Job - Key Accounts Manager

About the role:

Diageo is the world’s leading premium drinks company with an outstanding collection of brands, such as Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, Baileys, Captain Morgan, Tanqueray, and Guinness. Our purpose – Celebrating life, every day, everywhere – has an important role in our company, for our people, our diversity, our brands, in how we perform and how we create shared value.

KBL is the engine of EABL - the #1 FMCG business in Kenya.

We have huge ambitions in KBL! We want to grow NSV to $1B (CAGR 8%), Operation profit at $378m (CAGR 10%) and Total Beverage Alcohol at 85% (+50%bps YoY) by the end of F’30.

Under Fahari, our ambition is to establish spirits as the most aspirational and versatile category, attending to the changing consumer demands with a strategy of unleashing the power of our brands and portfolio to curate strong culture and partnerships implemented with commercial excellence to deliver *3 penetration, *5 NSV and 35% Numeric distribution by F30.

This role is located within the Demand Sales business. The KAM is the high-level contact between KBL and its premium accounts and will be the “Push” Element in driving profits/NSV, volumes / brand growth. The role is also pivotal in driving trade innovation & creativity in key channels.

Purpose of Role:

Aspiring consumers are influenced by what the high-end consumers and the experiences they enjoy. To influence aspirers, we first need to influence the high- end consumers by activations. If you target the aspirer – then it no longer becomes aspirational. We need them to aspire to the cultural lifestyle we project via our brands in the high-end accounts with their customers. PR via the culture teams is the engine which drives the aspiration. The glue of the reserve model is the partnership across top accounts in chose strategic cities.

To ensure we win in market, now and in the future, Diageo needs inspired, motivated, and equipped commercial managers capable of exceeding the goals asked of them.

Role Responsibilities:

• Management of profit and NSV targets – “own the Premium numbers”. Develop truly world class collaborative customer partnerships and strategies,
• Develop, and orchestrate end-to-end relationships via a cross functional network within Diageo and the customer base,
• Develop and co-ordinate tailored brand activity by channel and major customer. Drive the highest standards of execution for all specified outlets.
• Contribute to shopper and category insight resulting in powerful and breakthrough category strategies, Obtain and apply facts and data, driving excellence in planning, decision making and performance measurement and taking corrective action as required,
• Develop accurate forecasting through demand planning resource.  Monitoring, evaluating, and advising on Brand/Customer volume, trends, and dynamics with objective to grow in line with business ambition.
• Create, develop, and execute world class account plans.
• Identify and manage brand distribution (listing) opportunities as defined for the fiscal for all Reserve brands.
• Event co-ordination: co-ordinate experiential events to build Premium brands’ equity
• Win with consumers through world class trend setting experiences that can be codified.
• Contracting 100% TLA, 50% of gold and silver accounts through world class JUCPS.
• Elevated quality of JUCPs anchored on data analytics and qualitative insights, Consistency in execution with no start/stops.

Execution Excellence

• Identify the everyday minimum execution standards for the customers we work with and understand the 365 Essentials principles and how they translate into these execution standards.
• Navigate a sales call/appointment using the clearly defined and proven commercial selling skills to understand customers’ needs and match them to the business propositions.
• Use proven selling techniques to deliver propositions that exceed customer expectations, satisfy needs, and create ‘win, win, win’ opportunities to ensure distributor coverage and call frequency targets are achieved.
• Persuasive selling to deliver a customer proposition; using knowledge of customers to write winning persuasive customer propositions that are used to achieve/exceed objectives.
• Commercial Competence - have a good understanding of the commercials (spend, volume, margin, etc) to make good business decisions that drive profitable growth for Diageo and its customer.  Also, to have a deep understanding of the various financial levers at our disposal and can use these to positively impact Diageo and our customer's P&L.
• Use the processes, tools and plans provided to ensure brilliant execution by building customised plans for priority accounts against nominated growth drivers and ensure that the plans are driven brilliantly at the point of sale. To coordinate the overall execution agenda of the customers we work with.
• To balance the short-term needs with a mid-term perspective and a disciplined activity management approach.
• Ability to implement, track and improve adherence to the minimum execution standards by segment as defined by the market to drive growth. Owning the measurement of the minimum execution standards in the customers we work with and reporting back the results to the sales organisation on an ongoing basis.

Experience / skills required:

• Suitable university degree.

• High cognitive ability Experience

• 3–5 years’ experience gained across commercial and other functions – cross functional experience an advantage.

• Exposure across different channels and different levels of customer sophistication (e.g. Modern Trade, Key Accounts and Field Sales) • Track record of success in highly demanding sales organisations (FMCG) and in alcoholic beverages

• Solid understanding & demonstrated delivery in challenging trading environments, understanding of channel, pricing, negotiations, and strategy development

• Exposure resolving numerous conflict-filled situations

• Negotiation and conflict resolution with powerful customers

Flexible Working Statement:

Flexibility is key to our success. Talk to us about what flexibility means to you so that you’re supported to manage your wellbeing and balance your priorities from day one.

Diversity statement:

Our purpose is to celebrate life, every day, everywhere. And creating an inclusive culture, where everyone feels valued and that they can belong, is a crucial part of this.

We embrace diversity in the broadest possible sense. This means that you’ll be welcomed and celebrated for who you are just by being you. You’ll be part of and help build and champion an inclusive culture that celebrates people of different gender, ethnicity, ability, age, sexual orientation, social class, educational backgrounds, experiences, attitudes, and more.

Our ambition is to create the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products companies in the world. Join us and help transform our business as we take our brands to the next level and build new ones as part of shaping the next generation of celebrations for consumers around the world.

Feel inspired? Then this may be the opportunity for you. 

If you require a reasonable adjustment, please ensure that you capture this information when you submit your application.