Associate Manager, Sales Strategy & Planning (Pet Team)
About The Position
The Associate Manager, Sales Strategy & Planning supports customer planning, performance management, and cross-functional coordination for assigned customers or customer portfolios. The role partners with Sales and cross-functional teams to translate business strategies into actionable customer plans, own assigned 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, work generally involves lower customer complexity, lower ambiguity, and more defined planning needs, while still requiring strong ownership, analytical rigor, and cross-functional follow-through. The role is based at the JM Smucker Corporate Offices in Orrville, Ohio, with a hybrid arrangement that requires onsite work during Company-designated core weeks, estimated at up to nine days per month. Intermittent business travel may be required.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree.
- At least 2 years of experience in Sales Planning, Commercial Planning, Category Management, Sales Analytics, Finance, Marketing, Customer Strategy, or related business functions.
- Experience with business performance reporting, analytics, and/or customer planning support.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite, including Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.
- Experience managing multiple priorities, timelines, and stakeholders.
- Strong analytical, communication, and collaboration skills.
Nice To Haves
- 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.
Responsibilities
- Support customer plans and own assigned work, including data, inputs, updates, planning trackers, and follow-through for assigned customers or portfolios.
- Support annual planning, Joint Business Planning (JBP), quarterly business reviews, customer planning cycles, innovation planning, and strategic initiatives.
- Translate business priorities into customer planning deliverables and connect assigned work to customer plans and broader business priorities.
- Track customer planning milestones, decisions, actions, and follow-ups to support timely execution.
- 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.
- Compile facts, updates, and analysis for Sales decisions; identify takeaways and raise issues, risks, and opportunities.
- Help Sales and cross-functional partners understand customer performance and planning inputs.
- Partner with Sales, Brand Marketing, Category Analytics, Revenue Growth Management, Finance, Supply Chain, and other stakeholders.
- Gather, organize, validate, and connect cross-functional planning inputs in support of customer priorities and business objectives.
- Support alignment meetings and document decisions, owners, and next steps.
- Coordinate inputs, follow up on actions, maintain work progress, and escalate open issues or inconsistencies to the appropriate decision owner.
- Execute established planning processes, tools, templates, and operating rhythms.
- Maintain planning calendars, assumptions, trackers, and reporting resources accurately and on time.
- 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.
- Respect all individuals, support diversity and inclusion, and recognize the value of embracing divergent styles.
- Demonstrate a continuous improvement mindset and willingness to challenge the status quo when needed.
- Model ownership, accountability, collaboration, and a customer-first mindset with an enterprise perspective.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
