Regional Sales Manager - Western

Company Description

De Beers Group (DBG) is a 135-year-old rough diamond mining, sorting and selling organisation. Within DBG sits the De Beers Polished Diamond Division which aims to vertically integrate De Beers by managing the polishing and procurement of diamonds for De Beers London, Forevermark, and the Origin polish program. It is poised to enhance De Beers’ market position by ensuring a consistent supply of high-quality polished diamonds and leveraging advanced technologies for market competitiveness. The Polished Diamond Division seeks to streamline operations to improve margins and ensure a high-quality diamond supply for De Beers brands. By utilizing AI and machine learning, the division aims to validate demand and optimize inventory management. Additionally, it will enable De Beers to establish and grow contract polishing, develop new polishing facilities, and explore mergers and acquisitions for further expansion.

Job Description

Reporting to the Vice President, Sales & Client Management, this role is responsible for developing and managing the retail distribution strategy in Western USA. This role involves developing sales and account plans, training of sales associates, achieving sales targets and accounts receivables for the region. This role requires an extensive knowledge of mid to high end retailers and wholesalers of polished diamonds. The successful candidate must have deep relationships with key retailers in addition to knowledge of diamond distribution trends in the Western Region.

Cross Cultural Versatility

• Work effectively with other departments, such as marketing, operations, and finance, to ensure smooth sales processes and achieve company objectives. Moves easily and effectively across organizational cultures, motivating and leading diverse groups to deliver strong business performance.
• Lead, direct, delegate and manage performance of customer facing function (as appropriate) – creates an environment conducive to developing strong working relationships.
• Understand and educate internal teams on how customers are best serviced by the Group. Promote stability between supply and demand.
• Stays within legal and ethical guidelines; shows reliability and consistency, and demonstrates, respect for others and understands how the impact of all actions could affect the company.

CRM Management

• Maintain CRM system to ensure a consistent approach to customer management.
• Makes and implements changes to the CRM system as part of continuous improvement.
• Ability to objectively source and filter as appropriate relevant information for inclusion in CRM System.
• Demonstrate commercial understanding of how the customer’s business works across the value chain.
• Lead the development of cross business unit commercially robust account plans based on mutual beneficial opportunities with practical implications, including measurement and management of returns and margins.

Polished Diamond Expertise

• Have intimate experience selling diamonds into brands and retailers in the US.
• Provide appropriate direction in terms of value creating distribution opportunity even if this involves reducing allocation to own customer. Margin growth being the arbiter of success.
• Provide price feedback on product sales, including both current price and future expectations based on fundamentals, and understands the significance of triangulation in order to ensure veracity of data.
• Understand how to derive value from product bespoking and future assortments for the customer.
• Provide accurate sales forecasts.

​​​​​​​Joint Business Plans

• Create Joint business plans.
• Manage a diverse portfolio of accounts and create account plans per account accordingly. Develop and deliver on objectives per account plan.
• Write account plan to high standard with specific goals and objectives for revenue and product/service opportunities which includes:
• Revenue forecast.
• Planned product requirements.
• Bespoke product requirements (where applicable).
• Forecast sell through and future demand.
• Where applicable propose, pitch and follow up on Strategic supply options taking into consideration current, prevailing and any future market conditions.
• Maintain intimate knowledge of customers business and gain understanding of their requirements by building and maintaining relationships with the client and being accepted as a credible business partner to clients:
• Develop an in depth understanding of each customer’s business, together with an understanding and overview of their activities within a relevant territory.
• Understand customer motivations behind decisions and provide this insight internally.
• Identify