Smurfit Westrock
Sales Manager - Packaging

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Description & Requirements
Smurfit Westrock (NYSE:SW) is the go-to leader and partner of choice in sustainable packaging. We are dedicated to creating efficient and scalable paper and packaging solutions to help solve complex packaging challenges. Guided by our values of safety, loyalty, integrity, and respect, we are committed to delivering meaningful value for shareholders, customers, employees, and the communities where we operate.
Job Purpose
The Sales Manager is responsible for leading and managing Sales for the Smurfit Westrock Bristol business to maintain and grow profitable revenue streams in line with the overall regional business growth strategy. This role includes supervising and coaching other sales team members with the objective of achieving budgeted revenue and margins. The Sales Manager has direct hands-on responsibility for sales activity for the Bristol business. The Sales Manager is responsible for understanding the profitability, growth, attrition analysis, and year-over-year account progress, working closely with the regional sales director to grow sales in line with the site’s strategic plan. The role holder will work closely with the manufacturing team to understand and sell open machine capacity and value-added capabilities. This role serves as the liaison between the customer and the plant to align the needs of the customer with business objectives.
Major Job Responsibilities
- Lead the Sales team to deliver results by achieving weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual sales targets.
- Drive Commercial Excellence to exceed volume and profit goals through new account development, growth in existing accounts, margin improvement plans, and sales support.
- Support Site and Regional Senior Leadership in developing the annual budget targets for each account contributing forecasted revenue based upon yearly sales trends and current pipeline, ensure the monthly Business planning process reflects ongoing and future demand.
- An active, collaborative, and influential member of the Senior Bristol Business Leadership team that collectively delivers excellence in all aspects of performance.
- Monitor profitability levels to track progress against budgeted targets and analyze monthly financial summaries for the Bristol business and the England & Wales Region.
- Understand market dynamics and business drivers that define long-term commercial strategies and have an impact on their organization and develop strategies to reach company objectives.
- Communicate information and ideas that engage customers utilizing Sales Excellence.
- Utilize Site Level Execution Agreement and Quarterly Business Review to ensure customer requirements are met and demonstrate proof of value.
- Lead a number of key accounts creating strategic growth partnerships aligned to BU objectives.
- Work closely with the England & Wales Regional Sales Director to ensure sales growth in line with the business’ long term strategic plan.
- Responsible for managing volumes and margins of all sales, people, plus the direct sales and marketing costs.
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People and Culture
- Lead, manage, and support the safety culture of Smurfit Westrock by constantly enforcing safety practices at the customer site, in the field, and at the manufacturing plant.
- Partner with Sales, Operations, and Marketing to test, measure, and execute tactical sales strategies.
- Motivate and align Sales team to the growth strategy to maximize sales and volume growth.
- Conduct performance reviews and career development plans for Sales team members.
- Coach, mentor, and counsel direct reports, building on strengths and identifying and improving development areas.
- Promote diversified recruiting, hiring, training, and managing of Sales Representatives.
- Conduct monthly reviews with Sales team to understand new account opportunities and monitor the sales pipeline for the Bristol business and the Region.
- Drive customer satisfaction across the customer base with expert account management and customer service.
- Develop working relationships with England & Wales Region the PES/MNA organisation for relevant customers and the wider Smurfit Westrock sales organisation to create opportunities & additional revenue streams.
- Develop and use collaborative relationships to facilitate the accomplishment of organizational goals.
Critical Skills/Capabilities
- Decision-Making: Incorporates empathy, collaboration, and strategic thinking to drive decisions that positively impact their employees, stakeholders, and/or the organization; makes and/or deviates from management policies or operating practices when necessary to meet organizational objectives.
- Collaboration: Works effectively with others to complete a task or achieve a common objective; ability to cooperate in both interpersonal and team relationships to foster enthusiasm and maintain mutual trust, candor, and respect for others. Works through conflict constructively.
- Strategic Thinking: Takes a lead role in developing strategic plans that may involve complex issues or multiple functional areas; understands complex relationships between various groups, functions, and initiatives and how they contribute to Smurfit Westrock strategic objectives; establishes strategic performance measures or actions to allow the organisation to continually assess and adjust program direction.
- Coaching: Believes growing is greater than knowing – inspires and actively encourages others to develop themselves and seek out continuous learning opportunities by serving as a role model and identifying development opportunities; encourages employees to find their own developmental solutions that align with organizational and personal goals; serve as champions for succession planning; embodies culture and encourages teams to grow and innovate.
- Leadership: Skillful in creating and communicating a strategic vision for the organisation and aligning individuals with the vision; makes significant decisions that have a great impact on standards; influences positive change driving organizational excellence; ability to read people and situations and adjust approach accordingly; demonstrates and teaches sound leadership skills.
- Communication: Influences and motivates multiple diverse stakeholders through effective writing and speaking; presents complex ideas to others in a way that demonstrates an understanding of their needs and motivates management to support organisational initiatives.
- Problem-Solving: Improves organizational efficiency by developing, planning, and implementing solutions to complex or unprecedented problems; synthesizes information from internal and external sources to develop solutions for issues with broad organizational impact.
- Customer-Oriented: Is oriented to “wow” the customer; builds, encourages, and/or creates a customer-first experience and culture; is empowered or enables empowerment to proactively assess, identify, and understand customer needs; responds quickly to changing customer needs and resolves issues effectively and efficiently; committed to providing quality products and services; anticipates growing customer needs and expectations to continuously improve product development and service delivery.


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Technical Skills
- Product & Technical knowledge of both Folding Carton & Packaging Machinery Sales.
- Sales process knowledge.
- Commercial effectiveness and negotiation skills.
- Understanding of sales and commercial impact on the P&L.
- Microsoft Office – Excel, PowerPoint, Word.
- Proficient in Salesforce.
Experience
- Required: 5 to 10 years business-to-business (B2B) Sales experience in a manufacturing/service industry, ideally with management or coaching responsibility.
- Knowledge of the Consumer Food & Beverage market.
Education
- Required: Bachelor’s degree.
Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by state or federal law.
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