deliver year on year and long-term growth platforms.
• Maintain an external bias with a strong knowledge of customer needs, market trends and consumer preferences to enable prioritization of Kerry’s investments to drive growth.
• Ensure that appropriate resources and actions are recommended to address customer-based issues including competitive threats, product and service complaints, and information discrepancies.
• Lead in the development of customer specific annually budgeting & 5-year growth forecasts.
• Delivery against budget objectives and executing against appropriate actions to achieve and/or exceed sales budget targets.
• Continually gather pertinent information to allow Kerry teams to successfully make sound business decisions on the viability of commercial projects.
• Responsible for the overall accuracy of the customer demand plan and its impact on driving improved supply chain and operations.
   

Qualifications and skills

• Bachelor’s degree in business, Communications, Food Science, Chemistry, or related discipline. MBA is preferred.
• 4+ years progressively responsible, post baccalaureate experience in related Sales, technical or R&D roles within a food company.
• Experience in Ingredient, Flavors or Functional & Active sales channels, preferably with existing relationships within retail customers covering areas of dairy & plant based dairy beverage.
• Sales systems & operations knowledge: CRM, Customer Segmentation, Customer Lifecycles and Analytics.
• Working knowledge of the dairy complex & ingredients and the correlating price inputs as it relates to price risk management & margin management.
• Experience with building deep customer relationships and converting those relationships into increased sales, innovation, and top line growth.
• Demonstrated effective communication skills.
• Experience building strategic plans with demonstrated ability to formulate customer activation strategies and turn them into clear compelling, actionable plans and results that are informed by the external landscape and deliver year on year growth.