The Company is one of North America’s leading sales and marketing agencies specializing in outsourced sales, merchandising, category management, and marketing services to manufacturers, suppliers, and producers of food products and consumer packaged goods. The Company services a variety of trade channels including grocery, mass merchandise, specialty, convenience, drug, dollar, club, hardware, consumer electronics, and home centers. We bridge the gap between manufacturers and retailers, providing consumers access to the best products available in the marketplace today.
Responsibilities
- Associate Development: Provide coaching, training, and direction to associates to achieve professional objectives. Ensure project deliverables meet the quality standards of our partners.
- Client/Customer Management: Engage with assigned clients/customers and internal stakeholders to build strong, value added relationships. Leverages insights to provide recommendations that inform strategic direction enabling Advantage to be viewed as the “Trusted Advisor”. Utilizes syndicated, panel, client, and geodemographic data along with market research to proactively identify mutually beneficial, actionable, and quantifiable solutions.
- Thought Leadership: Identifies, develops, and presents insight-driven thought leadership to clients, customers, and internal stakeholders. Presentations will demonstrate both data and story-telling mastery and effectively integrate category, consumer, and shopper insights with a quantifiable action plan. Be a Strategic Thought Partner, driving insights to action through deep analytics of the category, macro-trends, competitive landscape, pricing, promotion, assortment, space management, and shopper trends.
- Peer Collaboration: Consult with cross-functional teams on the development of business-building strategies and tactics informed by demands of the everyday business.
- Strategic Collaboration: Establish trust and rapport with internal and external partners to accomplish business objectives through understanding of customer goals, strategies, and capabilities.
Qualifications
Education: Bachelor’s degree in business, marketing, analytics, or related field required
Experience: 5-8+ years of experience in category management, shopper insights, business intelligence, strategy, or combination within the CPG, FMCG, retail, and/or consulting industries. 3+ years of people management experience leading teams of 5 or more members.
Professional Category Management Certification a plus (i.e. CMA, CKMG, TPG, Delta Associates, etc.)
Travel and/or Driving Requirements
- Travel and Driving are not essential duties or functions of this job
Supervisor Responsibility
Direct Reports
- Hires, retains, trains, coaches, guides, directs, and develops direct reports using company-wide processes, tools and resources
Indirect Reports
- May delegate work of others and provide guidance, direction and mentoring to indirect reports
Required Knowledge and Skills
- Strong leadership and team management skills – ability to lead, coach, mentor, and develop people
- Ability to collaborate with client, customer, and internal sales partners to influence business decisions with fact-based insights.
- Understanding and application of principles and practices of category leadership (assortment, pricing, promotion, shelving, and shopper)
- Communicate complex quantitative analysis in a clear, precise, and actionable manner / strong presentation skills
- Strong analytics, interpretive, & problem-solving skills – data into actionable insights
Environmental & Physical Requirements
Office / Sedentary Requirements: Incumbent must be able to perform the essential functions of the job. Work is performed primarily in an office environment. Typically, requires the ability to sit for extended periods of time (66%+ each day), ability to hear telephone, ability to enter data on a computer and may require the ability to lift up to 10lbs.
Additional Information Regarding Job Duties and Job Descriptions
Job duties include additional responsibilities as assigned by one’s supervisor or other manager related to the position/department. This job description is meant to describe the general nature and level of work being performed; it is not intended to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, and skills required for the position. The Company reserves the right at any time with or without notice to alter or change job responsibilities, reassign or transfer job positions, or assign additional job responsibilities, subject to applicable law. The Company shall provide reasonable accommodations of known disabilities to enable a qualified applicant or employee to apply for employment, perform the essential functions of the job, or enjoy the benefits and privileges of employment as required by the law.