Business Development Manager - Whiskey On and Off Prem - Northern California
Location: San Francisco, CA (within daily driving distance)
About Diageo
With over 200 brands sold in nearly 180 countries, we're the world's leading premium drinks company. Every day, over 30,000 talented people come together at Diageo to create the magic behind our much-loved brands. Join us and you'll collaborate, explore, and innovate. Challenge and be challenged. Together with passionate people from all over the world, you'll build brands consumers love.
We value each other and celebrate different perspectives. In our inclusive culture, you'll have the backing you need to test new ideas and learn from them. Harness your passion and desire to grow as you make your mark. Let's unlock a brighter, more exciting future together.
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About the Function:
Our Sales team love building relationships, connecting with customers to sell our much-loved brands in new and vibrant markets where they can thrive. They help sell our iconic brands across 180 countries every year.
We're operating across different markets, channels, and areas of expertise. Using your curiosity and passion, you'll make the most of consumer insight and digital platforms, reaching new customers, markets, and celebrations to help us achieve our growth potential. We'll support your learning and growth as you develop your career with us and work with people across our business to realise your fullest potential.
About the role:
The Business Development (BD) Manager is the in-market category & brand expert that leads consumer & trade demand generation for our brands. This role will promote the growth of Diageo brands, along with distributor/broker partners, customers, and consumers. This role is a blend of sales coordination, local marketing execution and category/brand representation - collaborating with our sales teams at Diageo and within our distributor teams. The role works directly with the relevant Diageo brand and trade marketing personnel to develop and execute winning brand, customer, and portfolio plans tailored for their market.
This role is designed to be very visible and active in the market - spending a minimum of 70% of their working time with customers, distributor sales teams, marketing/activation agencies, event and sponsorship promoters, and local influencers. This role relies heavily for success on effective collaboration with other Diageo sales and marketing teams - to ideate, create, budget for, and enable the operational readiness of their plans, allowing the successful candidates to focus on building an in-market reputation and track record of demand generation that translates into performance measured through sales depletions and share growth.
Role Responsibilities:
• Builds demand for our brands by locating, defining, and executing against the most important business/category opportunities in the market consistent with the category and brand plans developed for that market.
• Has a strong, trusted business relationship with the most important customers in their - market.
Strengthens that relationship by regularly engaging with those customers to find mutually beneficial opportunities for growth.
• Identifies new opportunities for brands to participate in a market by being close to distributor, agency and customer personnel and validating opportunities through consumer, category & customer insight.
• Closely monitors standard brand performance metrics to ensure efforts are delivering against
market/brand/customer expectations - course correcting where necessary - distribution, authorizations, display, menu, cross-promotion, share & re-order rates etc.
• Agrees category specific targets, timing and KPI's for in market sales and agency partners - execution, merchandising, activation efforts, etc.
• Locates potential business opportunities by contacting potential partners - cross promotional opportunities, sponsorship opportunities, media, or local influencer opportunities etc.
• Inputs directly to the development (by brand/trade marketing teams) of local/in market category and channel plans for specific category and constituent brands.
• Leads local category & associated brand education opportunities and coordinates learning plans with Diageo and third-party personnel - including the Diageo Academy learning agenda.
• Protects Diageo by being an expert in our marketing code and living our code of conduct always.
• Helps refine and evolve the business development role by observing and recommending positive
enhancements to the role and how it works and how it can better engage with internal and external
stakeholders.
Experience / skills required:
• BA in business administration or a related field.
• 3 -5 years of sales & brand activation experience.
• Existing or commitment to quickly complete WSET LI or equivalent education in Wines & Spirits.
• Ongoing category specific learning - formal & informal learning - liquid, consumer, category insights.
• Experience of beverage alcohol category and familiarity with On, Off and Non Premise channel
landscape.
• Track record of in market & customer engagement - wants and likes to spend time actively in trade - listening to customers, observing shoppers/consumers and turning insights into actions.
• Category expertise - deep Diageo & competitor brand understanding.
• Negotiation skills - can manage local negotiations, including sponsorship agreements.
• Strong relationship building - based on transparency, empathy & trust.
• Sales Analysis - knows how to read sales and demand creation metrics - knows when intervention is necessary.
• Customer & consumer centric - understand customer motivations and knows how best to appeal to shoppers/consumers to the benefit of customers and Diageo.
• Territory management - understands the BevAlc route to market and how to compliantly influence outcomes.
• Deep market knowledge - channel, customer, and consumer.
• Energy level - approachable and quick to engage with all stakeholders - brings positive energy to customer, distributor and agency interactions.
• Professionalism - polished but authentic - comfortable in public presentation situations.
• Self-starter - self-motivated and pro-active.
Lean in to our "dial up behaviors" and core values
- Be externally curious
- Collaborate efficiently
- Experiment and learn
- Act decisively
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. Please let us know any reasonable accommodations you may require.
Rewards & Benefits Statement:
We recognize and value performance, offering our people a highly competitive Rewards and Benefits package.
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, mindsets, 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!