National Sales Manager 2026

TITLE: National Sales Manager

POSITION CLASSIFICATION: Exempt

DEPARTMENT: Retail Sales

POSITION REPORT TO: Sales Leadership

REVISION DATE: July 2025

SUMMARY: The National Manager is responsible for the implementation and execution of sales programs for National Accounts including the largest grocery and big box retailers in the U.S. while building and leveraging relationships with customers, vendors and broker partners to increase sales as well as strengthen relationships.

Experience and Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree

• 5-10 years sales experience in relevant National Grocery /Big box retailers

• Proven delivery on KPIs, with with a record of meeting or exceeding sales targets

• Multi-category sales experience including any Meats, Prepared Meals and/ or Fresh food items. The ideal candidate has experience launching and selling consumer packaged retail brands.

• Ability to analyze sales trends and market shifts.

• Understanding retailers' margin calculations and pricing considerations.

• Strong creative, analytic, critical thinking, decision-making skills.

• Experience in setting sales goals, building sales planesm and refining strategies for existing and new products.

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills to clearly articulate objectives to broker partners, work with company leadership and present to potential customers.

• Outstanding presentation skills; developing and delivering on company objectives that align with the goals of the retail customer.

• Demonstrates a hunger for success with a strong ability to lead/manage product launches. The ideal candidate must be able to move with speed and supercharge the program's overall goals.

• Strategic and consultative with advanced interpersonal and project management skills.

• Motivated self-starter, able to thrive in a fast-paced environment with quickly changing business needs and customer and broker demands.

• Ability to problem solve, identify issues and develop well thought out solutions in order to adapt in a dynamic retail space.

• Energetic with great relationship skills, independent thinker with the ability to anticipate and solve big picture programmatic issues.

• Passionate about customer service and overall success.

• Willingness to travel 25-50% (dependent on location) to clients and relevant trade shows.

JOB RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Achieve and deliver annual plans for the National Grocery and big box retailers that reflect brand and customer strategies and support achievement of business goals. Retailers include, but are not limited to: Kroger, Albertson's Publix, Wal-Mart and Target. This individual should have pre-existing relationships within one or more of these retailers.

• Lead or participate in the development of the P L, trade promotion and merchandising strategies, have distributor knowledge, understand shopper marketing fundamentals and marketing acumen.

• Build and maintain consultative business relationships with key decision makers (KDMs) for all customers. Partner with KDMs to develop and execute a detailed action plan to achieve sales goals.

• Establish and manage customer relationships that strengthen and build on the success of Cuisine Solutions' brands, paving the way for new SKU's and product placements.

• Cultivate a network of influential contacts at all levels of customer organizations.

• Possess a strong command of key retailer priorities and vehicles available to achieve shared business objectives.

• Tailor selling and consultative strategies to specific customer objectives to achieve best-in-class merchandising locations, display, and promotional support.

• Manage Brokers and KPI development and lead quarterly meetings ensuring compliance.

• Translate strategy into clear and locally executable plans and focus resources accordingly within respective accounts.

• Demonstrate excellent demand planning and forecasting skills.

• Possess a strong skillset in leveraging SPINS, IRI or Nielsen data and incorporating it into retailer presentations and ongoing forecasting to identify key opportunities, gaps, and competitive insights.

Success in this role will be based on the strength of customer relationships and broker networks, depth of knowledge of the customer's goals and timelines, solid Cuisine Solutions product knowledge, and meeting monthly Cuisine Solutions sales targets.