Deputy General Manager - Key Accounts (Modern Trade)

Location: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Position Title: DGM Key Accounts (Modern Trade)

Brief description : The role of the  DGM Key accounts is described in broady two areas.

1.Key accounts management

2.Sales Management

Key Accounts management – The DGM – KA is responsible for managing the National Accounts for Modern Trade. They are the interface between the accounts team and the Hershey’s sales team for these accounts. Their key responsibilities in this area are:

1. Generate sales for the current portfolio.
2. Identify new sales opportunities within existing accounts. Listing of new products and build business .
3. Manage and solve conflicts with accounts.
4. Interact and coordinate with the sales team and other functions like marketing , finance and supply chain to maintain and improve customer satisfaction.
5. Establish budgets with the client and company
6. Meet time deadlines for accounts

Sales Management – The DGM – KA is responsible for achieving business goals for the assigned account. The key responsibilities in this area are –

1. Achieve sales revenue plans for the region.

2. Plan the distribution and achieve RTM goals.

3. Train and improve productivity of the sales team.

4. Competition tracking and ensuring dominant share of market

5. Ensuring effective execution of trade marketing plans

Major Duties/Responsibilities: 

Summary of major duties & key responsibilities:

Account Management 

•  Responsible for portfolio planning and listing. Negotiating and closing trade terms with the accounts. Ensuring availability through getting the product link across geographies and stores. Negotiating for space and planogram suitable for the product. 
•  Planning trade marketing activites for the account to impact offtakes from the stores.  Coordinating with the marketing team to line up instore acitivity along with the marketing plans and hence draw a trade marketing calendar for the year.
•  Tracking of share of shelf (SOS) to improve market share.
•   Following up on account receivables and coordinating with the commercial team to get account reconciliation sign offs , every year.  
•  Ensure fulfillment and track fill rates. Cordinate with the supply chain team to continuously improve on fill rates.Sales management
•  Ensures the delivery of the sales goals through the sales team. Defines the  Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the sales team in alignment with the organization goals.Owns the sales KPIs.
•  Is accountable and responsible for the RTM structure for his zone. Should review the distribution structure periodically and provide solutions for apt distribution structure.
•  The role is responsible for maintaining good distributor management. Should be able to put processes in place to monitor distributor inventory, claims, fulfillment and achieve customer service standards.Financial management
•  The role is responsible for the P&L at the account level. Should coordinate with the finance team to put processes for monitoring of account level P&L. Periodic review and next steps to achieve the financial goals for the account.
•  Should be able to measure the efficacy of promotions with support from the financial team. Plan and ensure best ROIs from the promotional spends.
•  Is accountable for the accounts receivables and claims.With coordination with the commercial team, should ensure timely recovery of outstandings and clearing of claims. Ensure periodic reconciliation of accounts with the customers.

People management

•  Delivers the agreed organizational and talent development strategies in his market.
•  The role consistently articulates to HR partners the development needs of his team. Work closely with HR to retain talent and work towards growth of potential candidates.
•  The role is an active participant in determining in-market recruitment, retention and rewarding processes and programs for his team.
•  The role is responsible for the training and development of the sales team. Should be able to provide relevant and adequate training directly or thorough HR support for the sales team

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements:  

Education: Graduate from any college/university. Business degree would be a plus.

Experience: Minimum 8-10 years of work experience in modern trade/sales , handling FMCG products. Should have spent at least 3-4 years in a KAM position

Attributes :

Leadership

The candidate should be a visionary. He/she should help everyone see and be excited by what's possible. His/her customers and their peers should respect him. He/she should be able to respectfully challenge and direct the customer in the customer's best interest. This means he/she must have a degree of comfort with stressful situations. Team members should  be willing to go the extra mile for him.

Communication

He/she should be able to keep all stakeholders informed on all the important issues. He/she should be able to coordinate with different functions , smoothly. He would often have to lead the presentation of project updates or account reviews. Whether oral or written, it is critical that all communications are concise, clear and convincing. Communication must also be highly nuanced for the particular stakeholder or group being spoken to.

Business Acumen

He/she should be able to see the bigger business issues for the customer and help the customer to manage their business. He/she should be able to look at long term perspective when taking business decisions and not focused  on closing deals in isolation. He/she should be able to create value for the company and ensure all business deals are a win – win for both the company and the client. 

 
Relationship Savvy

He/she must be able to read people and connect meaningfully with a variety of personalities. He/she must understand that all progress is made through relationships. He/she must know when to take the lead in relationship development and when to enable others to take the lead. His/her objective is to build a highly intricate web of many-to-many relationships between the client’s people and the company’s — the more intricate the web, the greater the partnership and the higher the cost to switch to a competitor  

Results Oriented

He/she must have acute focus on getting results for the customer. This means he/she must be proactive and not wait for the customer to notice they are not on track to achieving a particular goal. He/she must have a “no excuses” mindset.He/she should be able to take the next logical step. He/she should be able to coordinate between multiple resources to achieve the desired outcome.He/she should be matured enough to take the blame for failures and give credit to the team for successes .   

Appetite for Learning

He/she should be able to  recognize the pace of change that we are undergoing. Consequently, he/she should always  be open to training and development. He/she should never be complacent on his achievements. He/she should be able to command respective by constantly working on growing in his perspectives and abilities.He/she should constantly look for opportunities to improve in areas that he has identified as important.