Channel Lead On Premise - JHB at The Heineken Company

Key Performance Areas would include, but are not limited to: 

Category, Portfolio and Brand understanding

• Ensures team understanding of category, portfolio and brand strategies and plans
• Develops channel plans incorporating category, portfolio and brand strategies and plans
• Optimises portfolio and brand profitability in a sustainable way, incorporating Rev Man guidelines into TM plans

Shopper and On- Premise Consumer understanding

• Applies learnings from research, time in market and multiple data sources to create strategic insights that anticipate shopper/consumer behaviour
• Creates shopper/consumer profiles that identify prioritised value drivers at point of purchase and consumption
• Ensures all channel plans reflect shopper/consumer understanding and opportunities, leveraging data and insights

RTM, Channel and Customer understanding

• Demonstrates an understanding of priority channels, value drivers and activation pillars by channel as well as OpCo trade terms and investment guidelines
• Develops channel plans that consider key customer strategies, needs and execution capabilities across direct, in-direct and digital RTM
• Anticipates future opportunities based on channel and customer needs and trends
• Understands key competitor strategies and execution capabilities to identify commercial opportunities
• Considers OpCo sales organisation capacity and needs when building plans

Channel strategy development

• Develop winning channel strategies and plans with SMART objectives
• Prioritize channels and tier customers for investment.
• Ensures that channel strategies support delivery of 3 year OpCo plan
• Translates category, consumer and customer value drivers into relevant channel strategy
• Coaches team in strategy development, project briefing and management

Annual Planning

• Builds segment plan by channel that reflects the 3 year channel strategy, leveraging value drivers via outlet execution standards
• Translates top-down channel objectives into objective-driven activities, allocating budgets in line with Rev Man principles
• Manage the channel budget cross functionally
• Develops PICOS for all channels, utilising category management and Rev Man insights.
• Develop the cold strategy and customer loyalty strategy for respective channels.
• Develop the draught strategy and plan for channels
• Ensures development of practical, implementable plans, materials and promotions that make for ease of execution
• Leads and coaches the team creation of the channel plan

Excellence in execution

• Ensures execution is in line with strategy, brand plans, calendar and budget
• Ensures cross-functional alignment and commitment to execution of the channel plans
• Delivers sales tools and information to support delivery of the channel plans
• Drives delivery of channel plan using execution reporting data
• Continuously evaluates execution performance by weekly market visits and demonstrates agility in adapting plans based on sales and customer feedback.
• Champions EoE purpose and process within the team

Channel, outlet and consumer segmentation

• Ensures trade census data is up to date, valid and fit for purpose
• Uses shopper/consumer, channel and customer information to prioritise value drivers
• Leverages database to enable matching of priority value drivers by channel with brand activation selection
• Enables targeted equity building in Gold /Silver/Bronze outlets for OpCo brand priorities
• Ensures that quantified segmentation is reflected in channel plans
• Ensures segment plans link to prioritised channel opportunities and investment allocation

Commercial Acumen

• Demonstrates understanding of profitability and drivers by channel to optimise investment
• Recommends investment choices by channel/customer/brand based on commercial jobs to be done and ability to execute
• Evaluates the segment plan against channel strategy and financial objectives
• Performs pre & post activity ROI analysis, generating recommendations for improvement
• Monitors and responds to competitor activity across the value chain

The successful candidate must have the following qualification, skills and experience: 

• Relevant tertiary qualification, preferably Bachelors or Honours in Commerce.
• Sales experience
• 7+ years’ experience in FMCG environments 
• Strong marketing, key accounts, channel and merchandising capability
• Exhibit strong leadership, problem solving, and time management capabilities.
• Experienced managing multiple sales channels.
• Strategic and commercial acumen