Job Description
Looking for a new exciting business development role with a rapidly expanding company in the food, beverage and dairy sectors?
Our client, a leader in developing disruptive technologies for the rapid detection of microbial contamination is undergoing a major expansion to address the growing market for automated rapid testing, mainly in the food and beverage industries. We have partnered with our client to recruit a proven high-level business development professional, who can:
• Acquire new customers by diversifying and broadening the company’s customer base
• Boost the level of sales of products and services to existing customers
• Become a key liaison to their customers; ensuring that they remain committed to the company’s value offering
• Develop sales strategies, supported by persuasive sales pitches, and by adopting best CRM practices
• Strengthen the reputation of the company brand and overall competencies of the organization.
Duties and Responsibilities
• Effectively communicate company’s value proposition through proposals, presentations and marketing collateral.
• Identify, evaluate and propose candidate distributor organisations by market; develop and foster long-term commercial relationships with distributors.
• Establish sales objectives for approval by the CEO and the Board; forecast and develop annual sales quotas, expected sales volumes and projected net margins for existing and new products in all territories; own and hit/exceed annual sales targets and accounts.
• Leverage your own and Company network contacts to prospect and identify new sales leads for the Company’s microbial assay solutions and associated consumable products.
• Manage customer related issues, including investigating and helping to solve customers’ long-standing or complex technical problems.
• Communicate technical issues that require further input from the Company technical and scientific team.
• Maintain professional and technical knowledge by attending educational workshops, reviewing professional publications, etc.
• Consolidate professional relationships with existing and prospective customer personnel and key industry opinion leaders; attend trade shows; understand category-specific landscapes and trends.
• Report on forces that shift tactical budgets and the strategic direction of accounts
• Write detailed contact reports and minutes of meetings; reports to management with feedback as to what is and what is not working
• The role will be mainly field based, supplemented by regular team reviews and meetings.
• Consolidate the progress made to date by leveraging key customer relationships
• Identify new sales leads for microbial assay and disinfection solutions, along with supporting consumable products
• Drive sales and marketing initiatives to support Company’s strategic commercial goals
• Maintain relationships with existing customers by managing customer related issues, including investigating and solving customer’s long-standing or complex problems
• Identify technical issues that require further input from the Company R&D team
• Identifying market opportunities for new product development
• Networking with existing and prospective customer personnel and key industry opinion leaders
• Documentation – writing detailed contact reports and minutes of meetings; reports to management with feedback as to what is and what is not working.
Job Requirements
• The position requires an ability to work remotely while simultaneously managing a sales and marketing team on a day-to-day basis.
• Ability to negotiate and close deals
• Strong written & oral communications skills; must be good with numbers, and have IT fluency
• A deep understanding of the Dairy sector in the UK and Ireland
• Experience of dealing with Dairy customers and a knowledge of the key personnel would be a distinct advantage
• Qualifications and experience appropriate to microbiology in the dairy environment; laboratory organisation and lab operations are key requirement
Qualifications/Key Skills
• B.Sc in Science, preferably Microbiology minimum
• In-depth and extensive knowledge of the industry and it current market trends, events and conditions; understanding the competitive environment
• Ability to network, cold-call; develop rapport with key decision makers (mid-senior management; marketing; technical) at any level in target organisation
• Ability to develop strategic plans – identifying sales pipelines, setting and exceeding sales targets
• Creative talents and ability to solve technical problems
• Ability to handle pressure and tight deadlines
• Professional approach to the role – with attention to detail
• Excellent time management and organisation
For further information on this position please contact John Phillips at The RFT Group on 01 2302400 / john.phillips@rftgroup.ie Check out all our open jobs on our Recruitment website: www.rftgroup.ie Follow us on Linked-in.