Industrial Account Manager

Built on a century-long history of service and performance, Gunther Salt is the Midwest’s premier supplier of bulk and bag salt. Headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri,  our mission is to provide top-quality salt products for every purpose. When you join our team, you’ll play a direct role in delivering essential solutions to the communities we serve – backed by a longstanding commitment to excellence. 

Job Summary

This position is an Account Manager for the Industrial B2B Segment of Gunther Salt. The territory covers the St Louis area and surrounding states. The jobholder is responsible for driving profitability and business strategies at regional key accounts. The jobholder works cross functionally and develops relationships to align strategies and sales improvement plans where necessary. The jobholder aims to ensure the organizational development and alignment on customer expectations through appropriate resource allocation and business planning.

Duties and Responsibility

Results Orientation / Driving Profitability 

• Achieve annual revenue, margin, market share, and volume plans for the assigned account base.
• Assist in formulation and implementation of long and short-term strategic sales plans for accounts within assigned area
• Coordinate pricing per established guidelines.
• Qualify and develop potential customer leads as received from various sources (trade shows, email, and Morton website inquiries).
• Increase revenues by cross-selling customers into additional products.
• Utilize CRM system to maintain internal data on customers through timely call notes submission and related customer data tracking.
• Support production planning via monthly demand forecasts for relevant product categories.
• Coordinate with Quality Assurance, Sales Operations, Technical Service, Transportation, Regulatory Affairs, and Legal personnel to prepare documents and meet requests for information from government agencies and customer accounts.
• A portion of the business is driven by our ability to sell and service accounts in the winter season. This will require ability to manage a high volume of customer requests and orders.
• Demonstrate a strong sense of urgency for getting work done.
• Possess aptitudes for solving problems and attention to detail.
• Operate within assigned expense budget.

Customer Orientation

• Plan for and conduct sales calls for assigned key accounts within territory.
• Find & develop new customers, in alignment with sales & marketing goals.
• Communicate customer requirements to sales management, marketing, and supply chain.
• Quickly and effectively solve customer problems.
• Gather, assimilate, analyze, and distribute market insights and observations of competitive activity.

Key Account Management

• Develop sales strategies for assigned customers and potential customers that drive mutual profitability
• Assist in formulation and implementation of long and short-term strategic sales plans for accounts within assigned area
• Negotiate customer agreements and contracts
• Become proficient in technical aspects of selling salt and logistics impacting delivery of products.
• Manage Certified Distributors within geography to include training and joint sales calls

Building Collaborative Relationships 

• Participate in industry trade shows & develop industry relationships
• Work in conjunction with Inside Sales on account development, strategic market coordination, and prospecting
• Develop operational and logistics understanding of our service model that differentiates Gunther in this local market.
• Use market insight, product knowledge, etc. to establish self as a category expert with the customer
• Sell beyond the buyer to relevant customers stakeholders where possible
• Actively participate in team meetings and share weekly territory activity.

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities

• Education: B.S. degree preferred.
• Sales experience: A minimum of 3 years of selling experience is required; sales of chemicals, food ingredients, or raw materials to manufacturers is desired.
• History of high-performance ratings in current and recent positions.
• A basic business understanding of how sales and marketing efforts relate to company bottom line profits is necessary.
• Strong organization, communication, presentation, and time management skills.
• Must possess a drive to produce results, a strong bias for action, and determination to follow-through on tasks until completion.
• Critical thinking skills and ability to problem solve with attention to detail.
• Customer-orientation and client development: strong skill sets for selling and relationship-building.
• Persuasive negotiations abilities to influence current and potential customers to purchase Gunther Salt products.
• Good prospecting/cold calls skills.
• Knowledge of the various products, markets, application technology and customer base is helpful.
• Previous experience in an environment that utilizes S&OP and P&L management is helpful.
• Knowledge of computer programs including Outlook and all Microsoft Office Suite products is necessary. SAP experience is helpful.
• Travel 65%. Note that the highest density of customers lies around the St Louis and surrounding markets. Therefore, if based in that area, much of the customer travel could be accomplished through day trips, although there might be a need to drive several hours in one day. And if based in that market, overnight trips would be expected, requiring an average of 3-5 hotel stays in a typical month.

At Gunther Salt we work best when we work as a team, when we treat one another with dignity and respect, and value the unique contributions of others. We are committed to equal employment opportunity and prohibit discrimination and harassment based on race, national origin, sex, religion, color, disability, marital status, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, genetic information, citizenship, or any other characteristic protected by law