Director of Retail Sales - Europe

The Director of Retail Sales Europe defines and executes the company’s commercial strategy for European retail channels, drives new Business Development Initiatives within the EU region, and is responsible for net sales and margin realization. As a leader, this individual fosters a strong growth mindset and a bias toward action, embodying servant leadership. They excel at building high-performance bridges between different stakeholders and teams, uniting the organization behind its commercial needs. Additionally, they create structures and processes that enable teams and individuals to work efficiently, with a high degree of ownership and autonomy.

• Continuously improves forecast reliability and ensures sales expenses are in line with budget.
• Next to delivering on the profitable growth plans, leads the GTM strategy to execution in seamless collaboration with the Cross functional Commercial teams to deliver on the Strategy and goals.
• Leads and coaches the EU Retail sales team and builds retail & account management capabilities within the EU commercial team.
• Initiates a KAM program and builds strategic relationship with Local & international retailers and current distributors.
• Drives a high-performance (sales) management culture; creates high performing, highly effective and highly engaged teams.
• Closely collaborates within the commercial quadrant (sales, STM, marketing and OPS) and with the other retail channels (Amazon, E-commerce, D2C)
• Together with the commercial quadrant the Head of Sales drives perfection in Sales fundamentals (e.g. Product Distribution/listings, Sales promotional planning & effectiveness and excellence in store execution) but also works directly with retailers and indirectly with distributors / importers.
• Overall growth, health and revenue of the responsible markets / channels within and above his / her targets
• Managing the performance vs budget (including margin and cost to serve, activation and SOA budgets)
• Building trustworthy strategic relationships with the top management of the retail partners in the European market
• Leading the sales force and ensuring the implementation of effective multifunctional account teams
• Building a sustainable customer service strategy with the operations teams
• Building commercial capabilities and strategic workforce planning to create a highly effective and highly engaged sales team.
• Defining and implementing the commercial policy and distribution strategy for the relevant markets together with commercial policy and Marketing.
• Forecast accuracy through taking ownership in the S&OP process
• Implementing all elements of Strategic Account Management process and elevating our (strategic) account management and retail management capability
• Optimizing the gross margin and driving trade spend optimization
• Customer/category mix optimization
• Optimizing the overdues through close credit management.
• Aligning and rallying the cross functional commercial team behind our Growth plans in the region
• New business development initiatives
• Ensuring full compliance of the company’s general business principles in the sales organization

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• Min. 15 years of (inter)national marketing & sales experience
• Experience in/knowledge of European retail markets/channels
• Proven track record in (strategic) Retail & Account Management
• Proven track record in managing GTM transformations
• Proven track record in building strong, long-lasting commercial partnerships
• Proven track record in change management for commercial transformation processes
• Strong P&L knowledge.
• Experience with transition from Start-up to scale-up phase
• Experience in having fact-based discussion centralized from data
• Knowledge and experience in shopper and trade marketing
• University level with business/commercial direction
• Excellent negotiation skills
• Strong leadership skills in managing a large commercial team
• Building effective & high performing teams
• Building trusted and inclusive relationships both internally and externally
• Business acumen, and data driven decision making
• Excellent communication, strong conceptual skills to build compelling strategies, while hands-on can-do mentality to bring them to execution.
• Thought leader in strategic account management
• Create channel strategy for EU territories in cooperation with peers
• Willingness to travel with flexibility to be in the office when required
• Job located in Amsterdam with maximum 50% - working remotely possible. Ability to travel in Europe 50-60% to meet with Teams / Customers