CD & Trade Lead - Unilever South Africa

JOB PURPOSE

The CD & Trade Lead manages the delivery of sales plans which will grow ahead of the food service industry and competitor suppliers within TTS budgets across the different Trade, Territory, & Channels in Southern Africa & rest of Africa. The role ensures that different account plans complement each other to ensure the total UFS business objectives are achieved annually. The focus of the role is to strategically align territory, trade and channel to maximize growth in trade. This requires maintaining current business to grow steadily, as well as unlocking new avenues of growth both within Southern Africa and the rest of Africa. Strategic planning for the year as well as a road map focused on channel & customer shifts which will help UFS grow ahead of the industry

On a day-to-day basis the CD & Trade Lead manages investment levels between customers to ensure that TTS is invested to get a return on investment and that individual account risks are mitigated by new profitable opportunities deployed in other accounts.

Externally, the CD & Trade Lead ensures that promotional activities are optimized across accounts and provides an extra level of escalation after the account leads in times of conflict. Internally, the CD & Trade Lead can build arguments with the cross functional team to address trade risks or opportunities and looks to global best practice for opportunities to drive sustainable & profitable growth.

WHAT WILL YOUR MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES BE (But not limited to):

Accountable for delivering business targets for CD, this includes but is not limited to: 

• Turnover, volume, Top 10, USG, reach, penetration, and innovation.
• Developing & executing Trade, Channel & Territory strategy in line with business objectives
• Drive and lead change management within CD as ways of working change to drive high-performance
• The CD voice providing insight from trade and driving business initiatives with CD as part of the Business Team (BT)
• Works with the cross-functional (Marketing, Culinary, Supply Chain, BEX, & Finance) team to ensure plans are built & aligned strategically, executed flawlessly, and tracked pre and post-execution
• Allocates resources between accounts (Trade, Territory & Channel) to achieve the total business strategy with regard to OKR’s
• Ensures that individual account plans are aligned to the business strategy and are aligned to annual IBP plans annually
• Make trade-offs between customers to ensure that monthly targets are achieved
• Drive ROI on TTS invested in all accounts by using OPSO evaluations 
• Builds NAM capability in core areas of Commercial Selling, Negotiations, Customer Business Planning, Execution
• Work with Field Sales agent & internal team to drive instore execution in line with Perfect Store standards aligned to business expectations
• Lead key negotiations externally with key customers (with Account Leads)
• Land JBPs and lead top to tops with Account leads and senior management with key customers
• Trading Term strategy to implement fair and equitable terms which maximize UFS business building spend with customer, signed timeously annually
• Lead data agreements via the RTM team with trade partners/C&C’s for SSD offline/online sales out as per agreed UFS road map
• Ensure data is used effectively, i.e. insights into action plans to increase turnover, volume, reach & penetration
• Land digital selling in the team by ensuring team works closely with trade partners to generate demand creation towards either UFS.com or trade partners platform.
• Manage TTs discipline and controls with regards to accruals, planning, and payment of fixed and ad hoc spend with customers
• Responsible for accurate CD team forecasting based on planned sales in/out activity. 
• Ensure activities & corresponding spend are collated and verified as part of the S&OP process
• Manage team engagement for trade partners as per defined contact strategy for the assigned territory i.e., Performing F2F calls (and virtual when needed) via local CRM tool.
• Ensure team follows timely submission & settlement of distributor claims (with appropriate supporting documents) from trade partners.
• Create efficiencies in GTM costs
• Conduct ongoing trade visits and in field coaching.
• Develop the strategic plan for future CD and RTM(Trade)

Experiences & Qualifications

Minimum

• Relevant Sales Qualification.
• Postgraduate Qualification (advantageous).
• 5-10 years of working experience in similar functions in FMCG.
• Proven track record in sales, preferably in the Foodservice Industry. 
• 5 years of proven leadership experience.

Preferred

• Industry knowledge for trade customers (Customers, Operators, & channels).
• Account management.

Skills

• Strategic Selling skills
• Impactful Customer Engagement
  
  • Full understanding of all Customers & UFS solutions (research & pre-call planning)
  • Business Insights to Activation Solution Selling
  • Sound understanding of all Offline & Online Touchpoints
  • Familiarity of UFS CD Cycle which includes Planning of call Cycles
  • Customer Business Planning
• Analysis & processing of large amounts of information and come up with solutions.
• Critical thinking, ability to look at numbers, trends, data and to come to new conclusions & solutions based on findings.
• Knowing the Business: The ability to demonstrate awareness of the food industry, its markets.
• Strong leadership and coaching skills via in field coaching 
• Collaborator - Ability to work cross-functionally to deliver on customer needs.
• Commercial Skills
• Strong Business Acumen
• Advanced Negotiation skills
• Exceptional Planning and organisational skills 
• Strategic influencing and stakeholder management to drive desired outcomes.
• Agility – Ability to adapt & drive the change and flexibility to pivot self & others towards business requirements.
• Strong communication skills and presentation skills. Ability to use all company digital tools for external & internal comms.

Leadership

You are energized by delivering fantastic results. You are an example to others – both your results and your resilience. You are constantly on the lookout for innovative ways to do things, engaging and collaborating with key cross-functional teams.

As an individual, you are the one responsible for your own wellbeing and delivering high standards of work. You are the voice of the customer internally and the voice of UFS externally, looking around to interpret evidence and data smartly, spot issues and opportunities to make things better. You need to balance what’s best for the UFS business externally, whilst finding solutions for customers internally.