Job Description

Founded by Walter Kidde, a pioneer in early smoke detection and fire suppression, Kidde is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of fire safety products. Each day, we work to expand upon our legacy of innovation, providing advanced solutions to protect people and property from fire and related hazards.

The strategic customer role will lead the National Retail team including several National Account Management professionals and agents/brokers. Oversees all related customer development activities and ensures short-to-medium term operational plans are met within traditional U.S. retail and ecommerce channels excluding The Home Depot. A successful candidate will develop strategic business plans and provides recommendations to leadership on critical, joint business needs and cultivating existing relationships while driving distribution into new customers & channels.

About this role

Leads the National Retail team that may include multiple teams led by managers and or supervisors of Account Management professionals and agents/brokers. Oversees account management activities and ensures short-to-medium term operational plans are met within traditional U.S. retail and ecommerce channels excluding The Home Depot. Develops strategic business plans and provides recommendations to leadership on critical business needs and cultivating existing relationships while driving distribution into new customers & channels.

Key Responsibilities

• Responsible for delivering all Sales & Profit targets including forecast and execution for sales and investment needs for Menards, Walmart, Amazon, and other retail customers.
• Acts as the primary leadership contact with the highly visible / valuable account management teams and/or strategic prospects, develops a professional relationship with the purpose of understanding and meeting the customer needs and within the bounds of contracted scope.
• Manages joint business development activities for account management teams to support the business strategy defined by executive leadership, market dynamics, and customer needs.
• Pursue major channel & customer expansion opportunities via product line reviews and opportunistic selling, reviews final customer responses with team, negotiates with potential large/complex customers and builds and maintains customer relationships to win product placement & execution.
• Contacts on a regular basis, leads the relationships with account management teams to discuss their needs, and to explain how these needs could be met by specific products and services in order to create new client base and increase sales.
• Lead relationships with broker partners that support selling activities.
• Drives necessary change management initiatives that support Kidde transformation.
• Quickly analyzes considerable disparate and unstructured market information and can process and synthesize the data to make critical decisions.
• Excellent communication, analytical and negotiation skills with experience leading team transformation
• Strong people leader, able to lead a diverse & distributed/remote team.
• Proficient in Microsoft Office applications (Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree
• 10+ years of experience in Consumer Goods, working within or calling upon U.S. Retail channels in customer facing, digital commerce and/or trade marketing roles.
• 5+ years of experience managing national retail customers required.
• Ability and willing to travel across national and international borders 25-50% of the year.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Business
• MBA preferred
• Excellent communication, analytical and negotiation skills.
• Customer HQ experience
• Atlanta based or located in relevant major metro area (Chicago, Minneapolis, New York, etc.).
• Additional experience with digital commerce and/or trade marketing roles

RSRCAR