Business Development Assistant Manager - Sarawak + Brunei

Your Role

The purpose of the role is to maximise key commercial KPIs within your assigned geographical region for East Malaysia through management of selected distribution partners, identifying and executing growth opportunities and driving best in class activation. Key responsibilities include the following:

• Management of distributors in the assigned area, with respect to infrastructure, process and overall operations to ensure outstanding implementation channel specific of brand / category, reviewing promotional efficiency and Point of Purchase (POP)/ Outlets vision, while ensuring agreed ROI and distribution objectives
• Develop and train the distributor operation managers and the distributor sales representatives
• Set growth agendas in line with company goals and liaise with local distributor teams for front end delivery.
• Consolidating annual plans and hold markets accountable to drive growth and profitability as well as increasing market share.
• Coordinating with key internal functions (ie. Marketing, order processing, supply chain, logistics, credit control) to ensure task timelines are met accordingly.

Your Key Task

• Understand the impact of geographic, demographic etc. factors on retail environment and assess customer and channel attractiveness
• Assist in determination of channel priorities based on brand / channel objectives and implement action plans
• Interpret findings of RSA / shopper insight into local context / activity and identify trends, provide inputs to category managers to identify new opportunities
• Proposal of milk tea mass pack based on in depth competition study to ensure Guardrail met and Lipton relevance in market
• Identify opportunities and develop a business plan by distributor each year
• Develop mechanisms to recruit new OOH Tea Dust customers
• Align distributor business plan with company’s strategy into action plan
• Maintaining clearer forecast & sales databank by channel in East Malaysia and updated master data to ensure data accessibility, business continuity with proper naming conventions
• Monitor implementation of business plan; volume, value, growth, infrastructure and resources.
• Monitor customer for achievement of target and maintenance of agreed ROI and suggest alternatives
• Build and maintain relationships with key customers in the area
• Bi-annual meetings to build confidence with key retailers
• Meeting key retailers in Modern Trade regularly to secure display & promotion on monthly basic. ( E Mart, Everwin, Farly, Everise )
• Keep track sku distribution in General Trade & review sales representative performance on monthly achievements to understand their challenges.
• Review ROI of display by store on monthly basic & take action to rectify immediately of store with high investments
• Understand the Point of Purchase vision by channel and evaluate quality of implantation and suggest / drive corrective action
• Analyze category / brand / SKU performance and prepare customer specific sales plan to achieve brand objectives
• Monitor implementation of channel specific activities and report performance. Take initiative for improving efficacy
• Make recommendations to improve availability, visibility (initiatives at distributor end)
• Roll out and monitor visibility improvement initiatives
• Identify, plan and implement actions to assist in performance improvement of distributor partners through; coaching, guidance, delegation, recommendation to training, projects etc.
• TTS budget tracking and claims processing - Consolidated budget and ongoing claims, ensuring tracking to avoid overspending or underutilization resulting in business impact.
• Following up with distributors on payment to ensure Lipton’s cashflow is protected
• Involved in internal project meeting to ensure business aspect is taken into account.

Skills and Experience

• Commercial degree, preferably in sales and marketing
• 5 years of distributor/ customer management
• Proven track record of delivery topline and bottom-line results
• Proven track record of managing multiple stakeholders and delivering operational excellence
• Communication and presentation skills
• Problem solving skills
• Synthesis of data and insight
• Crisis management skills
• Proficient in English language
• Travel is required for this role

Who we are looking for

• Bias for action, drive for results
• Networking and influencing
• A strong sense of ownership and accountability
• Organisationally and analytically strong
• High level of resilience and problem solving
• A dot connector
• Curiosity: A customer centric mindset.
• Ability to perform under tight deadlines
• Relevant values, drivers for this role
  • Performance and growth mindset
  • Agility to thrive in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world
  • Flexibility to drive change
• Transparency and openness
• Passionate about Tea