Area Sales Manager

Job Purpose

• To conduct monthly business planning meetings with designated distributors focusing on Sales Performance, Coverage, Call Planning, Distribution, Merchandising and Service Levels, to continuously improve distributors in field executions.
• Ensuring that area sales and development objectives are achieved through planning, direction, motivation and follow-up activities with the area field sales team
• To regularly review the distributors' infrastructure with the objective to upgrade as necessary to effectively handle the increasingly competitive and challenging market environment and to train and develop the team of CRO / Van Sales.

Key Responsibilities

Distributor Management

• Set sales and distribution targets, in consultation with the Trade Marketing Executive, for each Distributor under his/her charge.
• Ensure adherence to the agreed journey plans for Distributors' field sales personnel.
• Conduct Distribution audits during market visits and discuss follow-up actions with the Distributors concerned.
• Evaluate continuously distributors' overall performance and come up with alternatives/solutions if certain distributors are performing below par.
• Hold monthly discussions with ASE together with the Distributor owner, CRO and Merchandiser to update Sales KPI performance and resolve trade / operational issues.

Financials

• Responsible for credit control and timely collections of receivables.
• Manage the sales and marketing budgets and ensure the promotional budgets are effectively and prudently spent.

Commercial Planning

• Ensure the Company's promotional activities are cascaded down and implemented effectively by all field sales personnel.
• Evaluate competitive activities, report and recommend counteractions.
• Ensure bottom-up sales forecast by SKUs by the distributor is submitted 2 months ahead.

In-Store Excellence

• Ensure effective implementation of Merchandising guidelines and standards.
• Executes Picture of Success in the outlet and tracks the same- 5Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion, POSM)
• Improve out of stocks (OOS) situation in the outlet
• Coordinates with merchandising agency for timely and quality execution
• Provides timely feedback to internal and external stakeholders on store issues and opportunities
• Assist Achieves speed to market on innovation including NPD, events, promotions, and POSM

Organizational and People Management

• Lead your team to deliver the company vision to be the innovative face of dairy, and to drive a high-performance culture
• Help create an engaged, driven and positive culture. Drive employee engagement through leading by example in engagement actions. Lead action planning around engagement opportunities and ensure progress is achieved to improve employee engagement.
• Spend maximum time in the field working shoulder-to-shoulder coaching and on-the-job training with ASE, Distributor CROs and merchandisers.
• Develop an annual performance plan for direct reports and review at least quarterly.
• Develop an Individual Development Plan for direct reports focusing on building capability and high-performing teams.
• Participates in training to enhance competencies

Skills & Experience

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience
• Minimum 3 - 5 years of related experience in the FMCG environment
• Strong in Excel and Office applications