Director of Sales

Maple Leaf Foods is Canada’s leading consumer packaged meats company, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario. We make high-quality, great tasting, nutritious and innovative food products under leading brands including Maple Leaf®, Maple Leaf Prime®, Maple Leaf Natural Selections®, Schneiders®, Schneiders Country Naturals® and Mina™. Our Company employs approximately 11,000 people in its operations across Canada and exports to more than 20 global markets including the U.S. and Asia.

A champion and advocate for MLF and customer(s). Responsible for managing sales team activities for one or more customers of regional and/or strategic significance with emphasis on profitable growth through business development.

• Set direction, performance objectives, provide feedback and make key business decisions for customer/regional sales team
• Hires, develops and appraises staff
• Plan account strategies and work with customer team(s) to develop sales plans and objectives (i.e., volume, GP, trade spending, promotional plans, business development plans, market penetration)
• Develop a deep understand of the customer’s strategy and build strong relationships with customer(s) at senior levels
• Maintain a strong customer interface strategy with customer and lead value creation initiatives for customer
• Maximize sales volume and GP
• Manage and improve the complete sales process including customer relationship management, price negotiations, Sales Planning, Customer Category Management etc.
• Demonstrate strong knowledge and expertise in products and category management
• Recognize total cost reduction opportunities, presenting the customer with solutions and quantifying results
• Regular and frequent contact with customers and internal staff in marketing, category management, finance, supply chain and other functional departments as required
• Builds and maintains knowledge base of competitors and consumer/customer trends in the marketplace/industry, integrating this information into strategic recommendations
• Local travel required on a regular weekly basis and some overnight travel required

Education, Experience & Competency Requirements:

• 10+ years sales experience preferred
• University Degree – Business Education preferred

Required Competencies:

Business Acumen

• Consistency in delivering results focusing on overall profitability.
• Has strong industry knowledge and contacts and leverages them to drive improved results.
• Has strong understanding of markets and competition and leverages it to drive better results.

Strategic Capability/Problem Solving

• Ability to translate broad strategy into a meaningful and explicit action plan to execute and achieve a goal.
• Able to manage and simplify complexity to develop executable solutions.
• Leverages cross-functional resources (dedicated and shared) as well as team to identify and solve strategic issues.

Communication

• Ability to clearly express ideas and concepts to ensure an executable plan is in place.
• Synthesize complex data, insights and inferences into a coherent and logical chain that others can execute on.

Negotiation Skills

• Strong negotiation skills including listening, probing, identifying interests, and mutually solving problems.
• Can deliver and stick to a tough message when required.
• Effectively reads and adapts to different personality types to maximize value out of negotiations.
• Has the fortitude to “hang in there” on strategic issues that may draw out over a long period of time.
• Clearly identifies what they want out of a negotiation and finds creative and profit-creating ways of achieving that outcome.

Analytical/Process Orientation

• Fact based selling – Uses market and sales data (AC Neilsen, Homescan, Market Trade and Channel Watch) to develop actionable fact-based plans and executes those plans.
• Ability to interpret financial data and makes decisions with the data to positively and measurably affect GP.
• Uses ROI as the primary decision point around trade spend and pricing to ensure growth in profit.
• Ability to reduce complexity and the ability to manage through complex problems.

Leverage Relationships

• Building influence and credibility with internal and external customers and cross functional resources.
• Can nurture and develop a team to drive strong performance and results.
• Trains others to be self sufficient to have the ability to make decisions that impact business results.
• Blends people into teams when needed to solve complex business issues or problems.
• Get things done by building and leveraging cross functional relationships.
• Knows how to influence at all levels of an organization to get things done.

Customer Focus

• Can formulate and deliver proposals to solve issues.
• Is dedicated to meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external customers in a timely and responsive manner.
• Builds and nurtures high quality customer relationships based on mutual respect

Position Outcomes:

• Meet or exceed plans/targets
• Strengthen customer relationship
• Ambassador for MLF
• High performing team