Customer Development Leader Caribbean

Leads the implementation and optimization of the assigned countries’ route to market to maximize sales and profits and achieve mutually beneficial category growth, deliver results, and build long term relationships.

The associate will develop & deploy the local sales strategy to capture the markets’ business potential: define right model for negotiations, investments, and secure best-in-class execution and distribution, to drive category growth and market leadership, over a set of diverse, multi-cultural islands around the Caribbean.

**What are we looking for?**:

- ** Education & Professional Qualification**
- Bachelors’ Degree plus Professional certifications. MBA Degree could be considered as well as equivalent experience with supervision, finance, or marketing studies. Fluent English, Spanish
- ** Knowledge/Experience**
- 5+ years of experience in similar positions in the Consumer Industry.
- Cross-Functional Experience: Sales Management, Sales Training & Development, Key Account Management, Distributors Management.
- International Experience: Desirable exposure to multiple sites or markets including and working with distributors workforce
- Strategic Background: Contribution to markets development, best in class execution at POS.
- Influence: Key for different levels across the organization
- Scope and Responsibility: Managerial and business development.

**What will be your key responsibilities?**:

- ** Distributor Management**:

- Reviews and recommends the optimum organization for the market, including distributors.
- Manages distributors in the country and develops relationship with their key customers.
- Responsible for establishing and developing an efficient relationship with the net of distributors and key customers, monitoring their performance and compliance with the company standards of freshness, quality, service, availability, and coverage.
- Lead Collaborative Business Reviews to generates additional volume ideas to reach Sell-Out targets.
- ** Business Development**:

- Delivers of the annual sales operating plan within planned investment levels.
- Accountable for the development, execution and evaluation of the sales and in-market activities in coordination with other functional areas, focused on driving the Perfect Store through Merchandising Must Haves (driving Distribution on Traditional Trade and the Best-In-Class Coverage & Innovation Execution on Modern).
- Sets/attains product distribution targets by channel, customer and/or format using priority lists.
- Develops Strategies and Tactics that increase brand recognition in store, interrupt and engage the shopper to increase basket conversion and category growth.
- Continuously maximizes & pushes the boundaries to maximize in store availability through relationship and insightful management of distributor’s execution, inventory levels and assisting in Forecasting/Orders.
- ** Budget & Pricing Management**:

- Manages promotion, trade and assigned fixed costs budgets to ensure efficiency, fiscal responsibility, and contribution to company sales and profits.
- Executes and monitors pricing strategy according to the expectations.
- ** Category Management**:

- Uses a logical, systematic, and fact-based approach to analyze data and information from a variety of sources to assess/diagnose situations, solve problems and draw accurate recommendations of new business opportunities and ways of leveraging learning.
- Understands the competitive landscape to predict competition’s ‘next steps’ and minimize risk to our business and the category.
- Builds compelling rationale/stories that deliver mutual category growth determined by revenue and profit.
- ** Other**:

- Demonstrates the ability to step out of a purely functional mindset to generate cross-functional opportunities and can deal with conflict and negotiate to a collaborative solution.
- Develops cross functional network within the market, PAC, CCA and other Mars units.
- Prepares and presents business reports, sales metrics, projections, and forecasts.
- Functions as a liaison on behalf of the company before government agencies.

**How the Job Gets Done?**:

- Road warrior skills. Most time will be spent creating collaborative relationships with distributors & top customers. The associate will team up with distributor’s brand managers and top management, to ensure right strategy is in place and ensure proper execution of picture of success in MT and right coverage and execution in TT.
- The associate will need to develop strong influencing without authority, leveraging insights to action, strategic agility, drive for results and resilience.
- Role requires travelling ~20% of time.
- All actions based on Mars Five Principles and reporting to the Market Development Head.

**What can you expect from Mars?**:

- Work with over 130,000 like-minded and talented Associates, all guided by The Five Principles.
- Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build