General Trade Key Account /Chains Manager (Chain Customers, Ho Chi Minh City)
Unilever · Ho Chi Minh City
Job Purpose
The DT Key Account Manager is responsible for identifying, acquiring, and developing chain-store customers in the DT channel in Ho Chi Minh City, while managing selected existing chains to deliver sustainable, profitable growth. The role develops customer plans, strengthens partnerships with chain owners and buying teams, coordinates distributor and field execution, and leads cross-functional collaboration to improve sales, assortment, availability, visibility, and return on investment.
Key Responsibilities
1. Customer Strategy and Business Planning
- Develop annual and monthly account plans for assigned chains, aligned with DT channel priorities and company objectives.
- Build a strong understanding of each chain’s business model, shopper profile, store format, growth plan, and decision-making process.
- Translate category and channel strategies into customer-specific priorities covering assortment, pricing, promotion, visibility, and distribution.
- Identify whitespace opportunities, new-store openings, and expansion opportunities across existing and emerging chains in Ho Chi Minh City.
2. Sales, Profitability, and Account Performance
- • Deliver agreed turnover, growth, assortment, coverage, and execution KPIs for assigned accounts.
- Manage account investments, promotional spending, and customer profitability within approved budgets and commercial guidelines.
- Monitor sales performance, customer contribution, promotion effectiveness, stock levels, returns, claims, and outstanding payments; implement corrective actions promptly.
- Prepare accurate sales forecasts and demand inputs by customer and category to support supply planning and service levels.
3. Customer Relationship and Negotiation
- Establish productive relationships with chain owners, buyers, operations teams, and other key customer stakeholders.
- Prepare and conduct customer business reviews, presenting performance, opportunities, and clear joint action plans.
- Negotiate listings, assortment, trade terms, promotions, secondary displays, new-store openings, and other commercial counterparts within delegated authority.
4. Execution Excellence
- Convert customer agreements into clear execution priorities for distributor teams, sales supervisors, sales representatives, and merchandisers.
- Conduct regular market visits across assigned chains to audit assortment, on-shelf availability, pricing, promotion, planogram compliance, visibility, and point-of-sale materials.
- Work with customers and field teams to resolve out-of-stock, ordering, delivery, merchandising, payment, and store-level execution issues.
5. Distributor Collaboration
- Partner with CSP, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Customer Operations, and Field Sales to deliver customer plans from planning through execution.
- Collaborate closely with distributor management and sales teams to ensure stock availability, order fulfillment, disciplined execution, and timely issue resolution.
Key Performance Indicators
• Turnover and profitable growth; assortment and distribution; on-shelf availability; visibility and promotion execution; trade investment effectiveness; forecast accuracy; stock and payment health; and customer satisfaction.
Requirements
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, or a related field.
• Two to three roles in Customer Marketing/Trade Category Management and Account Management / Field Sales (when wanting to pursuit a Customer Development career).
• Strong understanding of Vietnam's retail landscape, particularly independent chains, and experience working with distributors and field sales teams. DT/GT experience is a plus.
• Excellent analytical, planning, selling, negotiation, and stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence customer decision makers.
Willingness to travel regularly for customer visits and market audits.
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