East Sales Manager - Convenience Channel

Reports to: Director of Sales, Convenience

Location: Fully remote, with travel required. Prefer that candidates live in a Central or Eastern time zone within 45 minutes of a major airport.

Summary

Opportunity to join and grow with a fast growing, entrepreneurial small company that’s disrupting sweet snacking. This role will manage and be responsible for growing a region of C-Store Retailers and Distributors with the support of broker partners.

Company Overview

Rip Van’s mission is to improve people’s lives by creating convenient, low-sugar snacks that taste as delicious as the full-sugar alternatives. Our first product, Rip Van Wafels, was a Dutch-style waffle that is made with simple, clean ingredients and has only 3g of sugar. We are now embarking on a rapid expansion of our offerings via a full platform of low sugar snacks. Rip Van is committed to sustainability and ethical business practices and is dedicated to building a community around healthy snacking and wellness. With a rapidly growing customer base and strong brand reputation, Rip Van is poised for continued success and explosive expansion in the years to come.

Role Overview: Regional Sales Manager

The Regional Manager will help Rip Van achieve its mission by expanding distribution of our robust innovation pipeline with our retail partners within their geography. As a member of the Sales team, this role will increase product portfolio sales and manage existing business within direct and distributor serviced Convenience Store Chains. To be successful in this role, you’re strategic, proactive, creative, well connected in the customer and distributor set, an excellent planner, well organized, and a highly skilled communicator and collaborator. You are willing to dive in and do what is needed to achieve our goals. You have 5+ years of relevant experience, yet you’re a continuous learner and improver. You’ll be joining a small team of core team members who value making quick and informed decisions, achieving and celebrating wins, and executing with a ‘can do’ attitude

Responsibilities

• Develop action plans to address challenges and maximize opportunities
• Contribute to sales strategy and forecast in existing and new channels
• Collaborate with finance team to monitor, research and dispute invoice deductions as needed
• Attend internal team and cross functional calls via video call
• Attend customer, broker and distributor meetings, trade shows, market tours and industry/consumer facing events as required to maintain and pursue relationships
• B e a Rip Van ambassador and spokesperson within the community and industry, networking and exploring unique opportunities and scenarios for the brand - which may at times fall outside the scope of territory (in other words, live and breathe the brand)
• Collaborate with cross functional leaders on planning, forecasting, budgeting, strategy, innovation, sales collateral and execution
• Cultivate new business within the region and beyond, using all available methodologies (networking, cold calling, market research, competitive intelligence, industry resources, third parties - distributors/brokers/agencies, technology, etc.)
• Create, execute, monitor, manage and evaluate customers’ promotion/trade plans and calendars to meet and exceed expected ROI
• Create sales reports, collateral and customer-ready content for internal and external initiatives
• Evaluate and apply available data (POS, distributor and syndicated) for planning, managing, fact- based selling, distribution tracking, post promotional evaluation/ROI analysis and market intelligence
• Manage Rip Van business and relationships with Retailers, Distributors, and broker partners within your region
• Train and develop customers, brokers and distributors on Rip Van’s portfolio and objectives - via phone, webinars and on site/in-market visits
• Manage new item process (samples, reviews and set-up process) within customer portfolio
• Create custom programs as applicable to develop channel opportunities
• Identify opportunities and develop custom programs to foster opportunities, continued sales growth and ROI within customer portfolio

Qualifications

• Comfortable in frequently changing and potentially stressful internal and external environments
• Occasional lifting and carrying items weighing up to 40 pounds
• Entrepreneurial mindset, creative problem solving and analytical skills
• Occasional high stress situations may occur in dealing with customers
• Ability to design and deliver effective presentations to various levels of customers’ organization
• Ability to take potentially long flights for meetings and trade shows is a requirement
• Fully competent with Google Suite (preferred) or Microsoft Office Suite
• Distributor, Retailer, and Broker management experience
• May require irregular work hours and travel
• Track record of success and increasing responsibility
• Excellent communication, and negotiation skills
• High sense of urgency and responsiveness, with ability to prioritize, achieve priorities and thrive while multitasking
• 5+ years C-Store CPG sales experience, relationships with buyers for major East C-Store chains and/or cookie-cracker category experience a plus
• Must be self-motivated, curious and comfortable with ambiguity typical of a young and growing company
• Proven ability to work both independently and collaboratively
• Strong customer management/relationship management skills
• Experience with conceptual selling and sales forecasting using data, industry tools, trade math, margin optimization
• Requires full range of body motion including walking, standing, stooping, bending, and lifting, manual and finger dexterity and eye-hand coordination
• Up to 40% travel may be required depending on customer needs Physical Requirements
• May require sitting, standing and walking for extensive periods of time.