Speciality Breads Ltd
Senior Sales Manager
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Job Role: Senior Sales Manager
Pay: £45,000.00-£50,000.00 per year + Bonus + Company Car
Job Description
Role Purpose
The Sales Team Manager is responsible for the day-to-day leadership and performance of the sales team, ensuring that clear objectives and KPIs are established, activity is focused on the right commercial opportunities, and agreed sales targets are delivered.
A key focus of the role is to drive profitable growth from our existing product portfolio, particularly the products manufactured through our state-of-the-art Eden bakery.
The Sales Team Manager will work with the sales team to increase customer spend by identifying range gaps, improving product penetration and developing innovative promotional and sales activity that creates genuine incremental growth.
Alongside managing the team, the Sales Team Manager will have direct responsibility for a small portfolio of key accounts and will support the Sales & Marketing Director in the development and management of selected strategic accounts.
Working closely with the Marketing Manager, the role will use sales and customer data to identify opportunities, develop targeted campaigns and measure their effectiveness.
Key Responsibilities
Sales Team Leadership & Performance
- Lead and manage the sales team on a day-to-day basis, creating a positive, ambitious, and accountable sales culture.
- Agree clear individual and team KPIs aligned with the company's sales and growth objectives.
- Regularly review sales performance against targets and KPIs, identifying areas requiring additional focus or support.
- Conduct regular one-to-one meetings and performance reviews with members of the sales team.
- Coach and develop the team, helping individuals improve their commercial effectiveness and account management skills.
- Ensure the team has clear priorities and is focusing its time on the customers, products and opportunities capable of delivering the greatest commercial return.
- Maintain strong visibility of sales activity, pipeline, opportunities and expected outcomes.
- Recognise strong performance while constructively challenging underperformance and agreeing clear actions for improvement.
Existing Product & Customer Growth
- Drive increased sales of products already manufactured within the business, with a particular focus on products produced through Eden.
- Develop a structured approach to identifying range gaps within existing customers.
- Ensure each salesperson understands what their customers currently purchase, what they could purchase and the size of the resulting opportunity.
- Develop and implement account growth plans for priority customers.
- Increase product penetration and average customer spend through effective cross-selling and range development.
- Work with the team to convert identified opportunities into sustainable incremental sales.
- Ensure sales activity is commercially focused and supports profitable growth rather than simply increasing turnover.
Key Account Management
- Take direct responsibility for a small portfolio of key customer accounts across both Foodservice & National.
- Build strong relationships with key customer contacts and develop a detailed understanding of their businesses.
- Identify opportunities to increase sales, improve product penetration, and develop longer-term partnerships.
- Conduct regular account reviews and maintain clear account development plans.
- Support the Sales & Marketing Director with selected major and strategic accounts.
- Provide additional commercial support where significant opportunities or challenges require senior sales involvement.
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Data & Commercial Insight
- Work closely with the Marketing Manager to analyse sales, customer and product performance data.
- Identify trends, declining sales, range gaps, underperforming categories and potential growth opportunities.
- Use data to prioritise sales activity and provide the sales team with actionable customer insight.
- Develop appropriate reporting that provides clear visibility of sales performance, customer growth and commercial opportunities.
- Encourage a data-led approach to account management and sales decision-making across the team.
Sales & Marketing Campaigns
- Work closely with the Marketing Manager to develop targeted campaigns designed to generate incremental sales.
- Develop innovative promotional activity to encourage customers to trial additional products and extend their ranges.
- Ensure campaigns have clearly defined commercial objectives, target customers and expected outcomes.
- Coordinate the sales team's execution of campaigns and ensure appropriate follow-up activity takes place.
- Measure campaign performance and use the results to improve future activity.
- Share successful initiatives and best practice across the wider sales team.
Sales Pipeline & Forecasting
- Maintain clear visibility of the sales pipeline across the team.
- Ensure opportunities are appropriately qualified, valued and progressed.
- Challenge opportunities that are not moving forward and ensure agreed actions are completed.
- Provide accurate and timely sales forecasts to the Sales & Marketing Director.
- Identify potential risks to sales performance and develop appropriate corrective actions.
- Ensure major opportunities are prioritised according to their potential commercial value and likelihood of conversion.
Cross-Functional Working
- Build strong working relationships across Sales, Marketing, NPD, Operations, Finance, Technical and Supply Chain.
- Ensure commercial opportunities are communicated effectively across the business.
- Work with operational teams to ensure sales activity reflects available capability and capacity.
- Support the successful introduction of new products where appropriate, while maintaining a strong focus on maximising the opportunity from the existing portfolio.
- Provide clear customer and market feedback to help inform wider business decisions.
Key Performance Indicators
Performance will be measured through a combination of team and individual KPIs, including:
- Sales and gross margin performance against budget.
- Growth from existing customers.
- Growth in sales of existing Eden-produced products.
- Increased product penetration and number of products purchased per customer.
- Value of identified range-gap opportunities and conversion into sales.
- Sales pipeline value, quality and conversion.
- Performance of individual sales team members against agreed KPIs.
- Customer retention and development.
- Performance and return from targeted promotional campaigns.
- Forecast accuracy.
- Performance of directly managed key accounts.
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Specific targets will be agreed annually and reviewed regularly with the Sales & Marketing Director.
Skills & Experience
Essential
- Proven experience in B2B sales and account management.
- Experience of managing, coaching or leading a sales team.
- Strong commercial awareness with the ability to identify and prioritise profitable growth opportunities.
- Experience of setting and managing sales KPIs.
- Strong analytical skills and confidence working with sales and customer data.
- Demonstrable experience of developing existing customer accounts and increasing customer spend.
- Strong relationship-building, communication and negotiation skills.
- Ability to translate commercial insight into practical sales activity.
- Highly organised with strong follow-through and attention to detail.
- Comfortable balancing team leadership responsibilities with direct customer management.
Desirable
- Experience within food manufacturing, foodservice, wholesale, hospitality supply or FMCG.
- Experience working with wholesalers, distributors and/or larger national accounts.
- Experience developing and implementing customer promotional activity.
- Experience working closely with marketing teams on data-led sales campaigns.
- Understanding of manufacturing capability, margin and the importance of selling the right product mix.
Personal Attributes
The successful candidate will be:
- Commercially driven – naturally focused on identifying opportunities to grow profitable sales.
- Data-led – comfortable using information and insight to decide where to focus.
- Accountable – takes ownership for results and creates the same expectation within their team.
- Curious – continually asks what more we could be doing with a customer.
- Proactive – turns opportunities into actions rather than waiting for customers to come to us.
- Collaborative – works effectively across Sales, Marketing and the wider business.
- Positive and energetic – brings pace and enthusiasm to the sales team.
- Customer focused – understands customers' businesses and looks for opportunities that create value for both parties.
- Pragmatic – able to balance commercial ambition with the realities of a manufacturing business.
- Results-oriented – maintains a clear focus on converting activity into measurable commercial outcomes.
Role Success
Success in this role will mean that the sales team has clear objectives, strong commercial discipline and a visible pipeline of meaningful opportunities.
Our existing customers will be buying more from us, our existing product range will be better represented across our customer base, and the significant capability created through our investment in Eden will be translated into sustainable, profitable sales growth.
The Sales Team Manager will create the structure, focus and accountability that enables the sales team to consistently identify opportunities and turn them into results.
Working Environment & Physical Requirements
- Hybrid – minimum 2 days per week office-based, plus home working and customer visits as required.
Benefits
- Company events
- Cycle to work scheme
- On-site parking
Work Location: Hybrid remote in Manston (Kent, South East Region)
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