Sales Strategy & Customer Marketing Leader

 Sales Strategy & Customer Marketing Leader_ T2

Position Summary

The Sales Strategy & Customer Marketing Leader is responsible for developing and executing customer-centric growth strategies that drive category, brand, and customer performance. This role serves as the critical link between Marketing and Sales, translating consumer, shopper, and innovation strategies into actionable customer plans that deliver business growth.

The successful candidate will lead annual planning processes, customer marketing initiatives, innovation commercialization, and shopper activation programs while partnering closely with Sales, Marketing, Category Leadership, Finance, Operations, and external agency partners. This individual must thrive in a fast-paced environment, demonstrate exceptional cross-functional leadership, and influence stakeholders across all levels of the organization.

Key Responsibilities

Innovation Strategy & Commercialization

• Partner with Marketing, Sales, Supply Chain, and Category teams to develop customer-specific innovation plans.
• Support the customer activation of innovation initiatives from concept through launch.
• Build compelling customer selling stories that drive distribution and incremental growth.
• Monitor innovation performance and recommend optimization strategies to achieve objectives.
• Ensure innovation priorities are incorporated into customer plans and annual business planning processes.

Shopper & Consumer Marketing Programs

• Develop and execute integrated shopper and consumer activation programs that drive awareness, trial, conversion, and loyalty.
• Translate consumer insights into customer-specific activation strategies that deliver measurable business results.
• Lead development of promotional programs, display initiatives, seasonal campaigns, and omnichannel customer marketing plans.
• Evaluate program effectiveness through ROI analysis and post-event assessments, identifying opportunities for continuous improvement.
• Collaborate with Marketing to ensure alignment between national brand campaigns and customer execution strategies.

Annual Planning & Commercial Strategy

• Lead cross-functional annual planning processes, ensuring alignment across functions with corporate growth priorities.
• Support key planning milestones, including innovation planning, demand forecasting, promotional planning, and investment allocation.  Key planning milestones (Mission Control (Future year innovation planning), NPM (National Sales Meeting), RTS (Ready to Sell material for sales), Lift Off (Sales plan readiness).
• Identify risks and opportunities and provide strategic recommendations to drive business performance.

Marketing & Sales Integration

• Act as the primary liaison between Marketing and Sales teams, ensuring strategic alignment and flawless execution of business priorities.
• Communicate customer needs, market trends, and competitive insights to Marketing partners.
• Translate brand and category strategies into customer-specific execution plans.
• Facilitate collaboration across functions to ensure timely decision-making and effective implementation of initiatives.
• Influence stakeholders to achieve alignment on business priorities and growth opportunities.

Agency & External Partner Management

• Lead relationships with external agency partners, ensuring delivery of best-in-class activation and marketing programs.
• Manage agency briefs, timelines, budgets, and performance expectations.
• Ensure all agency-developed programs align with brand strategies, customer requirements, and business objectives.
• Co ordinate the creation of all POS, Toolkits, Display requirements across innovation and Shopper programs.
• Foster strong collaborative partnerships that drive innovation and continuous improvement.

Cross-Functional Leadership

• Build and maintain strong cross functional relationships across Sales, Marketing, Finance, Category Leadership, Supply Chain, Strategic Revenue Growth Management, and Operations.
• Lead project teams and coordinate resources to deliver strategic initiatives on time and within budget.
• Drive alignment across stakeholders to support customer and business objectives.
• Champion a culture of collaboration, accountability, and execution excellence within the team.

Qualifications & Experience

Required Experience

·       Educated to degree level or equivalent.

·       Experience in Customer Marketing, Sales Strategy, Brand Marketing, or Commercial Planning within a consumer-packaged goods (CPG) environment highly preferred.

·       Proven experience leading innovation launches, customer activation programs, and annual business planning processes.

·       Experience working directly with customer teams and senior commercial leadership.

·       Experience managing external agency partners and cross-functional project teams.

Key Skills & Competencies

·       Highly adaptable and comfortable working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

·       Exceptional cross-functional collaboration and stakeholder management skills.

·       Proven ability to influence without direct authority.

·       Strong communication, presentation, and storytelling capabilities.

·       Project management and prioritization skills.

·       Results-oriented with a focus on execution and business impact.

·       Ability to manage multiple priorities while maintaining attention to detail.

Leadership Behaviours

·       Creates Collaborative Relationships: builds strong partnerships and collaborative working relationships.

·       Navigates Complex Challenges: demonstrates agility and resilience in a rapidly changing environment.

·       Delivers Consistent Results: takes ownership, drives accountability, and delivers results.

·       Challenges the status quo and identifies opportunities for improvement.

·       Inspires alignment and commitment across diverse stakeholders.

·       Balances strategic thinking with operational excellence.

·       Delivery of projects on time and within budget.

What can you expect from Mars?

• Work with over 130,000 diverse and talented associates, all guided by the Five Principles. 
• Join a purpose driven company, where we’re striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.
• Best in class learning and development support from day one, including access to our in - house Mars University.  An industry competitive salary and benefits package, including company bonus.