Customer Executive

A leading supply chain and logistics company headquartered in Durban, South Africa, is looking for a Customer Executive that can effectively drive the Food Services Channel, through focussed customer insights and strategy, ensuring effective accounts management and professional customer relationship management that achieve customer and Channel objectives, KPIs and targets while developing business relationships and growing the Food Services Channel by contracting new customers and expanding volumes/products with existing customers. 

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES, NOT LIMITED TO: 

• Channel Strategy Formulation and Implementation  
• Formulate Food Services channel strategies to deliver sustainable, profitable growth by key customers 
• Prioritise services and initiatives by customer within the channel based on demand 
• Determine the tone and direction the Channel team takes in its approach to working with key customers 
• Work collaboratively with cross functional teams and ensure alignment with supply chain initiatives 
• Drive the achievement of targeted sales growth 
• Evaluate and monitor competitors and their activities and formulate proactive responses when required 
• Perform rigorous service/channel analysis and drive priorities accordingly 
• Manage key accounts at a strategic level and develop relationships that enable the achievement of channel plans 
• Food Services Market and Customer Insight Maintenance  
• Research and analyse environmental and competitive conditions and customer needs 
• Maintain a deep understanding and current knowledge of the food services sector 
• Analyse and track market, customer and channel trends and in-market measures at the customer and channel level 
• Identify business implications and make recommendations 
• Act as the food services expert, understanding what drives service needs and customer behaviour 
• New Business Development  
• Meet new business sales targets as aligned with the growth strategy of the channel and the company 
• Design strategies to capitalise sales opportunities and ensure strategic plans complement marketplace needs 
• Build impactful business value propositions for the channel 
• Network with industry leaders and build relationships to facilitate expanded sales opportunities 
• Maintain an in-depth knowledge of the company’s operations and pricing variables to innovatively align service offerings and Identify service and pricing opportunities that will attract new food services accounts 
• Strategic Account Management  
• Ensure that all accounts are profitably serviced for the company to achieve sales and revenue goals 
• Leverage current alliances and customer relationships to further expand business development opportunities 
• Analyse sales statistics to determine business growth potential with the Account Manager 
• Support the Account Manager in the development of proposals 
• Negotiate T&C’s and implement contractual agreements for expanded offerings within an account with focus on delivering results 
• Plot the annual and long-term objectives for accounts and ensure all volume and ‘basket’ and revenue targets are met 
• Facilitate the communication of a customer perspective within multi-disciplinary forums to ensure that customer expectations are met within the ambit of smooth, efficient, and profitable operations and service delivery 
• Review key account performance results as per agreed SLAs and communicate performance trends to the customer 
• Customer Relationship Management  
• Manage all aspects of account profiles, including performance history as well as customer forecasts 
• Ensure that customers have up-to-date knowledge of trends and performance statistics 
• Develop and maintain strong relationships with key opinion leaders in the market to inform future planning and sales focus 
• Manage the presentations to and negotiation with key accounts 
• Drive the awareness and understanding of customers’ budgets, goals, and needs and the impact on the company 
• Drive the nature and extent of all strategic level communications with customers 
• Facilitate multi-disciplinary team forums to provide key customer reports and critical service analysis and performance trends 
• Channel Planning and Execution Lead the channel management planning process to create customer-specific priorities and plans 
• Lead channel performance reviews 
• Understand key drivers of profit and loss and actively support the achievement of financial targets. Identify business risks to achieving the sales targets 
• Estimate ROI for key channel initiatives and evaluate plans post-execution 
• Pricing Guidelines Management  
• Participate in setting new service pricing to extract maximum value for the company and key account customers 
• Track company and competitive price across customers within the channel 
• Recommend pricing corrections 
• Understand how customer spending is allocated 
• Recommend improvements to create greater value 
• Organisational Efficiency – implement and simplify appropriate business processes to increase organisational effectiveness and efficiency in support of key account requirements 
• Support corporate strategy alignment and business update meetings 

REQUIREMENTS  

• Post graduate degree in Supply Chain or Sales and Marketing as well as a commercial or management degree
• Valid Code EB drivers’ licence  
• 10 years’ experience in a marketing and sales function that includes managing complex and/or significant customer relationships and key/national accounts with at least 5 years in a management role