We are seeking a Director - Category Management to lead our Utilities division and drive strategic sourcing and procurement excellence across our organization. You will develop and implement overall product line strategy designed to drive profitable sales execution for customer segments and specific suppliers serving that segment to increase sales and profitability of the category. You will oversee and lead product category resources, including strategic supplier relationships, product management, and strategic marketing. You will be responsible for providing strategic and tactical leadership to manage the relationship with key/strategic suppliers. You will develop relationship management plans. You will monitor performance and compliance with Wesco's standards. You will drive continuous improvement. You will lead the development of training initiatives for their category and work with key suppliers to develop and lead the deployment of that training.Responsibilities:
- Defines overall strategic growth plan for category segment and collaborates with core suppliers, field sales organization, customer segment sales leaders, and other functional groups to drive product category business development plans to achieve revenue and margin targets.
- Collaborates with senior sales leadership to determine joint annual growth and profitability goals for product category segment.
- Owns high-level supplier relationships to create and implement joint strategies to drive profitable growth of category through the organization with targeted end-customer segments.
- Collaborates with supplier relations team to ensure uniform, consistent process is defined and implemented across organization's suppliers, including rebates, terms, agreements, etc.
- Responsible for definition of key performance indicators (KPIs) and associated metrics that support profitable growth of category.
- Responsibility for market trends and competitive analysis related to assigned product category.
- Partners with information technology team to ensure data integrity in product line performance reporting.
- Owns strategic product and solution offerings to drive demand at targeted end-customer markets for assigned product category.
- Responsible for development of sales tools, promotions and support resources to enable optimum levels of sales productivity.
- Leads digital marketing strategy for the product category.
- Leads effort to develop and implement product line and sales training curriculums for field specialists and salesforce.
- Collaborates and leverages cross-functional WESCO resources to drive profitable product category growth and maximize productivity.
- Manages product category by leveraging technical field specialists.
- Applies understanding of customer and supplier insights, product portfolio, brand positioning, brand vision and brand strategy to product sell-in and sell-through.
- Provides key input on pricing strategies to maximize profitability, brand, and product positions in marketplace.Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree required.
- Masters Degree preferred.
- 7 years' experience required of category manager or manager/director of a team where competence in developing category business plans and share was achieved.
- 7 years' experience required of demonstrated managing against budgets including sales and profit growth.
- 7 years' experience required previously worked in matrix environment.
- Ability to manage multiple tasks at once.
- Strong decision-making and problem solving skills.
- Sense of urgency and deadline-driven.
- Strong analytical skills.
- Strong interpersonal and communication skills.
- Demonstrates attention to detail/organization skills.
- Excellent written and verbal communications.
- Ability to influence and lead change in a cross-functional team environment. #J-18808-Ljbffr