Sr. Director, Customer Solutions

At Suntory Global Spirits, we craft spirits of the highest quality and deliver brilliant experiences to people around the world. Suntory Global Spirits has evolved into the world's third largest leading premium spirits company ... where each employee is treated like family and trusted with legacy. With our greatest assets - our premium spirits and our people - we're driving growth through impactful marketing, innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit. Suntory Global Spirits is a place where you can come Unleash your Spirit by making an impact each and every day.

What makes this a great opportunity?

Mission

The Customer Solutions Senior Director will lead a team of fifteen in developing and delivering strategic and tactical recommendations to internal and external partners, rooted in category management fundamentals, advanced analytics, and robust shopper insights. 

What Makes This a Great Opportunity

• Build and lead a winning team in support of high-exposure Strategic Account customers
• Opportunity to join a dynamic leadership team, working in an entrepreneurial and cross-functional environment
  • Externally, with key stakeholders across retailer and distributor networks
  • Internally, with leadership in Sales, Marketing, Finance, Insights, Strategy and MDC
• Opportunity to join world class Distilled Spirits supplier:
  • Global leadership positions in Bourbon and Japanese whiskey
  • Recipient of 20+ employer of choice awards
  • 3rd largest Premium Spirits Supplier, globally
• This role will report directly to the General Manager of Strategic Accounts and support both the On-Premise and Off-Premise businesses

Location: Any core office (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Louisville, New York, Miami) strongly preferred

Role Responsibilities

• Lead, inspire, and empower a diverse team, providing a clear vision and fostering a culture of accountability
• Attract and retain top talent in category management, prioritizing candidates with a commercial mindset and who can build relationships
• Foster a diverse, equitable, and inclusive culture that is embedded in the team's DNA
• Develop and execute a comprehensive strategy to position Suntory Global Spirits as the premier Category Advisor and Insights thought leader
• Analyze the customer landscape to identify opportunities for optimizing resource deployment, ensuring our team is strategically aligned to support the most critical business units
• Drive a team to deliver with excellence against all elements of a retail category plan, with an emphasis on engagement, influence and impact
• Develop a team with a high commercial acumen to become indispensable partners in support of SGS sales leadership (NAMs) with robust analytics, rooted in customer, shopper, and consumption data
• Assess customer data landscape, effectively deploy a $2M budget to ensure SGS commercial teams are equipped to win with our most strategic customers
• Leverage internal data assets to create a platform of business intelligence tools, focused on financial analytics and customer program activities
• Actively engage, inspire, and motivate distributor Category Management teams to execute against SGS standards
• Active participation across multiple cross-functional workstreams, including
• Performance Management cycles
• Key Performance Indicators (KPI) development and measurement
• Consumption reporting and analytics
• Innovation ideation and assessment
• Shopper Insights ideation, interpretation and execution
• Shelf Standards (6Ps – Placement) guidance and recommendations to ensure brand strategy is consistently executed
• Lead partnership and management of distributor counterpart and team to ensure collaboration in identifying, presenting and securing customer opportunities to drive long-term sustainable growth

Qualifications

1. Relevant Bachelor’s degree required – Master’s Degree a plus
2. Minimum 15 years’ experience in sales and/or category management at a manufacturer or distributor – beverage alcohol experience strongly preferred
3. Strong commercial acumen, demonstrated experience across off-premise/on-premise channels
4. Proven people leader with deep experience in building/leading high-performance teams
5. Excellent presentation, communication skills
6. Mastery of MS applications and relevant category management software and applications
7. Excellent interpersonal skills and strategic thinker with demonstrated experience