National Account Manager in Foodservice

£55k plus car allowance and package

Home based contract

Are you looking for an environment to progress your commercial career? Working with strong brands and high-profile product ranges. Joining a well-established commercial team with proven opportunities for personal development and mentorship.

Are you a commercially minded, upbeat and ambitious individual, someone who takes pride in outstanding relationship management, customer service, able to bring a fresh perspective and look at things with an open and fresh mindset?

This opportunity is ideal for an account manager or National Account Manager who has foodservice experience able to balance account management with business development - the mix 70/30%. Exploring new opportunities both in new and existing accounts is a key part of this role.

This is a mature and professional team who work autonomously meeting in a Head Office location once a week.

The business:

People join and stay in this business. Careers are developed and people progress.

There is a mature approach to work life balance.

Recent years have seen growth across their product ranges and into new channels.

The business has a welcoming and positive approach, hence their low attrition rates - they don't often need to recruit!

Some more information on this National Account Manager role?

• It's combination of account management and new business. Some great work has been done and those accounts can be picked up, managed and developed going forward. A third of the role will be a strategic map of the market identify new customers to focus on.
• Working with the other members of the team to align with their customer and commercial objectives. The team work well together and meeting up weekly ensures a good bond and strong communication across everyone. It's a supportive environment with extensive knowledge to tap in to.
• As in all commercial roles, putting together a yearly commercial plan to be agreed with the Head of Commercial.
• Setting budgets to include volume plans, price, cost and margin.
• Collaborating with the development team on the new ideas coming through, relaying feedback from the customer base.
• An in-depth knowledge of the market and where you sit in the category. This can be developed with support from the team - always having relevant market knowledge is vital.

As mentioned above, foodservice experience would be an advantage, but what's important here is the experience in commercial and the ability to demonstrate your commercial acumen and how to tackle challenge with fresh ideas.

In summary, your background must include:

• Commercial experience as a Junior National Account Manager or maybe you are at the National Account Manager level and looking for a change.
• Solid examples of developing accounts, building trusted relationships and having the ingenuity to develop new customers.
• Previous experience in FMCG or food product categories where you have been the point of contact able to build relationships and network effectively in the sector.
• Good with numbers and able to interpret sets of data and budgets.
• Confident in your approach contacting new customers and internally to grow those all-important relationships in the business.
• An interest in food manufacturing and knowledge of food trends and what is happening in the market.
• Professional negotiation skills. Training is provided on a formal basis and with experienced members of the commercial and leadership team to build on those skills already developed so far.
• An upbeat and open personality. Eager to think differently and challenge the norm.

For more information, please get in touch with the Novus Team for this and other commercial roles we are working on.