Key Account Manager, Home Entertainment Physical

Sony Pictures Entertainment’s (SPE) Canadian Digital Distribution group is looking for a Key Account Manager to help cover a parental leave for up to 18 months. This role will focus on transactional home entertainment account management and business planning.

**CONTEXT**:
The Canadian market is a top 5 territory for SPHE. In a rapidly changing marketplace SPHE is evolving and changing the focus of our organization around Consumer Understanding and Insight to enable us to ‘Connect Canadians to a world of Entertainment Experiences’ and ‘expand our presence and conversion’.

**SCOPE**:
The Key Account Manager is a core role for the SPHE Canada team. He/She reports to the Head of Sales and manages one (or several) national physical distribution and / or retail accounts.

He/She will drive the strategy and engagement for their accounts, owning the P&L, the account strategy and planning process, driving an insight driven approach to engaging and challenging our partners to ensure we are putting the consumer (shopper) at the core of our agreed initiatives. He/She will need to demonstrate strong thought leadership, relationship management, influencing skills and an analytical approach to evaluating our strategies and execution in line with our profit goals.

This is a key role that is critical as the business navigates an evolving and challenging market whilst shifting our approach to engage our key customers and partner to being Insight and Analytics led. He/She will lead insight based sell in of New Release titles, Catalogue programs, & overarching Commercial Strategy. He/She will need to have partnered with a variety of key customers and platforms, will be very data savvy having worked with large data sets and have a strong analytical skill set in account level analysis and reporting. He/She will also need to identify consumer trends and create account specific plans based on key consumer insights.

**Business Planning**
- Build a thorough understanding of the customer needs and National levers to achieve objectives; monitor competitor strategies
- Generate and implement annual rolling customer business plans to meet / exceed targets
- Monitor performance and recommend action as appropriate to improve sales, margin, and share of customer business
- Where appropriate, implement joint account planning with customers to ensure SPHE delivers against their objectives while achieving gross profit targets

**Customer Management**
- Facilitate engagement with the customer at multiple levels and through appropriate contacts both within and outside of the buying team
- Manage customer portfolio, monitor customer profitability and prioritize commercial activities with each customer
- Effectively negotiate and close customer agreements (short and long term trading terms), including promotional pricing, rebates, MDF and coop, ensuring profitability targets are maintained
- Be the internal point of contact for all customer related queries; coordinate with Ops, Finance, Marketing and Sales Planning teams to deliver excellent overall customer service
- Manages returns approval process, where necessary, and ensure effective coordination and information flow with Customer service, Operations & Finance teams.
- Where appropriate, conduct regular business reviews with the customer, with a focus on annual Joint Business Planning alongside tactical execution and opportunistic exploitation

**Commercial Planning**
- Review each account promotional calendar, ensuring activities are well executed
- Work in conjunction with Marketing to define and allocate marketing budget and monitor spend vs. account performance
- Work in conjunction with the Sales Planning team to agree planogram decisions in line with objectives set for each account & to ensure all strategies are supported with data and insight
- Manage implementation of new business models and/or retail solutions enabling an increase in the number of consumer touch points
- Execute trade presentations, in collaboration with Marketing teams

**Team**
- Develop a full understanding of, and align with, Sony governance and standard working practices, strategies & objectives
- Demonstrate and promote SPHE values
- Maintain effective working relationships with all internal and US based teams to ensure smooth, efficient running of commercial activities within the Business Unit
- Champion best practice solutions across the company

**JOB REQUIREMENTS**:
**Experience**
- Minimum three years account management experience.
- Typically 3-5 years in sales.

**Knowledge**
- Experience gained within a Home Entertainment or a fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company
- Experience working within a fast-paced, commercial sales environment
- Experience with and working knowledge of Canadian retailers, media, and trade environment
- Experience at working directly with internal and external stakeholders
- Demonstrable examples of successful sales experience and contract negotiation. Examples