Market Development Manager

**SUMMARY**:
This role is not about managing existing products or fine-tuning steady campaigns. **You will architect Yamaha’s first true market development strategy for this space in Canada** — **identifying where and how we win, aligning cross-functional teams, and relentlessly driving toward increased market share and sales**. **If you** **are energized by building new markets, creating clarity from ambiguity, and being accountable for significant business outcomes, this is your opportunity**to leave a legacy in a category ripe for disruption.

**You will bring your knowledge, experience, and network within the Canadian industry to take Yamaha Canada into the market.**When in your career do you get to do a do-over with green fields and tremendous resources?

With the power and capabilities of a well-established and highly successful Sales and Marketing subsidiary team and a rock-solid Operations and Finance division, you will have the ability to leverage these resources and move faster than our competitors to establish new business opportunities for Yamaha Canada in the installed and touring audio and business solutions market. Working closely with senior management, you will lead the search for new sales channels and channel partners to establish the business.

Product Marketing owns an upstream portion of a product’s journey to market by leading the positioning of the product and the development of a go-to-market strategy to ensure the product is set up for success. Product Marketing leads the ongoing management of the products in the category by recommending and establishing effective and competitive pricing, monitoring product performance, and managing the overall product lifecycle in our market.

**Responsibilities and accountabilities include but are not limited to**:

- Identifying target customers, their needs, and how products will meet those needs; be a conduit for the voice of the customer to the product team and company.
- Owning competitive intelligence for the assigned product segment completing and maintaining market analyses, and reporting competitive product and market intelligence to the organization
- Developing product position and producing the following:

- Market segmentation and product differentiation for targeted messaging
- Value proposition and initial messaging
- Analyzing pricing impact and perform future pricing actions within the portfolio as well as implement steps in End-of-Life process when appropriate.
- Developing an effective Go-To-Market strategy for new product launches and collaborating and/or communicating with cross-functional partners, especially Marcomm, to plan for in-market execution. Track and communicate progress towards relevant KPIs related to launch.
- Creating production, sales, and inventory forecasts to support the sales objectives and opportunities
- Working with cross functional groups to support dealer workshops, videos, and related initiatives
- Ensuring Product Marketing strategy maps to the overall YC product category marketing strategy
- Ensuring sales growth through effective channel strategy and product positioning, pricing, and distribution
- Ensuring that Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service teams (and other relevant internal stakeholders) understand the category’s product functions and features in support of overall product education objectives and successful product life cycle management.
- Developing Yamaha product Go-To-Market strategies for assigned product categories to create customer demand and preference for Yamaha products
- Driving alignment between internal stakeholders (Product Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service teams) and YCJ
- Establish new processes and best practices to help YC adapt to what is required to win in this space.
- Ensuring accurate review and assessment of YC product category supply chain

**To be successful in the role you will need a combination of the following experience and qualifications**:

- Proven success using qualitative and quantitative data to derive customer and/or business insights in support of product life cycle management.
- Experience developing go-to-market strategies and plans for new product launches with top brands is required.
- Hand on experience for training and operation of Yamaha digital mixers from TF/DM up through to Rivage level consoles is highly desirable.
- Direct experience using Microsoft Office with advanced PowerPoint and Excel skills is required.
- Budget management is required.
- Demonstrating success with influencing and leveraging research and development / product development within a consumer products organization to expand breadth and/or depth of a product line is required.
- Demonstrating success translating product specifications into end-user features and benefits is preferred.
- Posses Audio-Visual Certifications in live sound and installed networked business solutions design and integration is required.
- Dante Certification and experience with control sof