Sales-National Account Manager-Engineered Specialties (Paper Industry)

Company Description

Pixelle Specialty Solutions™ is the largest specialty paper company in North America, with fully integrated pulp and paper operations in Chillicothe, Ohio, Spring Grove, Pennsylvania, Stevens Point, Wisconsin and a coating operation in Fremont, Ohio. Supported by an experienced product development team, Pixelle excels in designing customized solutions that help customers bring new products to market. With a long history of leadership in the paper industry, Pixelle delivers the most comprehensive portfolio of specialty papers to help you meet today’s challenging demands.

Job Description

ROLE

The National Account Manager (NAM) role in the Engineered Specialties (ES) group of Pixelle Specialty Solutions Specialty is a high-profile and largely autonomous role focused on driving growth via business and product development, and developing long-term customer relationships. The NAM must manage and balance a broad set of responsibilities, including market analysis and prospective customer targeting, exploratory sales calling, opportunity defining, product development collaboration externally and internally, trial planning and execution oversight, and managing all the variables in pursuit of fully commercializing new business and defending current business.

The NAM role may live and work remotely. The NAM is expected to balance his/her time among customer locations and the home office for individual work, as appropriate. Customer travel is estimated in the 30% range, with an additional 10% for travel to Pixelle locations and annual business meetings.

National Account Managers will also engage in special assignments as prescribed by Engineered Specialties leadership, such as business development, product development, special analysis, and project management in nature.

ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Applies specialized market knowledge and advanced specialty paper experience to pursue and develop new business in one or more targeted specialty areas (see Qualifications-Required).
• Develops and sustains profitable, defensible business with assigned accounts; and in so doing, demonstrates proficiency in supporting the customer’s business and helps coordinate ES’s leadership, technical and customer support teams to meet the customer’s evolving needs.
• Develop a strategy to service and grow large multinational accounts and meet the customer's global requirements to their satisfaction which provides profitable growth.
• Becomes and remains highly knowledgeable in the customer’s business; what they manufacture, and how they process products to achieve their value proposition downstream to their customer; further, how the product fits in their cost structure, and the share of customer’s total paper (or like products) purchases is.
• Achieves budgeted sales volumes, including new business and new product targets, while managing travel and support costs within budgets and other guidelines provided by the sales management.
• Contributes to collaborative work with innovation, product management and customer service to improve mix and/or margin progressively and strategically over time.
• Aspires to achieve total customer satisfaction for assigned accounts; establishes metrics and/or customer feedback mechanisms with which to evaluate and target improvement opportunities.
• Works closely with Quality / Product Assurance in coordinating customer complaints satisfaction on a timely basis.
• Works closely with Product Managers and other team members in generating and updating grade costs and deciding what are the best candidates to submit for a new opportunity.
• Coordinates credit screening, customer payment compliance and follow-up, and makes informed credit recommendations working closely with the Corporate Credit and Insurance Manager.
• Generates an 18-month rolling forecast for volume and pricing by account on a monthly basis (data used for Demand Planning and the S&OP process).
• Works closely with Customer Service and teams to assure that trial rolls are shipped on schedule.
• Works effectively to solve customer problems, both independently and by facilitating the right people, as needed.
• Remains diligently up-to-date with the Engineered Products portfolio to allow for better screening of opportunities when prospecting.

Qualifications

• Ten to Fifteen years related experience in a commercial or business development role serving the North America or global specialty paper industry either directly or via a converter.
• Experience selling to large multinational accounts with complex organizations.
• Bachelor's degree (BS/BA) from four-year college or university in business, finance, engineering, chemistry, materials science, or paper science/manufacturing; MBA is preferred.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office applications; proficient skill in creating documents to facilitate meetings and discussions; capability of producing documents needed to drive customer and internal discussions.
• Excellent communication skills (listening, verbal, and written).
• Ability to lead professional discussions, presenting information and responding to questions from groups of managers, clients, customers, and the general public.
• Must hold and maintain a valid motor vehicle operator license.

Additional Information

Key Competency Areas

• Consultative selling.
• Ability to influence others and implement appropriate changes.
• Ability to work effectively in a team environment.
• Fundamental understanding of the pulping, papermaking and paper coating process.
• Effective time management.
• Willingness to learn.
• Attention to detail.
• Presentation skills.
• Ability to gain detailed knowledge about markets, products, customers, and industry issues.
• Good delegation and organizational skills.
• Thorough understanding of competitive activity and threats.
• Strong leadership skills.

Competitive healthcare benefit package and 401K match.