Sales Director China

Company Description

As a global key player in yeasts and fermentation, Lesaffre designs, manufactures and markets innovative solutions for Baking, Food taste & pleasure, Health care and Biotechnology.
Family group born in northern France in 1853, now a multi-national and a multicultural company, Lesaffre is committed to working with confidence to better nourish and protect the planet.
In close collaboration with its clients and partners, Lesaffre employs 11 000 people in more than 50 countries.
Lesaffre achieves a turnover of 3 billion euros.

Procelys aims to support the biotechnology industry by providing nutrients and expertise to improve growth and productivity of microorganisms and cell culture. 

This Lesaffre’s Business Unit develops a wide range of specific fermentation nutrients designed for Biopharma, Food & Feed Bioingredients, Food cultures & Probiotics, Renewable Chemicals and Biocontrol industries. Strengthened by being a part of Lesaffre and drawing upon its expertise worldwide, Procelys fosters a strong proximity with its customers.

Job Description

You will be responsible for delivering topline sales targets. You will achieve this by persistently ensuring your team focuses on the needs of your customer base. This will require you to visit customers frequently with and without your team. Your forecast accuracy, number of co-creation projects initiated, and scorecards from our CRM platform (Salesforce) will be used as proxies for customer intimacy. You will directly manage a handful of customers as well.

• Know Your Customers
• Deliver revenues according to the budget
• Improve forecast accuracy
• Lead the budgeting process for China
• Formalize agreements with customers
• Initiate co-creation projects with customers
• Prepare monthly reporting scorecards (both financial as well as on customer centricity) and provide recommendations
• Ensure 100% adoption by your team of our CRM platform (Salesforce), which includes capturing competitive intelligence
• Articulate your specific needs from other parts of the organization (e.g. Marketing) to ensure your team is setup for success e.g. technical sell sheet

Supervisory Responsibilities

Your direct reports include several regional Sales Managers, a Key Account Manager and one business development manager; our local Innovation Project Manager will have a dotted reporting line into you.

Qualifications

Education, Experience, Certificates, Licenses, Registrations

• Required: Scientific/Engineering studies (ideally Biochemical Engineering/Biotechnology/Bioprocessing)
• Required: minimum experience of 12 years selling B2B product to the fermentation industry in China (biotechnology, bi-ingredients, bio-pharma, food, feed), responsible for revenues in double-digits
• Required: minimum experience of 6 years managing a team of regional sales managers, key account managers and new business development managers
• Required: minimum experience of 6 years working for a multinational with >$1B in revenues
• Preferred: significant experience in business development
• Preferred: significant experience leading the commercial launch of new products
• Preferred: significant experience initiating co-creation projects with customers
• Preferred: significant experience using Salesforce 
• MBA preferred (Executive)

Competencies

• Results-driven team leader
• Excellent understanding of the fermentation industry
• Consultative selling and listening
• Fluent performance in front of customers
• Strong sensitivity to customer satisfaction
• Ability to drive projects internally and externally
• Budgeting
• Forecasting

Computer Skills

Good knowledge of computer skills SAP, Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint), Power BI, SharePoint, and Salesforce.

Language Skills

• English proficiency required; second language a plus – Spanish or French preferred.
• Ability to read, analyze, and interpret general business periodicals, professional journals, technical procedures, or governmental regulations.
• Ability to write reports, business correspondence, and procedure manuals.
• Ability to effectively present information and respond to questions from groups of managers, clients, customers, and the general public.

Reasoning Ability

• Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions.
• Ability to interpret an extensive variety of technical instructions in mathematical or diagram form and deal with several abstract and concrete variables.

Additional Information

Travel

You are required to travel up to 50% of your time, mostly within China, with quarterly trips overseas.