Flavors Product Manager

Job Summary

Deliver sustainable, profitable sales growth for the designated category. Responsible for reviewing, setting, and executing the strategy for the category interacting at multiple levels with the Account team, ensuring that IFF's global and overall strategic interests have appropriate priority, collaborating with IFF management across functions and geographies.

For a defined category: set financial targets and expenses; collaborate with function heads to provide clear direction, creating and fostering a culture aligned with IFF Vision, Mission and Principles; develop and maintain sustainable relationships with internal and external customers by building a long-term partnership; orchestrate execution of category strategy in line with global account targets and regional inputs; deliver innovations and bring in new ideas to the category and account; ensure category resource, expertise and effort are correctly channeled to enable success and effective teamwork; partner with operation team to ensure customer satisfactions in term of services and supply; manage category sales performance, ensure best sales practices implementation; drive global cross functional teams to successfully deliver on key projects; ensure collaboration and alignment across regions, on the category priorities, quality standards, information sharing and project synergies.

Responsibilities/Description

1. Foster and lead multi-level cross functional customer relationships with key decision makers/influencers.
2. Maximize time with the customer, collaborate and support customer on key events and initiatives.
3. Immerse into assigned category and customer ecosystem including activities, strategies, brands, markets, customer competition, consumers via different sources and identify white spaces and opportunities for innovation.
4. Lead strategic commercial initiatives (e.g., core listing).
5. Maximize IFF advantage (GP improvement/ Catalog optimization/ Complexity reduction, etc.) from any changes driven by regulatory, compaction and/or cost savings initiatives.
6. Embed IFF value proposition into the customer (innovation, global reach, collaborative/partnership spirit, etc.).
7. Responsible for addressing conflicts and roadblocks and escalate when needed.
8. Fully understand and provide necessary support to facilitate customer regulatory requirements/ changes.
9. Leverage IFF's consumer understanding and strategic insight to deliver relevant solutions that meet customer / consumer pain-points and generate excitement.
10. Ignite winning spirit in the cross functional team to maximize business growth. Passion for results and passion for the customer.
11. Role model to demonstrate IFF Cultural Principles and foster a culture consistent with the IFF vision and values.
12. Manage and/or mentor commercial and creative team members.
13. Ensure objectives are aligned to the business and a personal development plan is in place.
14. Onboard and coach new category team members.
15. Demonstrate Leadership Courage in challenging the status quo and tackling difficult issues to ensure IFF's interests are represented in a positive and inclusive manner both internally and externally.
16. Create an environment that fosters continuous learning and teamwork across regions.
17. Evaluate the issues, advise, and work closely with the regional managers to resolve them in the best interests of IFF.
18. Laser focus on securing and developing best in class sales team through talent selection, recruitment, onboarding, coaching and performance management / recognition.
19. Identify, develop, and champion talent in the team who can take broader leadership roles in the future of IFF supporting our Talent Management processes (ITRs, Talent Councils, Hipo programs).
20. Develop and communicate overall vision and global commercial category strategy plan for the given account and provide inputs to regional team for successful execution.
21. Coordinate the communication and execution of the category strategy in consultation with the Global Account Leaders and RGMs ensuring effective resource allocation against strategic plan across regions.
22. Set clear long-term commercial targets (Sales/GP/New Win/Grow Market share) aligned with category strategic plan.
23. Define and suggest the required account resources, investment, and relevant service model to support the category.
24. Effectively communicate the category plans with stakeholders including internal and external team members.
25. Review/update the progress of category plans versus KPI targets.
26. Gather and share intelligence on industry, market, competitors, consumer, technology from daily interactions with customer/industry network.
27. Contribute to annual category strategy ideation process and to the category and innovation teams on an on-going basis.
28. Define and develop the strategy for major global projects in collaboration with regional teams.
29. Monitor projects pipeline, regularly update management of the progress and support regional/account managers, as necessary.
30. Secure buy-in from Global Account Leaders and provide support (resources, commercial negotiation, etc.), as required, to maximize projects' success.
31. Consolidate category knowledge, products, market intelligence, innovations and expertise and ensure they are shared & leveraged across regions.
32. Gather and share cross-category expertise.
33. Foster team's awareness of the costs associated with projects. Ensure actions are taken to optimize.
34. When necessary, influence management to approve certain projects with low Gross Profit but high strategic value.
35. Encourage and apply Agile Practices.
36. Accountable for securing profitable and sustainable sales growth for the assigned category.
37. Ensure business potential of the account on global category level is accurately captured and validated.
38. Build and define category strategy for growth, aligned with the overall global account goals.
39. Drive growth and customer relevancy through innovation.
40. Ensure controllable and sales expenses are within agreed P&L parameters.
41. Monitor category and sales performance and recommend proactive corrective action and strategic project updates to regional teams & management.
42. Understand impact of economic scenarios, raw material cost fluctuations on the business and, as needed, support price increase strategies.

Requirements

Experience:

1. Between 7-10+ years of industry related experience with a strong track record and at least 3 years serving in a senior sales/creative/strategic role.

Skills:

1. Strategic vision, innovative thinking, business acumen, and ability to drive and rally cross functional category teams.
2. Ability to create, nurture relationships at senior levels and create opportunities for growth.
3. Strong Proficiency with financial concepts/processes (pricing/margin/forecasting/cash flow).
4. Solid vision of regulatory and sustainability issues impacting the industry.
5. Passion and in-depth knowledge of subject matter and product development.
6. Understanding of socio-economic environment and relevance to the category.
7. Analytical mindset to interpret inputs from market trends and consumer tests.
8. Strong fragrance knowledge, olfactive skills and IFF scent solutions and technologies.
9. Team player, Strategic thinking, Positive mindset, Orchestrator.
10. Strong communication, presentation, storytelling, and negotiation skills.
11. Effective business English with a global mindset able to work with different cultures.

Training / Certifications

Essential: Bachelor's degree

Preferred: Concentration in Business, Marketing, Chemistry, or Biology.

We are a global leader in taste, scent, and nutrition, offering our customers a broader range of natural solutions and accelerating our growth strategy. At IFF, we believe that your uniqueness unleashes our potential. We value the diverse mosaic of the ethnicity, national origin, race, age, sex, or veteran status. We strive for an inclusive workplace that allows each of our colleagues to bring their authentic self to work regardless of their religion, gender identity & expression, sexual orientation, or disability.

Visit IFF.com/careers/workplace-diversity-and-inclusion to learn more.