Salary: Commensurate with skills and experience

Reports to: SVP, Fuel – Americas

Location: US Menzies Aviation Network

Overview

This role will deliver sales growth and general key account management activities across a designated portfolio of accounts, assuming USA-wide responsibility for all fueling commercial opportunities, regardless of location. To deliver such growth, the post-holder will be responsible for building and influencing relationships with important personnel in both airlines and airports and will be the subject matter expert in how to win and retain business within the USA spanetplace. For key accounts based in the USA, the post-holder will also be the lead for that account and work with other regional teams to bring opportunities to fruition. This role will help to engineer a change in the balance of our sales activity from being largely reactive to an approach characterized by early and proactive involvement in the customer’s procurement cycle, identifying and developing opportunities before they come to spanet.

Main accountabilities include:

• Responsible for Fuel sales growth within Americas region. (This includes ensuring that we retain our existing business on suitable terms).
• Creating a network of contacts/influencers within each key account airline in their fuel services purchasing departments and to fully understand airline strategy and specifications and to work with the airlines to develop proposals which will meet and exceed their requirements
• Working with station, regional and other commercial/key account colleagues to understand local opportunities for new business, to create tender-winning proposals and to develop compelling proposals to retain existing business, ensuring the impact of new business wins is not undermined by contract losses.
• Ensuring that customer relationships are properly managed with structured Business Review meetings and proactive communications take place externally and internally.
• Working with station and regional teams to develop the sales pipeline, generating new sales leads and horizon-scanning for future opportunities.
• Managing sales opportunities for RFP processes and unsolicited proposals with the aim of securing as high a win rate as possible – working with other commercial and operational colleagues as appropriate
• Assisting in the production of regional and key account sales plans, ensuring these plans are as fully developed as possible.
• Creating and delivering high quality sales collateral to assist sales pitches and presentations, ensuring that the sales material is tailored to the customers’ needs and meets their requirements and priorities.
• Implementing customer engagement plans, ensuring that customer review meetings are well prepared, properly structured and help to increase our chances of commercial growth.
• Maximizing the CRM system by ensuring that all sales opportunities and customer information is properly captured, tracked, and updated as required.

Qualifications and Experience:

• Degree in business or another relevant field
• At least five years of experience in the aviation sector, working in commercial and/or operational disciplines.
• Proven experience working with major customers.
• Experience of working in complex organizations with a global footprint and diverse structures.
• Excellent communication and team-working skills

Key skills and competencies:

Significant experience in the commercial and/or operational arena, plus:

• Sales orientation - relishes the challenge of identifying and executing sales opportunities, helping to shape customer requirements, and delivering “win-win” solutions.
• Customer focus - the role holder must demonstrate an ability to engage with colleagues and customers at all levels and within a range of spanets and situations and must be adept at fully understanding and interpreting customer requirements and end goals.
• Initiative – adopts a proactive approach to identifying opportunities rather than waiting for opportunities to come our way.
• Strong presentational skills - ability to pitch proposals and presentations in a compelling manner.
• Data driven – ability to co-ordinate and analyze various sources of information to form a clear picture.
• Influence - able to influence a wide range of groups and individuals to actively support a point of view or position; in particular to secure the “buy-in” of others who may hold a contrary view.