Sales Manager North America

Position:             Sales Manager Accessories – North American region

Organization

Function:  Sales

• Country:    United States of America and Canada
• Location:   Nexans Charleston office
• Reports to: Cluster Sales Manager North Europe & North America

Context

The Sales Manager will utilize existing contacts to grow the turnover of accessories business in the region and develop new channels and customers. Depending on the speed of development, he will also build a sales team to better address the market and grow the business for the long-term. This sales team will report to him once created.

The sales manager will deliver profitable growth focusing on a portfolio of customers directly or from project pull through distributor channels.

The sales manager will focus on Nexans accessory products and services. He / she will quickly establish credibility with important decision makers in targeted companies ensuring opportunities are well identified and communicated within the Nexans organisation to enable a swift realization of plans.

Purpose

The role of the sales manager is to target a defined list of Distributors, OEM, Contractors and Utility/DNO’s identifying business opportunities and converting this into viable sales.

The sales manager will ensure a careful bridge between market line strategy setting and country level execution, communication and two-way knowledge transfer. As a ‘hands on’ sales professional the sales manager will identify barriers to order conversion and ensure effective counter strategies are implemented quickly on the ground.

Areas Of Responsibility

1. Sales & Account Management

• Realise the budgeted sales target against a defined list of customers and products.
• Work with the sales, customer service, technical BDM and marketing teams to evaluate and translate customer needs into value added services to leverage higher margin sales.
• Use a minimum of 3 days per week to focus in the field on the execution of the sales strategy, against a defined list of focus accounts to deliver the sales and commercial margin budget within your geographical sector.
• Share knowledge and understanding of the customer needs and expectations with the customer service teams ensuring alignment to sales strategy. Follow up on significant enquires and subsequent quotations to ensure swift conversion quote to order.
• Proactively manage accounts ensuring that the key decision makers are targeted, contacted, visited and updated with the sole purpose of securing long term business, in a logical, organised and self developed schedule.
• Negotiate pricing and service agreements with customers in line with Nexans policies together with the Cluster Sales Manager.
• Build a healthy business pipeline with forward forecasting.
• Ensure the preparation of timely, accurate and high-quality information sent to the customer is in accordance with the appropriate sign off procedures and risk management.
• Ensure optimised customer experience along the order chain (from initial sales contact and order placement, through to delivery and after sales management)
• Reports monthly to the Cluster Sales Manager keeping abreast of opportunities, threats and competitor intelligence.
• Handle customer concerns or dissatisfaction in a professional manner to minimise short and long term risk as well as supporting corrective actions.

1. Project Pull through

• Build a network of purchasing, engineering and management contacts within the targeted customers  in order to identify potential project opportunities.
• Build a project log to track project opportunities and drive commercial actions to generate sales either by ‘pull through’ or directly.
• Work with focus accounts within the sector to invite customers into the business to deliver Nexans awareness sessions. Register attendees and follow up to ensure brand awareness and sales delivery.
• Develop new channels to better increase Nexans market presence

1. Budget & Forecasting

• Review performance vs budget daily and advise changes to buying patterns which will impact the monthly forecast. 
• Provide an accurate monthly forecast to his manager to ensure production and stocks can be booked against.
• Address forecast gaps daily and work with the Cluster Sales Manager to execute action plans to meet budget.
• Rationalise outcome with explanations

1. Reporting & Sales Meetings

• Report overall performance and activity vs target monthly and demonstrate results of activity in KPI format. Demonstrate the balance of your activity between key account focus and project pull through with clear and concise reporting at the monthly sales meetings. 
• Pro-actively manage your weekly movements aligning your activity to the targeted customers and sales budget.
• Present in business case format opportunities for new products or service changes.
• Work closely with the customer service teams to ensure orders and quotations are managed smoothly and professionally.
• Report market intelligence and subsequent viable action proposals into the Sales Manager.
• Asses the future needs of the customer and propose the required resource in business case format.
• Propose new techniques to access the market and build loyalty and grow volumes.

1. Management

• When needed, hire sales profile(s) in order to support the growth

Expected Results

• Meet and exceed sales financial results (indicators: sales growth, commercial margin)
• Accurate sales forecasting.
• Maintain customer satisfaction (indicators: customer surveys, number of customer visits, market share, new customers, NPS)
• Develop and maintain effective working relationships with internal customers and cross functional departments
• Improvement of Nexans brand awareness and recognition
• Development of new offers that answer client needs
• Knowledge transfer and sharing with the wider sales team
• Grow the business with expectations above 10-15% per year from current level (15 M€)

Position Sizing (indicators of the position)

• Turnover in line with budgeted targets
• Margin development
• Market share development
• Number of new A customers within the Accessories business grading profile scope

Required skills and qualifications

• Experience of the electrical wholesale, distributor, Utility & contractor markets.
• Direct relevant industry experience.
• Ability to travel with geographical flexibility
• Demonstrable business acumen with a proven record of delivering profitable sales growth.
• Strong new business development experience
• Demonstrable autonomy of experience within a large multinational organization
• Strong customer presentation skills.

Competencies :

Pricing and understanding margin

Sales Behavior Skills

Takes Ownership

Reporting And Forecasting

Sales Strategy

Team Player

Customer Relationship Ownership

Business Development Acumen

8

  Negotiation and contracting skills

Low & Medium Voltage Accessory Technical Knowledge