National Account Manager

Ready to drink alcohol innovation into the grocery channel

About the job

An exciting opportunity has arisen to work in the newest area of our business, in our Alcohol Ready to Drink (ARTD) team. It’s part of keeping consumers at the centre of everything we do as we continue to develop our portfolio as a total beverage company. This key strategic role as the Commercial manager for the Away from home sector is responsible for growing this business across a portfolio of UK customers within convenience, wholesale and route to market. You will define and own the Alcohol ready to drinks business plan and marketing activations across these key retailers. You will implement the annual business plan to accelerate brand uptake and share in these accounts. Growth should achieve RTD category leadership within budget guidelines.

Your key focus:

• Create, negotiate & execute win/win JBPs
• Business Development to secure new retail opportunities
• Lead multi-functional retailer engagement, particularly Category, Supply & Shopper Marketing
• Maximise range and distribution
• Launch transformational product innovation
• Best in-class day-to-day account management
• Effective cross-functional collaboration

PLAN AND DELIVER COMMERCIAL RESULTS

• Manage work streams to provide unique solutions, in close partnership with important partners including Finance, Ops, RGM, Category and Shopper Insights.
• Allocate resources where the investment has the highest strategic payback.
• Guide the business planning and budget process
• Structure agreements and use investments to ensure business profitability
• Identify and close performance and opportunity gaps that reflect our ARTD position and desire to be the #1 ARTD supplier.
• Responsible for programming calendar (including pricing and promotions), driving onsite visibility, volume planning, and managing trade spend.
• To achieve agreed retail and wholesale targets within the dedicated store groups.

BUSINESS REVIEWS & REPORTING

• Conduct quarterly business reviews to measure progress against sales and financial targets and provide competitive analysis.
• Guide post-campaign analysis following all promotions and visibility campaigns to evaluate effectiveness and improve investment opportunities.
• Provide ARTD insights that influence merchandising, price, and promotion to achieve business targets.
• To monitor and accurately forecast retail and wholesale performance for the store groups via the Retail Reporting Tool and Wholesale tracker, or any other systems available to produce a daily, weekly and monthly summary document as required, highlighting variances to plan and recommending solutions to recover any risks / shortfalls.

BUDGET PLANNING

• Track and evaluate Trade Investments to ensure highest return on investment.
• Guide post-program analysis following all activations and ongoing analysis of always-on activations to evaluate effectiveness.
• Thoroughly analyse customers' sales to define priorities and focus of efforts.

Your areas of knowledge and expertise that matter most for this role:

We are looking for a strong relationship builder, with a track record of delivering growth within the these grocery channels. Ideally, the candidate would be looking for a role to challenge them with true ownership & accountability, with a go-getter entrepreneurship style mentality.

• Good broad experience working in UK grocery-aligned environment in account management
• Experience in the alcohol category desired, but not essential
• Experience in working with and influencing X-functional teams (category, shopper marketing and ops)
• Thrives in an ambitious and fast-paced environment
• Entrepreneurial, creative mindset
• Strong commercial acumen & negotiation skills
• Effective networker and relationship builder

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