Senior Manager, Allied Partners
The Senior Manager Allied Partners is responsible for leading the commercialization of select Keurig Dr Pepper (KDP) Allied Partner beverage brands across liquid refreshment beverage categories. Your ultimate goal is to drive success with our shoppers, customers and partners by helping to drive a commercial beverage strategy that is coherent across channels. The Senior Manager will be the driving force between the Allied Partner and National Retail Sales (NRS) teams by identifying growth opportunities and leveraging key insights/trends that lead to actionable brand and retail plans. Additionally, the Senior Manager will be responsible for collaborating with key cross functional teams and stakeholders, participating in the Annual Brand Planning process, tracking category performance, building category selling materials, owning product commercialization, supporting major industry/sales meetings and reporting out to senior leaders. We are looking for a team player who has the ability to drive influence throughout the organization, enjoys building relationships cross functionally, exudes strategic acumen, takes full ownership of assigned projects and identifies growth opportunities.
The ideal candidate will bring 7 or more years of consumer packaged goods (CPG) experience and will have led commercial efforts in the development, implementation, and measurement of category plans across the commercial organization. Knowledge of the beverage industry specifically would be considered a plus.
This role will be located in either the KDP HQ Frisco, TX or Burlington, MA office and will require up to 25% travel. This person will report to the Senior Director Allied Partners.
Responsibilities
The key areas of focus for this role include commercial planning, category assortment, innovation commercialization, and category sales growth strategy.
- Lead monthly operating review with internal cross functional teams and the Allied Partner, working closely with the Revenue Growth Management team on monthly analytic views and tracking of key initiatives.
- Support AOP initiatives and projects, executional tracking, and alignment of category activities.
- Collaborate with Allied Partner and KDP internal teams (supply chain, shopper insights, marketing, RGM, and category management) to identify and build a prioritized annual calendar of relevant activities, programming, occasion/brand/price/pack/channel (OBPPC) tactics and tools required to deliver against the annual commercial plan for assigned categories.
- Represent the full category commercial perspective in all discussions/decisions across the enterprise and when consulting brand marketing partners
- Build compelling, best in class insights-based category selling stories and operating plans that support annual commercial plans for the KDP selling organizations (National Retail Sales and Route to Market) inclusive of brand initiatives, innovation, category drivers, right assortment, and merchandising
- Shepherd the commercialization efforts for new product innovation as well as retail account specific product or package innovation, ensuring retail readiness and launch excellence
- Provide commercial guidance for the annual allied brand process and innovation launches
- Track in year performance and determine tactical changes or additions to the commercial programming to address AOP goals
- Provide on-going leadership and support for company-wide and sales specific meetings i.e., Quarterly Business Reviews, National Sales Meeting, customer AOP meetings, Bottler Meetings, etc.
Core Competencies
- Ability to partner across multiple levels and functions of an organization to drive improvement in business performance
- Strong analytic skills, ability to pull syndicated data from sources like Circana and translate into effective selling stories.
- Demonstrate problem solving skills and the ability to learn and adapt quickly
- Self-motivated and driven with the ability to lead strategic thinking and deliver results in a fast-paced and changing environment
- Tolerance for ambiguity and ability to resolve complex issues with clear commercial-centered solutions
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
- Strong executive presence, ability to present and lead meetings and discussions with Senior Leadership across internal and external teams.
- Demonstrated track record of driving sustainable results and problem solving
- Outstanding collaboration skills, with proven ability to work with multiple stakeholders across business lines to accomplish shared goals and manage expectations
- Team player with a “can do” attitude, willing to stretch across cross functional lines to ensure objectives are met. Comfortable holding people accountable and tracking against goals.
- Results orientated, passion to win
