Associate Director of Sales

Job Purpose:

To formulate, execute, and oversee the strategic sales plan and business development initiatives for the Specialty Material Business across the Middle East. The incumbent will drive high-level customer engagement, maximize share-of-wallet, and ensure the consistent achievement of volume and margin targets in a highly competitive regional market

Job Context & Major Challenges

• Formulate and oversee implementation of sales plan for India Middle East.
• Increase diversity of sales revenue in spot market defending and increasing share of wallet in an increasingly competitive market, crowded with new entrants.
• Differentiate offerings to offset pressures on product margins, in a market moving towards commoditization.
• Accurately capturing unmet tangible/intangible needs of the customer and relaying it to marketing/NPD teams to create appropriate solutions.
• Staying abreast of global trends and suggesting timely interventions to aide decision making.
• Anticipate bottlenecks in value chain through precise forecasting & order planning to ensure fulfilment
• Analyse and monitor sales & stock performance of channel partners & facilitate effective relationship with end customers

Job Challenges: High growth and competitive middle east market. Expectation of world class customer centric approach techno-commercial application-based sales approach

4) Principal Accountabilities

Accountability

Supporting Actions/ Tasks

Strategic Account Plans & Contract Negotiation

• Conduct ongoing competitor intelligence, market research, and customer deep-dives for all direct accounts.
• Structure, negotiate, and close annual contracts to secure projected regional volumes and margin baselines.
• Facilitate multi-level, cross-functional engagements between internal stakeholders and client executive teams.

Commercial Agility & Spot Market Optimization

• Manage monthly and quarterly pricing cycles and volume commitments for spot orders across direct accounts and channel networks.
• Defend product margins and maximize profitability in a crowded spot market facing commoditization pressures.
• Regular interaction with key stakeholders and engagement

Business Development & Pipeline Growth

• Qualify prospects and convert pipeline opportunities into long-term commercial accounts.
• Coordinate technical interactions and orchestrate product qualification processes for new material lines.
• Systematically capture unmet customer needs and relay actionable feedback to the Marketing and PD&D teams.

Driving operation excellence

• Collaborate daily with Customer Service, Logistics, and Manufacturing Plant personnel to guarantee supply reliability.
• Communicating customer requirements effectively to ensure adherence to contract/order and subsequent communication to customer
• Champion customer requirements internally to improve regional Net Promoter Scores (NPS)

Financial Disciple

• Review, analyze and study customers account regularly
• Ensure budgeted collections, tax forms & realizations from market de-risking the business against contingent situations

Forecasting

• Providing 3-month unconstrained rolling forecast in BY Monthly constrained/interim forecast
• Bi-annually providing annual forecast

Strategy & Miscellaneous

• Supporting leadership team with developing area specific plans/strategy.
• Represent Birla Carbon at key regional industry forums