Director of Commercial Growth

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Job Summary:

The Director of Commercial Growth is responsible for driving profitable revenue growth through strategic account leadership, business development, commercial strategy, and market expansion initiatives. This role serves as the primary relationship manager for the company's most strategic customer partnerships while identifying new opportunities to expand market share, developing value-added customer solutions and strengthening the company’s competitive position. This position serves as a critical voice of the customer within the organization and is expected to balance exceptional relationship management and strategic negotiations with a proactive approach to business development and innovation. Success in this role will be measured through strategic account retention and growth, development of new customer relationships, expansion into adjacent markets and contribution to the company’s long-term commercial growth objectives.

This role is directly accountable for three related areas:

Commercial Growth

Management of Key Strategic Accounts

New Business Development

Customer and Market Development

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Commercial Duties
  • Key Strategic Accounts
    • Develop and execute multi-year account growth strategies for key strategic customers, including executive relationship development, contract negotiation and renewal planning, cross-selling opportunities, risk mitigation, and long-term partnership expansion.
  • Business Development
    • Identify new market opportunities, develop customer acquisition strategies, evaluate adjacent industries and applications, lead strategic positioning efforts, and build a robust pipeline for long-term growth.
  • Voice of the Customer
    • Act as the voice of the customer within the organization by translating customer needs, market trends, and competitive insights into actionable recommendations for go-to-market positioning, market segmentation, product development, and strategic planning.
  • Commercial execution of short and long-term planning of demand and new business opportunities to maximize business profitability.
  • Accountable for the sales forecast and its representation in short- and long-term planning discussions.
• Financial Duties
  • Understand the financial goals of the business and develop sales strategies, marketing campaigns and business development goals that ensure we deliver against these targets annually.
  • Contribute to the Commercial aspects of the Annual Operating Plan including the aggregation of necessary data, development of supporting models, coordination with Business Units to determine assumptions, and establish key benchmarks

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in related field (or 10 years of equivalent experience)
• Minimum of 10 years of related work experience in B2B sales or commercial leadership
• Demonstrated ability to build trust-based customer relationships through active listening, consultative problem solving and service-oriented approach
• Experience engaging senior executives and decision makers within customer organizations
• Travel ~30% as required to support customer relationships, business development and company initiatives
• Valid Driver’s license in good standing

Preferred Qualifications

• Advance Degree in Business or Food Technology
• Previous experience in the food manufacturing or agriculture industry
• Demonstrated success negotiating complex commercial agreements, multi-year contracts, pricing structures and strategic partnerships
• Proven ability to balance account management with proactive business development and market expansion initiatives
• Experience working in cross-functional teams
• Strong communication skills; capable of presenting complex information in an easy-to-understand format
• Ability to think creatively and develop non-traditional solutions to complex business challenges
• Strong leadership and communication skills
• Ability to identify emerging market trends and convert customer insights into actionable growth opportunities

Other Considerations

• During a transition period, this position will work closely with the incumbent commercial leader to ensure successful transfer of strategic customer relationships, institutional knowledge, commercial agreements, and long-term growth opportunities. The successful candidate will be expected to build trust with key customers while preserving the relationship-driven culture that has been foundational to the company's success.