Senior National Account Manager

Ella’s Kitchen is hiring a National Account Manager to help drive our growth and strengthen key customer relationships. As a National Account Manager, you will take ownership of one of our key national accounts, building and nurturing a strong, strategic customer relationship with the support of the UK Customer Controller. Your core focus will be to deliver net sales and profit growth through commercially sound, creative account plans that align our ambitions with the customer's strategies and goals.

You'll be a key voice within the team, influencing and challenging us to make the right decisions and playing a vital role in driving forward our ambitious growth agenda. This role also involves contributing to broader team efforts — supporting day-to-day execution, ensuring we meet customer expectations, and helping to embed strong internal practices across the Deals (Sales) team.

Role activities / responsibilities:

Revenue + Profit delivery:

• Deliver to UK NSV, TI (trade investment), Contribution (profit) and Share targets
• Ensure TI is managed effectively, making clear decisions and recommendations on sales and profit ROI improvement.
• Help launch and ultimately manage our new revenue streams as they come to life (new brands, new categories + NPD)
• Implement agreed Cost Price Increase in accordance with business requirements as and when needed.
• Build amazing JBP’s that motivate our customers, excite our consumers and deliver the targets we set ourselves as a business
• Identify elements of a JBP that need to be dialled up or down to achieve results, thinking not just about the next year, tying your plans to wider business objectives.
• Use our internal tools to build bottom-up plans at a SKU level, making recommendations on investment choices
• Own, build and continuously track the full financial P&L
• Consider how the plans you’re building can impact the rest of the business
• Reflect on the total channel mix of your customers in your JBPs
• Ensure plans are delivered in a timely manner; allowing time for internal alignment/sign off whilst hitting retailer timelines.

Sales fundamentals:

• Devise, forecast and achieve NPD distribution targets.
• Work with the Category Team to deliver relevant category management/insight to help deliver targets and be a reliable category partner for our customers.
• Ensure all plans are aligned to our promotional strategy, BUT don’t be afraid to challenge and change if it’s the right thing to do
• Maintain high forecast accuracy standards in your account so that we can hit total business targets.
• Complete monthly re-forecasting cycles with our Demand Planning team, owning your number, and preparing for bi-weekly, monthly and quarterly cycles.
• Identifying and maintaining risks and opportunities to your forecasted demand plan

Customer Management:

• Build and manage the contact strategy for your customers (commercial, formats, commercial finance, supply chain, shopper marketing…)
• Establish and maintain great relationships with your buyers and commercial contacts.
• Make sure we’re the brand that challenges customers but isn’t the painful one to deal with – listen, communicate and respond to challenges in a timely fashion.
• Ensure that we are tailoring our Brand plans to make it easy for our customers to deliver them in their own way. You’ll need to achieve this by working with our Friends (Marketing) with Shoppers team (Shopper Marketing), so we can do it in a truly Ella’s way

People:

• Lead, motivate and develop your wider team.
• Proactively lead priorities to manage workload effectively, whilst clearly communicating with key stakeholders internally + externally
• Lead by example; by knowing your stuff – internal goings on, numbers, our customers and the market and coach your report to do the same

You:

• Know your stuff – internal goings on, numbers, our customers and the market
• Be willing to step back and look at things differently when required
• Share best practice with your fellow Dealers and the wider business
• Live our values both internally and externally
• Be willing to make sure when we do things, we do it in an Ella’s way – thinking about the personality of the brand and how we bring it to life for our team, customers and consumers

You will need to:

• Embrace, embody and exude all that is special and unique about Ella’s Kitchen
• Have solid experience at SNAM or NAM level within FMCG
• Experience managing a Top-4 Grocery account
• Have experience of developing, managing and leading Joint Business Plans (JBPs)
• Have excellent commercial + numeracy skills
• Have awesome relationship building skills
• Be a brilliant communicator
• Be a proactive thinker
• Be able to thrive in an entrepreneurial + exciting environment
• Have a results focussed mind-set with the ability to “never never give up” when it comes to finding solutions
• Be able to influence cross-functionally
• Demonstrate your ability to live and breathe our values and be a passionate brand ambassador

And What You’ll Get In Return:

• Bucket loads of training and development, supporting your career pathway
• Competitive salary
• A Box of Treats, including private medical, dental, pension, life assurance, 25 days holiday and the ability to buy more, high street discounts, amazing wellbeing events… to name but a few!
• A really awesome place to come to work … our beautiful Barns in the Oxfordshire countryside, but the flexibility to achieve a good work/life blend

Ella’s Background

Ella’s Kitchen was set up by Paul Lindley to promote healthy eating amongst babies and young children. We’re a highly entrepreneurial and values driven company which has achieved impressive growth to reach a £90m turnover, with a team of 100 employees based at Ella’s Barn near Henley. Our baby and toddler food pouches can be found in key retailers across the UK as well across Scandinavia and BeNeLux, in a handful of other European and Middle Eastern markets and the Far East. We are a brand recognised for its high quality ingredients and ethical credentials which are visible throughout our supply chain and in our social and charity work. Ella’s is part of the Hain Celestial group and we are very proud to be an accredited B’Corps and included in the Sunday Times Best Companies top 100 list 5 years in a row!

Already having achieved rapid growth to date, Ella’s is about to embark on an exciting new phase of development, to bring out more ranges of products and reach a wider international audience. With an ambitious growth target, we are looking for an enthusiastic, passionate and talented Senior National Account Manager (Senior Making Deals) to join our Sales team, working on Tesco.

You will be joining a team of people who meet personal and business challenges with hard work and a smile. They not only see things as they are and ask why - but see things that never were and ask why not.

At Ella’s Kitchen, we are guided by our values; they set the tone of our culture and we look out for newbies who will be a natural fit to our values and complement and contribute to our business.