Associate Manager, Sales Strategy & Planning (Pet Team)

J.M. Smucker · Orrville

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Your Opportunity as the Associate Manager, Sales Strategy & Planning (Pet Team)

The Associate Manager, Sales Strategy & Planning supports customer planning, performance management, and cross-functional coordination for assigned customers or customer portfolios. This role partners closely with Sales and cross-functional teams to translate business strategies into actionable customer plans, own assigned pieces of the planning work, provide accurate fact-based analysis, and drive follow-through on inputs, updates, and decisions.

All Sales Strategy & Planning roles have customer ownership. At the Associate Manager level, the work is generally differentiated by lower customer complexity, lower ambiguity, and more defined planning needs, while still requiring strong ownership, analytical rigor, and cross-functional follow-through.

Location: JM Smucker Corporate Offices in Orrville, Ohio

Work Arrangements: Hybrid - onsite during core weeks as determined by the Company (estimated up to 9 days a month); adjusted as the need requires. Intermittent business travel may be required.

In this role you will:

Customer Planning & Execution

• Support the customer plan and own assigned pieces of the work, including data, inputs, updates, planning trackers, and follow-through for assigned customers or customer portfolios.
• Support annual planning, Joint Business Planning (JBP), quarterly business reviews, customer planning cycles, innovation planning, and strategic initiatives.
• Translate business priorities into clear customer planning deliverables and understand how assigned work connects to the customer plan and broader business priorities.
• Track key customer planning milestones, decisions, actions, and follow-ups to support timely execution.

Business Performance & Insights

• Provide accurate analysis, reporting, and tracking to build the fact base for planning and decision-making.
• Develop scorecards, business recaps, gap-to-plan analyses, opportunity assessments, and supporting reports.
• Pull together the facts, updates, and analysis needed to support Sales decisions; identify key takeaways and raise issues, risks, and opportunities.
• Help Sales and cross-functional partners understand the “so what” behind customer performance and planning inputs.

Cross-Functional Coordination

• Partner with Sales, Brand Marketing, Category Analytics, Revenue Growth Management, Finance, Supply Chain, and other stakeholders.
• Gather, organize, validate, and connect planning inputs from cross-functional partners in support of customer priorities and business objectives.
• Support alignment meetings and ensure decisions, owners, and next steps are clearly documented.
• Coordinate inputs, follow up on actions, keep work moving, and escalate open issues or inconsistencies to the appropriate decision owner.

Planning Excellence

• Execute established planning processes, tools, templates, and operating rhythms.
• Maintain planning calendars, assumptions, trackers, and reporting resources with accuracy and timeliness.
• Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives that simplify work and improve planning quality.
• Build capability in commercial planning, customer economics, forecasting inputs, and cross-functional ways of working.

Contributing to Organizational Growth & Culture

• Respect all individuals, support efforts for diversity and inclusion, and recognize value in embracing divergent styles.
• Demonstrate a continuous improvement mindset and willingness to challenge the status quo when needed to advance thinking and outcomes.
• Model ownership, accountability, collaboration, and a customer-first mindset with enterprise perspective.

What we are looking for:

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree.
• 2 years of experience in Sales Planning, Commercial Planning, Category Management, Sales Analytics, Finance, Marketing, Customer Strategy, or related business functions.
• Experience working with business performance reporting, analytics, and/or customer planning support.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite; including but not limited to Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint
• Experience managing multiple priorities, timelines, and stakeholders.
• Strong analytical, communication, and collaboration skills.

Additional skills and experience that we think would make someone successful in this role:

• Consumer Packaged Goods experience.
• Experience supporting customer planning, annual planning, JBP preparation, business reviews, or performance management.
• Experience using data and insights to support business recommendations.
• Exposure to business intelligence, retailer, syndicated, or internal reporting tools.
• Experience using AI tools such as Microsoft Copilot.
• Growth mindset, curiosity, and passion for delivering business results.

The Right Place for You 

We are bold, kind, strive to do the right thing, we play to win, and we believe in a strong community that thrives together. Our culture is rooted in our Basic Beliefs, and we believe in supporting every employee by meeting their physical, emotional, and financial needs. 

We're an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, age, national origin, disability status or protected veteran status. 

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