Sales Account Manager

Yazaki•Canton, MI

8d•Hybrid

About The Position

Yazaki is seeking a Sales Account Manager to support its Ford North America business from Canton, Michigan. The role leads commercial activities, including pricing negotiations, agreement interpretation, recoveries, commercial statement-of-work items, and commercial metric tracking. The Account Manager serves as a primary commercial interface with customer purchasing, product development, and program teams, and works closely with cross-functional teams to ensure timely completion of program deliverables. The position is responsible for customer satisfaction and relationships, accounts receivable support, productivity and profitability, program support, customer quotations, and advanced business development. It includes managing customer requirements and commercial data, coordinating quotations and negotiations, tracking program financial and commercial issues, and identifying new business opportunities in electrical distribution systems or vehicle information products. Customer visits and occasional domestic and international travel may be required, as may on-call availability for customer or internal deliverables.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience required.
3–5 years of Sales Account Management experience.
Ability to travel for customer visits, including occasional domestic and international travel as required.
Ability to be on call as required by customer or internal deliverables.
Excellent financial, analytical, negotiation, communication, and presentation skills.

Responsibilities

Define customer needs, wants, and expectations and communicate customer requirements throughout the organization.
Cultivate and maintain appropriate relationships with key customer individuals.
Provide data for sales metric tracking and compile it for presentation as needed.
Ensure appropriate commercial requirements are in place before launch.
Understand and report changes to customer processes, organizational structure, and decision makers.
Maintain knowledge of Yazaki product offerings and trends and understand the competitive environment to evaluate sales and purchase price data.
Support Finance with customer purchasing-related collection issues and follow up with customers to resolve open issues in support of YNA accounts receivable targets.
Ensure pricing is accurate and updated in internal systems, and communicate insights to technical and non-technical audiences.
Notify the Sales Manager or Finance to initiate accruals.
Pursue profit-enhancement objectives consistent with USOEM BU profitability demands and support execution of sales strategy to meet business-unit objectives.
Assess impacts to current program profitability and determine whether corrective actions are needed; anticipate risks and develop mitigation plans.
Serve as the central contact for commercial and strategic customer issues.
Schedule regular open-issues meetings with buyers and monitor outcomes of routine customer meetings, including program team, program finance, and change-control meetings.
Maintain, track, and report Permanent Resolutions in BEAMS and support program financial tracking with the Program Manager.
Receive customer purchase orders and verify their accuracy through contract review.
Maintain visibility with customer assembly plants during launch and support customer visits to manufacturing affiliates as required.
Support Monthly Program Reviews, GPMS Functional Reviews, Financial Reviews, and other program-related meetings.
Lead timely and accurate customer quotation and RFQ submissions; ensure quote accuracy before submission and receipt of correct purchase orders for existing business.
Coordinate with departments and manufacturing to obtain pricing, packaging, and tooling information.
Lead commercial negotiations concerning design changes, target-related issues, sequencing, Engineering Resource Payment, and commercial statement-of-work items through closure.
Maintain accurate commercial data in required tracking tools.
Submit and negotiate customer-responsible extraordinary expense claims, Engineering Resource Payment, and tooling costs; receive purchase orders for submission to Finance.
Support technical and commercial review of quote packages and kick-off meetings, and prepare quote responses.
Analyze market conditions and develop data-informed business cases; evaluate risks and opportunities using data-driven methodologies.
Identify new business opportunities within electrical distribution systems or vehicle information products, coordinating with the Sales Manager as required.
Lead or support regional and global new-business activities, including presenting business cases and timing to US OEM BU management for strategic approval.