Area Sales Manager, Kyushu

About Zespri

Zespri is the world’s largest marketer of kiwifruit with over 800  people in New Zealand and throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas.
 

We  help people, communities and the environment thrive through the goodness of kiwifruit. We sit at the heart of an interconnected industry working with 2,800 growers in New Zealand and 1,500 growers in Italy, France, Greece, South Korea and Japan. We supply the world’s healthiest little superfruits to people in more than 50 countries. We are fruit on a mission.
 

Our values are at the heart of everything we do. We commit to guardianship; putting people, the community, and the environment first. We are results-driven, challenging ourselves to grow and deliver better value. We cultivate personal connections, listening and acting with empathy and humility – and treating each other better for it.
 

We are growing quickly, driven by our success in engaging more and more consumers and by offering the world’s best kiwifruit 12 months of the year. We have bold ambitions and aim to grow sales from approximately $3 billion in 2018 to $4.5 billion by 2025.
 

To achieve our goals, we’re empowering our people to achieve their goals, designing our work for wellbeing, through flexible work practices and self-leadership.
 

We have bold ambitions for the future and we want all of our people to live and perform at their best.
 

About The Role

The Sales Area Manager overseas the strategy execution and sales execution for a designated area/portfolio, with an expectation of increasing year-on-year sales revenue and customer satisfaction.
The Sales Area Manager builds relationships with customers, such as wholesalers and retailers, to explain the sales potential of Kiwi fruit, to maximise their orders, and support their sales/promotional strategies. This positions also acts as a local point of contact to support the rollout of global sales initiatives (via the Sales Excellence team) and Project Horizon’s transformations projects.

Accountabilities

•    Develop, execute and optimize sales activities for designated area/portfolio
•    Relationship management through regular sales meetings, conference and events with the customers.
•    Develop strategic and operational support plans with customers to increase sales.
•    Manage the delivery of assigned sales activities within the agreed budget.
•    Lead expanding RTE supply fruit for the market 
•    Work closely with the Marketing and Operations teams to respond to the trade competitors, consumers and supply environment.
•    Execute key account management program in conjunction with Trade Marketing.
•    Lead market analysis by utilizing customer POS data to offer the most effective in-store promotion by different channel/store type.
•    Work with Global Sales of Excellence team based in Singapore to enable local plans and strategies to increase sales, and the transformation team (NZ) to streamline processes.
•    Execute efficient fruit allocation for the market.
•    Take corrective actions in case of daily business problems
•    Do store checks in your region and/or of your retailers in order to get to know the assortments and the competition.
•    Check all the kiwi products, and other given fruits and prices in your region regularly. 

Qualifications & Experience

•    Experience in Sales, trade marketing, business development at least 7 years
•    Customers management and relationship build experience in B2C is necessary
•    Team management and Cross functional work (with Marketing, Supply Chain and Finance) experience is necessary
•    Fluency in English and Japanese (both written and oral, Native Japanese)
•    Thorough understanding and experience within the FMCG industry
•    Strategic thinker with an analytical approach to sales
•    Logical approach to doing business effectively and efficiently 
•    Team management and Cross functional project experience
•    Expertise in customers management and relationship building
•    Work with your team towards the common goals
•    Ability to work under pressure in a fast-paced environment
•    Pursue good understanding of the retail business in your region 
•    Build trust with your internal and external stakeholders based on humble and respectful approach to business
•    Fluency in both business Japanese and English due to the nature of the role

What's In It For You

• Competitive overall remuneration package, including a Short-Term Incentive scheme opportunity.
• FlexWELL flexible work ethos
• Additional paid annual leave day per year (Zespri Day).
• Additional paid volunteer day to volunteer within your community (Volunteer Time).
• Global Life and Permanent Disability Insurance.
• Group Medical Insurance benefits.

Agency

Zespri will not accept applications or contact from any temporary staffing agency, placement service or professional recruiter for this vacancy (“Agency”).

Where Zespri requires the support of an agency to fulfil a vacancy, we will proactively seek this support from our network of Agencies.  We respectfully ask that you do not contact Zespri or any of its affiliates/employees regarding vacancies, and reserve the right not to reply.

Zespri will not be responsible for, and will not pay, any fees, commissions or other payments related to such unsolicited resumes.