Director, Country Manager - 6-12 Month FTC

Lifestyle Brands (the LSB) is a growing house of like-minded brands under the SC Johnson umbrella including Method®, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day®,Babyganics® andEcover®. Headquartered in San Francisco with additional operations in Chicago and throughout Europe, the LSB is home to 650 employees. Together we act as a force for bold, transformative growth with a focus on delivering positive impact for people and the planet. If you’re into pioneering the future and doing good while doing business, come join us.

The LSB is part of SC Johnson, a family-owned company and leading manufacturer of household cleaning, home storage, air care, pest control and shoe care products, as well as professional products. Originally founded in 1886 and headquartered in Wisconsin, U.S.A., SC Johnson and the Lifestyle Brands division are at work for a better world.

Location: Frimley

Contract type: Temporary Contract - 6 - 12 Month

People Leader: EU Commercial Leader

Function: Sales

Overview:

We are looking for an experienced commercial leader to step in to manage the lead market in our European business. You will inspire, coach and manage a talented challenger commercial leadership team to overdeliver on our ambitious annual plan. You will foster a positive and inclusive culture for the UK sales and category teams, matching their passion for our LSB values and motivating them to execute our strategy to win with customers and consumers in the UK and Export markets.

Responsibilities:  

Lead the UK & Export Team

• Drive our hub culture & lead from the front, living our values, creating an envied team who set the tone in the Frimley office
• Build, nurture and develop a first-class sales and category team through fast passed recruitment, considered onboarding and retention plans and meaningful development plans
• Lead the hub ‘CLT’ (UK Hub Commercial Leadership Team) as the conduit between the EU head of Commercial and the sales and category teams, ensuring delivery of our channel plans
• Partner cross functionally with heads of finance, brand and supply chain to ensure alignment on priorities and seamless cross-functional wiring
• Drive ruthless focus from the team towards our budget, strategy & hub priorities, reinforcing our performance culture

Win with our retailers through ‘relationship retail’:

• Execute a winning sales strategy focusing resources towards igniting our channel and customer plans
• Deliver a transformational grocery retail business winning with our top 3 grocers
• Build & execute plans to drive E-Com min. 2x faster than the grocery growth
• Push our growth boundaries with expansion and acceleration into new channels and markets
• Create & execute a category vision to engage + inspire our retailers to partner with us
• Execute our innovation launches in market in line with budget & actively manage a profitable product portfolio
• Partner with the brand team to seamlessly align our in store activity with our brand campaigns in line with our brand strategies, maximizing the value and impact from our brand investments  

Deliver the full P&L for year 1 of our 5 year 2030 strategy

• Leverage your winning sales plans to deliver hub $/% ISV, NSV, DP & OP targets
• Track, monitor, communicate and course correct results vs. plan in hub & drive action and urgency to resolve issues
• Bolster the topline number by seeking out and chasing down opportunities and reducing risks through focused and targeted customer action plans with the channel leads
• Manage trade budget & make trade off decisions (customer, channel, promo, pricing, mix) to deliver DP & OP targets
• Build and present next year’s budget bottom up via your team in line with our 5 year plan expectations

Experience you’ll bring:

• Mass market commercial leadership skills to translate EU -> hub go to market & excel at executing via your team
• FMCG experience to translate & drive execution of sales and category strategies to deliver growth, you may have led the introduction of a brand or scaled up a brand in the market
• Strong track record of building customer relationships (buying manager level), to enable you to drive customer senior level engagement in our business and brands
• Team Leadership experience, ideally having led a team of sales managers
• Experience of full p&l ownership across multiple customers / channels
• Financial skills to devise & deliver a budget & manage a 1yr (& 3yr) hub P&L and experience of course correcting a budget when it’s been off track
• Experience of collaborative cross-functional working across finance, supply, brand

Superpowers you’ll bring:

…exceptionally high standards which you maintain via feedback and coaching of your team and a sense of urgency to deliver on plans at pace

…passion for retail, external focus and fostering authentic customer relationships

…an eye for the numbers and the dexterity to manage a broad customer and sku base to deliver on your P&L targets

…a strong leader with drive, resilience and determination to deliver your plan through a winning team

…have a deep passion for nurturing and developing talent, and have a history of coaching and mentoring your team to flourish in their careers

…humility and the ability to admit you don’t know it all or ‘got it wrong’ in front of your team; listen (really) to everyone and acknowledge that the mistakes you’ve made have built you into a stronger leader

…be passionate about our values, brands & products, how they work and how they are made

Inclusion & Diversity

We believe that being a team of diverse people with different ideas, views and cultures will help us and our business thrive. We are committed to ensuring everyone who works at the LSB feels that they have a real sense of belonging and that they can show up as who they are, be valued, listened to and supported to do their best possible work.

Sure, there’s always more that can be done. But together with our team, partners, customers and community, we can make everyone welcome.