Director, Sales

Work Location: Kansas City, Kansas or Remote

General Purpose:

Accountable for the development, growth, and management of sales with a focus into the meals end use category. Position will lead a sales team who support the meals end use categories and deploy the entirety of the DFA Ingredient Solutions portfolio of capabilities/services to profitably solve customer challenges. Responsible for development, growth, and management of all accounts assigned directly or to direct report team members. Sales Director will guide and manage the sales function and any aspect, including tactical activities, of DFA that relates to customer accounts to optimize profitability and operational efficiency. Accountable for: using business processes/tools, team development, EUC marketing development, digital marketing, messaging, content, capabilities, strategic internal & board/member focused and management of sales/marketing KPIs/metrics to ensure success. Must build new relationships and develop business based on customer needs and market trends in the industry.

Job Duties and Responsibilities:

Leadership:

• Guide, manage and develop the meals end use category sales in conjunction with marketing

• Identify and develop talent on the sales team and in the organization to ensure a robust internal talent pool for future opportunities.

• Work with sales enablement to ensure superb sales training process for onboarding new sales team members and developing current team

• Teach and utilize a "solutions selling" approach drawing from organizational strengths and capabilities:

• Determine customer needs, problems, insights, and strategy that would ultimately require a DFA solution

• Identify, clearly outline, and present the opportunity details including short- and long-term value to DFA

• Influence the cross-functional DFA team to "solve for yes"

• Drive opportunities to commercialization internally, and most critically, "close" with the customer

• Lead & manage sales and marketing efforts with select assigned strategic & key customers

• Drive cross-functional collaboration to provide market insights and implement strategies in the marketplace

• Lead the alignment of strategy to customer needs and the development of effective sales support tools, insights, etc.

• Lead the development and execution of category growth strategies

Results:

• Maximize the use of CRM (Salesforce.com) as a tool to manage customer pipelines and track customer activity demonstrating high levels of service and organization to the customer. Ultimately, leading to faster speed-to-market on winning new business.

• Manage sales metrics of the team and ensure the metrics are met for overall success of the product categories and business unit

• Drive volume and margin results to enable achievement of divisional financial targets

• Ensure team performs variance analysis of actual results against expected results and act to address gaps in performance w/ team members

• Continuously improve the customer mix by working with the sales team to develop existing customers and determining new customer targets based on segmentation criteria.

• Provide effective, timely and relevant reporting to leadership

• Pro-actively defend current business by working toward long-term strategic agreements on core business

• Continuous improvement of forecast accuracy

Business Development

• Learn and apply strong knowledge of the DFA's capabilities - including understanding the functional and technical aspects of the products and how DFA's capabilities differentiate us from others in the industry

• Foster customer relationships at various organizational levels across multiple functions (R&D, Marketing, Purchasing, QA, Operations) and facilitate the growth of customer counterpart relationships within DFA

• Listen to customers to learn their future needs and anticipate new areas of business development for DFA:

• Identify new markets and the need for new products; initiate action plans to increase share of market with existing and new accounts

• Provide innovative ideas to customers by understanding their brands, platforms and strategies

• Continually develop a value-added sales pipeline that will enhance company returns

Teamwork and Collaboration:

• Work closely with Sales Operations to provide exceptional customer care through the entire sales cycle.

• Work with urgency to resolve customer issues and problems in a transparent manner with DFA cross-functional stakeholders. Elevate and help resolve gaps within DFA systems/processes to continue to improve overall effectiveness.

• Work with cross-functional partners to execute sales and marketing strategies

Strategic Planning

• Develop, deploy, and manage to customer account plans

• Ensure the sales team follows the CRM process (account/regional planning, pre-call, post-call (insights gathering, etc.), opportunity pipeline, execute, close, report). Influence the cross-functional team to streamline processes and broaden capabilities by demonstrating the value through customer opportunities

• Responsible for developing and executing end-use-category strategies (as assigned) that enable achievement of sales goals and financial targets

• Assist in building the infrastructure to support the assigned EUC strategies

• Provide strategic and tactical direction from customer feedback and market intelligence

• Assist in strategic planning to maximize Ingredient Solutions opportunities with other DFA divisions relative to competitors, market conditions, customer situation, and our internal position

The requirements herein are intended to describe the general nature and level of work performed by employee, but is not a complete list of responsibilities, duties, and skills required. Other duties may be assigned as required.

Minimum Qualifications:

Education and Experience

• B.S. Degree, preferable with a Management emphasis

• MBA preferred

• 7+ years of dairy or ingredient experience in a progressive sales organization

• Proven career advancement in sales and marketing of dairy ingredients and food products

• Demonstrated staff leadership attributes or staff management experience

• Knowledge of dairy products, marketing and sales methods and principles

• Proven record of growing profitable sales results at a senior sales level

• Certification and/or License - None

Necessary Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Strong leadership abilities

• Exceptional communication skills

• Ability to solve complex customer demands and problems

• Self-driven and committed to hands on work habits

• Ability to initiate and adapt to change

• Ability to balance heavy work load and manage multiple tasks

• Must have the ability and capability to advance to a senior level in the organization

• Able to read, write, and speak English

Travel:

☒50%-75% (up to 2 weeks per month)

An Equal Opportunity Employer