The Product Marketing Specialist is an Individual contributor role that will help craft the future of product at Sears Seating. Need a creative, communicative individual, with a share of analytical abilities to help create the future of seating. You will help lead the ownership of all market, customer, competitor, and internal product benchmark data. As part of this position, he/she will work closely with internal coworkers across the organization, customers, and product users to create a story about a product and then communicate that in a simple succinct fashion that excites and sells management. The story will be based on actionable reports and informed recommendations that will support the long-term innovation for Sears product development.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

This list of duties and responsibilities is not all inclusive and may be expanded to include other duties and responsibilities as management may deem necessary from time to time.

General Duties

• Align discovery work to current and planned engineering projects. Discuss target markets and products with Engineering, Sales, and Executive Management. Look to Sears Product Generation Launch Plan, R&D Project List, and NPR Forms for source of products and markets to explore.
• Work collaboratively across global corporate organization to promote the commitment for cross company support.
• Create actionable reports and recommendations to improve company competitiveness and management of product and business decisions.
• Under direction of Director of Product Marketing leads and maintain business intelligence efforts.
  • Capture the voice of the customer and create actionable recommendation to Sales, Engineering, and Management.
  • Act as a partner to Director of Product Marketing providing them analysis to support decisions.
  • Identify and analyze the competitive threats.
• Support the Corporate Strategic Planning Process.

Voice of Customer

• Need to have passion for the "voice of the customer", VOC, and for meeting / exceeding customer needs with product.
• Interpersonal skills to develop relationships with dealers allowing an appropriately sized and qualified group of product user groups, including operators' representative of Ag, Construction, Truck, and Industrial markets.

• Interpersonal skills to talk with the customer, be able to identify their needs, and then creative to help develop product to meet those needs.
• Effectively provide written reports of findings with analysis and recommendations.
• Manage internal and external meeting setup including attendance, agenda, and coordination.

Product Discovery Workshops (Video Discovery)

• Interviewing equipment users in work environment.
• Analyze how customers use seat and equipment.
• Understand customers (OEM's buyers and engineers) and end user needs. Looks to meet those needs with product solutions that, for example, improve operator productivity, comfort, convenience, or safety.
• Use video and photos in reports back to organization engineering and management.

Product Benchmarking

• Establish and manage benchmarking program.
• Work with Sales to identify "Best-in-class" products.
• Work with Engineering, Costing and Test to compare Sears equivalent product cost and performance.
• Write report of findings, highlight important attributes of Sears and Competitor product, summarize, and compare strengths and weaknesses of both, create Sell Sheets for Sales arguing advantages of Sears product.

Customer Feedback

• Administer Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey, Net Promoter Score.
• Develop and manage customer feedback through various channels like Trade shows, user interviews, Focus Groups, NPS surveys, and other sources. Identify trends and compile into actionable reports. Summarize and report findings and trends.

Mar ket Share : Assist in preparing and presenting analysis of Sears's market share, business opportunities, and trends annually.