Sr. Sales Manager-East

About the role

The Sr Sales Manager is a senior commercial leadership role responsible for delivering profitable growth across assigned customers while leading a team of account managers who manage and grow their own customer portfolios. This role owns growth strategy, execution, and accountability for key direct accounts, while also coaching the team to identify opportunities, build pipeline, deepen customer relationships, and convert new business across regional and national accounts. The Sr Sales Manager is expected to balance direct customer ownership with people leadership, ensuring that customer plans, innovation opportunities, pricing, forecasting, and commercial execution are aligned to AAK’s growth objectives. Travel to deepen customer relationships, support team selling, and advance growth initiatives is required and expected to be 30-40%.

Responsibilities

The duties of the Sr Sales Manager include but are not limited to:
Deliver profitable sales growth across assigned customers through clear account strategies, opportunity development, pipeline conversion, and disciplined commercial execution.
Directly manage selected key customer relationships, including senior-level engagement, growth planning, negotiation, issue resolution, and long-term partnership development.
Lead, coach, and develop a team of account managers responsible for managing and growing regional and national customers.
Set clear growth expectations, customer priorities, and individual goals for the sales team, ensuring accountability for revenue, margin, volume, pipeline, and forecast accuracy.
Develop and execute multi-year customer growth plans for assigned accounts and ensure team members maintain robust plans for their customer portfolios.
Identify and advance new business opportunities by understanding customer strategies, unmet needs, product applications, and market trends relevant to AAK’s portfolio.
Partner cross-functionally with Marketing, Customer Innovation, R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, and Customer Service to convert opportunities and deliver customer commitments.
Lead commercial negotiations with assigned customers and support the team in structuring agreements that deliver sustainable value for AAK and the customer.
Conduct regular pipeline, forecast, customer planning, and performance reviews with team members, providing coaching, feedback, and prioritization support.
Monitor customer and team performance through KPIs, sales metrics, and market intelligence to identify risks, growth gaps, and corrective actions.
Ensure high-quality forecasting and business planning by translating customer insights, opportunity timing, and market dynamics into actionable sales projections.
Handle escalated customer issues and remove internal barriers that may impact customer growth, satisfaction, or execution.

About you

Qualifications include:
Demonstrated success delivering profitable growth with assigned customers through account planning, opportunity development, negotiation, and execution.
Proven ability to lead, coach, and hold a sales team accountable for growing customer portfolios and achieving commercial targets.
Strong understanding of customer needs, market dynamics, competitive activity, and the ability to translate insights into growth strategies.
BA/BS degree required; Food Science, Business, or related discipline preferred.
10+ years of progressive sales experience, preferably in food ingredients and/or the fats and oils industry.
Excellent relationship-building, executive customer engagement, problem-solving, and internal/external stakeholder alignment skills.
Strong organization, prioritization, pipeline management, and commercial planning capabilities.
Excellent quantitative, forecasting, and business performance management skills