Sales Manager - West

Location

Fully remote, with travel required. Prefer that candidates live in Pacific or Mountain 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.

Company Overview

Rip Van’s mission 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: Sales Manager - West

The Sales Manager - West will help Rip Van achieve its mission by expanding distribution of our robust innovation pipeline into brick & mortar stores in the Western half of the U.S., so that our snacks can be enjoyed by anyone, anytime. As a member of the Sales team, this role will increase product portfolio sales and manage existing business within direct and distributor serviced conventional grocery and natural accounts.

If you’re the right fit, you are a results-oriented and dynamic hunter who understands grocery and natural retail and can successfully think outside of the box to create wins in an often-ambiguous environment. 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 7+ 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

• Manage Rip Van business and relationships in natural and conventional channels for the
• Create, execute, monitor, manage and evaluate customers’ promotion/trade plans and calendars to meet and exceed expected ROI
• Develop action plans to address challenges and maximize opportunities
• Identify opportunities and develop custom programs to foster opportunities, continued sales growth and ROI within customer portfolio
• Manage brokers, distributors and retail merchandising resources
• Manage new item process (samples, reviews and set-up process) within customer portfolio
• Create custom programs as applicable to develop channel opportunities
• Create sales reports, collateral and customer-ready content for internal and external initiatives
• Collaborate with cross functional leaders on planning, forecasting, budgeting, strategy, innovation, sales collateral and execution
• Contribute to sales strategy and the forecast in existing and new channels
• Attend customer, broker and distributor meetings, trade shows, market tours and industry/consumer facing events as required to maintain and pursue relationships
• Western U.S. and (depending on experience) national accounts
• 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
• 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.)
• Train and develop customers, brokers and distributors on Rip Van’s portfolio and objectives - via phone, webinars and on site/in-market visits
• Collaborate with finance team to monitor, research and dispute invoice deductions as needed
• Attend internal team and cross functional calls via video call
• Be 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)

Qualifications

• Ability to design and deliver effective presentations to various levels of customers’ organization
• Track record of success and increasing responsibility
• High sense of urgency and responsiveness, with ability to prioritize, achieve priorities and thrive while multitasking
• Fully competent with Google Suite (preferred) or Microsoft Office Suite
• Up to 50% travel may be required depending on customer needs
• Excellent communication, and negotiation skills
• 7+ years natural and conventional CPG sales experience, buyer relationships in the cookie category a plus
• Comfortable in frequently changing and potentially stressful internal and external environments
• Proven ability to work both independently and collaboratively
• Entrepreneurial mindset, creative problem solving and analytical skills
• Distributor and broker management experience
• Strong customer management/relationship management skills
• Experience with conceptual selling and sales forecasting using data, industry tools, trade math, margin optimization
• Must be self-motivated, curious and comfortable with ambiguity typical of a young and growing company

Physical Requirements

• May require irregular work hours and travel
• Requires full range of body motion including walking, standing, stooping, bending, and lifting, manual and finger dexterity and eye-hand coordination
• Occasional high stress situations may occur in dealing with customers
• Occasional lifting and carrying items weighing up to 40 pounds
• May require sitting, standing and walking for extensive periods of time.