Overview In this Sr. Sales Manager role, you lead growth for key accounts in the Midwest while guiding a team of account managers. You will own growth strategy, pricing alignment, and commercial execution to deliver profitable revenue. You'll coach the team to deepen relationships, build pipelines, and convert opportunities across regional and national accounts. The position blends direct customer ownership with people leadership, and requires collaboration across functions to meet AAK's growth objectives. Travel of 30-40% will help strengthen customer partnerships and drive initiatives.
Compensation / Benefits- comprehensive health insurance
- 401(k) with company match
- tuition reimbursement and training
- Life and Disability insurance
- Employee Assistance Program
- discounts on travel and entertainment
Responsibilities- Develop and execute profitable, multi-year growth plans for assigned accounts with clear growth targets
- Directly manage senior-level customer relationships, including negotiation and long-term partnership development
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of account managers for regional and national customers
- Set growth expectations and goals for the sales team, ensuring revenue, margin, and forecast accuracy
- Identify new business opportunities by understanding customer strategies, product applications, and market trends
- Collaborate with Marketing, Innovation, R&D, Operations, Supply Chain, Finance, and Customer Service to convert opportunities
- Lead commercial negotiations and structure agreements that deliver sustainable value
- Monitor KPIs, pipeline, forecasts, and performance reviews to identify risks and prioritize actions
- Ensure high-quality forecasting and translate market dynamics into actionable sales projections
- Resolve escalated customer issues and remove internal barriers to growth
Key requirements- 10+ years of progressive sales experience, preferably in food ingredients and/or fats and oils
- BA/BS degree required; Food Science, Business, or related discipline preferred
- Strong track record of profitable growth, account planning, negotiation, and execution
- Proven ability to lead and coach a sales team and drive accountability for targets
- Excellent relationship-building and executive-level engagement skills
- Strong organizational, prioritization, pipeline management, and forecasting capabilities
- Excellent quantitative and performance management skills
- relationship-building
- problem-solving
- stakeholder alignment
- account planning
- pipeline management
- forecasting
