Associate Director – LPO (Commercial Lead)

Company Description

Job Description

Role Purpose:

Leads sales efforts for Line and Price Optimizer  (Pricing Solutions) practice among existing clients as well as new client acquisitions, and is responsible for commercial plan development and execution.

Key priorities include :

• Understanding client’s business questions and identifying solutions that will answer those questions
• Tailor-make the study design, in consultation with the LPO Delivery Team, to make sure that the business questions will be answered in full
• Drive full sales cycle with clients, proactively identifying sales opportunities based on client strategic priorities and networking
• Close collaboration with Delivery COE team to drive seamless delivery to clients
• Ability to identify trends and patterns from the Secondary Data or RMS data and making pro-active pitches or considering as inputs to the research design

Success Will Require:
Strong sales leadership including: prospecting, building a pipeline, moving opportunities through the sales cycle; proposing, presenting and discussing solutions with clients’ C-level and other decision-makers

• Ability to build enduring relationships with C-level executives – truly passionate relationship developer
• Strong affiliation to Sales Personas & develops sales strategies to suit
• Excellent problem solving skills, solution oriented and good analytical skill
• Very good client-facing and communication/presentation skills
• Financial understanding (eg. P&L, EBITDA) and how this relates to business success
• Excellent at consultative selling
• Ability to speak at external forums
• Strong Collaboration and Networking skills
  
   

Responsibilities:

Earning Client Trust/Building Relationships

Build and maintain strong networking and C-suite engagement with key players & Sales personas across broad base of client targets

• Confidence & credibility to talk to a wide range of decision influencers
• Demonstrate the highest commitment to sales force penetration and retention
• Knowledge of the CPG and Retail industry, understanding how trade and business needs are changing and how NIQ solutions can help solve client business issues
• Responsible for developing case studies & client testimonials. Present at client/ Retailer events , external industry events
• Full understanding of Pricing Solutions portfolio and interconnectedness of different solutions
   

Sales Management

• Deployment of necessary solutions around persona's as part of sales planning process

• Able to drive team towards sales targets, has visibility of all opportunities and risk, ensures the team has tight pipeline and proposal tracking systems
• Comfortable negotiating with senior clients and knows what levers to use. Clearly links the value of NIQ products and solutions with the price to overcome objections. Pre-empts stakeholder objections and pushes the client to a favorable outcome

Planning and Forecasting

• Owns the business plan: financial target/proposal submission/revenue on hand/pipeline for its group of clients/solutions
• Takes overall accountability for business planning and implementation. Tracks the financial performance of clients
• Sound understanding of profitability and EBITDA and how this relates to all proposals and sales. Knows how NIQ and competitor offerings are priced and is aware of the client budgets

Qualifications

• 8-10 years of experience in CPG sales or in market research with a strong acumen towards consultative seslling

• Subject matter expert for pricing techniques, including our flagship product LPO
• Develop deep knowledge of Solutions and apply it across a variety of regions, clients and categories.
• Ability to Interpret in-market data, secondary data appropriately to draft concrete and robust proposals / research designs
• Ability to understand the category and it’s scope – Hands on experience on any secondary data (eg:RMS, KWP, Euro Monitor)
• MBA degree
• Knowledge of sales processes in CPG companies, customers, modern and traditional markets
• Digital knowledge, Microsoft Dynamic/Salesforce
• Excellent business English, both verbal and written
• Proven sales acumen
• Excellent problem solving skills, solution oriented and good analytical skill
• Very good client-facing and communication/presentation skills
• Financial understanding (eg. P&L, EBITDA) and how this relates to business success
• Strong Collaboration and Networking skills

Additional Information

Our Benefits

• Flexible working environment
• Volunteer time off
• LinkedIn Learning
• Employee-Assistance-Program (EAP)

About NIQ

NIQ is the world’s leading consumer intelligence company, delivering the most complete understanding of consumer buying behavior and revealing new pathways to growth. In 2023, NIQ combined with GfK, bringing together the two industry leaders with unparalleled global reach. With a holistic retail read and the most comprehensive consumer insights—delivered with advanced analytics through state-of-the-art platforms—NIQ delivers the Full View™. NIQ is an Advent International portfolio company with operations in 100+ markets, covering more than 90% of the world’s population.

For more information, visit NIQ.com

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Our commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

NIQ is committed to reflecting the diversity of the clients, communities, and markets we measure within our own workforce. We exist to count everyone and are on a mission to systematically embed inclusion and diversity into all aspects of our workforce, measurement, and products. We enthusiastically invite candidates who share that mission to join us. We are proud to be an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action-Employer, making decisions without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability status, age, marital status, protected veteran status or any other protected class. Our global non-discrimination policy covers these protected classes in every market in which we do business worldwide. Learn more about how we are driving diversity and inclusion in everything we do by visiting the NIQ News Center: https://nielseniq.com/global/en/news-center/diversity-inclusion