Director of Sales - West

nutpods

1d•$125,000 - $175,000•Remote

About The Position

nutpods is a high-growth food and beverage company best known for its plant-based, dairy-free coffee creamers, loved by coffee drinkers nationwide. A leading dairy-free creamer brand across retail and online channels, nutpods has built a passionate consumer following and a strong foundation for continued growth. We are a small, entrepreneurial team with ambitious plans for the years ahead. That means every role has real impact, broad visibility, and the opportunity to help shape the future of the brand. We are looking for eager, enthusiastic, and experienced candidates who are excited to roll up their sleeves and help build the next chapter of nutpods. Our culture is of huge importance to the owners and team at nutpods. We are looking for people who will be a great addition to our culture. We are: Kind: We treat each other with kindness and mutual respect. Dynamic: We are full of energy and defined by constant progress, collaboration, and new ideas. Relentless: We relentlessly pursue a crazy good product, business, and team. Empowered: We empower each other to fail forward with trust, transparency, and the opportunity to learn and grow. Passionate: We take immense pride in what we make, how we work together, the impact we have, and how we treat people. We strive to do what’s right for our team, customers, and quality, even when no one is looking. The Director of Sales - West role is accountable for delivering annual operating plan results through: Effective customer-based and fact-based selling strategies. Development of winning relationships with the retail community including conventional and club customers. Alignment and adherence to a disciplined net revenue management process. Effective management of distribution and broker partners. Working collaboratively with functional teammates in operations, finance, and marketing to leverage the collective strengths of our organization. This is an individual contributor leadership role with significant cross-functional and broker influence.

Requirements

BA/BS Degree preferred in related field (Business or Marketing).
5+ years of experience in CPG sales, key account management, or retail leadership.
Significant experience managing Albertsons Companies, Inc. as a key account, with proven success in net sales growth, distribution expansion, and trade spend optimization.
Experience in natural/specialty foods, plant-based, or CPG categories strongly preferred.
Remote within the Western U.S., with ability to travel ~40% (customer visits, trade shows, headquarters alignment). Preference for candidates located in major Western hubs (e.g., CA, WA, ID, TX).
Initiative: Self-starter who identifies and acts on opportunities to accelerate results.
Strategic + Creative Problem Solving: Ability to define the issue/opportunity, gather the facts, develop the range of solutions, sort out the strengths and limitations, and arrive at a recommendation that best meets the needs of the business.
Project Management: Strong project management skills; demonstrated ability to manage project from start to finish, including coordinating activities across multiple functional groups with non-direct reporting resources.
Budget Management: Proven ability to effectively manage trade spend/selling expense budgets through a well-defined set of processes and methods.
Selling Story Development: Proven ability to proactively identify business opportunities/issues; mine the data, define the insights and build fact-based selling tools that support communication to customers.
Business Relationships: Must have strong "people" skills, ability to develop strong internal and external relationships and bring to bear your influence across our organization and externally to our customers.
Written and Verbal Communication: Highly developed written and verbal communication skills; ability to communicate status, plans, issues, and updates effectively, appropriately, and in a timely manner.
Organization and Execution: Highly organized; proven ability to effectively plan and execute to accomplish objectives.
Positive, supportive attitude.
High level of integrity and professionalism.
Experience working in a startup, high-growth company, or similarly fast-paced environment.
Proficient in Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint
Familiarity with IRI/Nielsen, SPINS, Shopper 360, etc. data sets
CUSTOMER SERVICE DEDICATION - Dedicated to listening and understanding customers, anticipating their needs, and giving top priority to customer satisfaction.
COLLABORATION - Working effectively within the organization to accomplish the mission, understand the values and vision, and integrate into all functional areas of the business.
TEAM INFLUENCE - Using appropriate interpersonal styles and methods to inspire and guide individuals toward goal achievement; modifying behaviors to accommodate the tasks, situations, and people involved.
DEVELOPMENT - Willing and able to develop skills and competencies to support current and future jobs.
INDIVIDUAL LEADERSHIP (INFLUENCE) - Using appropriate interpersonal styles and methods to inspire and guide individuals (customers, peers, and superiors) toward goal achievement; modifying behavior to accommodate tasks, situations, and individuals involved.
MAXIMIZING PERFORMANCE - Goal ownership oriented and open to coaching to optimize individual and company performance.
STRONG TEAM MEMBER - Focused on organizational goals, understands the importance of blending into teams and supporting strong morale and sense of purpose within the team. Understands why groups do what they do. Picks up intentions, needs, positions, values and motivational triggers of fellow team members.
FLEXIBILITY / ADAPTABILITY - The ability to readily modify, respond to, and integrate change with minimal personal resistance.
RESOURCEFUL - The ability to find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties.

Nice To Haves

Experience in natural/specialty foods, plant-based, or CPG categories strongly preferred.

Responsibilities

Help implement and execute a disciplined management process that optimizes the gross sales-to-net sales equation.
Assist in building customer-specific annual plans including trade calendar development, assortment, merchandising, pricing, promotion, and all aspects of trade spending.
Adhere to trade spend budgets and meeting overall P/L goals via this net revenue management process.
Lead the continued development of our category leadership strategy, which includes fact-based selling story development and collaboration with business insights team to optimize sales and profitability.
Develop win-win customer relationships that position our company as the category expert and consultant for their business. The goal is to build strategic alliances that are sustainable over time for the company and our customers based on the complexities and dynamics present in the marketplace.
Execute the S&OP process build by sales and executive management in partnership with the supply chain and finance functional teams. This includes executing against a team approach to trade planning, forecasting, managing inventory, customer service, and issue resolution.
Develop strong lines of communication internally with the rest of the sales team and cross-functional colleagues, and externally with broker/distributor partners and others to ensure alignment across the business.