Profiles
Sam
My first stint at Nestlé was in 2002 when I undertook an industrial placement at Head Office, Croydon. Despite working for a degree in Banking, Finance and Management, I opted for a role in Supply Chain initially working in the Customer Service department. During this year, I was exposed to the commercial team and I worked closely with them to ensure their plans came to fruition.
Before leaving my role to complete my degree, I was certain that a job in Nestlé Sales was what I wanted to pursue. I started my sales career in August 2004 as a Business Executive on the Morrisons / Safeway account. I was the Business Manager’s right hand person, providing support in all aspects of the day to day role. The great thing about Nestlé Sales is the responsibility and independence you are given early on. I was able to develop commercial acumen on the job through actively taking on more business management responsibility.
I was (and am) responsible for my own development. Nestlé are dedicated to helping you meet the personal development goals you set yourself. They have invested time and money in developing training programmes that can be tailored to individual needs. Nestlé strive to be the first choice of customers. They therefore aim to make business managers peerless in eyes of their customer contacts.
Four years on, I have continued to develop through the sales organisation and I am now Lead Business Manager commercially responsible for Nestlé Food and Beverages on the High Street. I head up a team comprising of an Activation manager, Shopper Insight Manager, Business Executive, Financial Analyst and Supply Chain Manager. I also have a Business Manager reporting into me.
The opportunities I have been given are testament to the meritocracy within Nestlé Sales. Such roles are not just about face to face selling. You should aspire to be a commercially well rounded, financially aware business person with sound negotiation skills, the ability to build and maintain rapport and an uncompromising focus on results.
If you want this, join Nestlé Sales!
Jason
I joined Nestlé in July 1997 as a Territory Manager after leaving University, having completed an Honours Degree in Business Studies with French language. My decision to work for Nestlé was driven by the market leading brands, global scale of the business and extensive career development opportunities.
As part of the Nestlé Field Sales team, the Territory Manager role involved both direct selling and merchandising of the Nestlé Confectionery range with Wholesalers, Independents, and Symbol outlets. This provided a very solid foundation in FMCG for my first full time role after leaving university, helping me to quickly build a greater understanding of the wholesale and retail trade.
After a year in Field Sales, I was given the opportunity to relocate to Head Office in York for a new role as Customer Category Manager in the Wholesale channel. My field experience proved to be invaluable in this role and allowed me to provide recommendations and practical solutions to issues faced by both wholesalers and independent retailers alike. As part of my role, I was involved in delivering Seasonal Shows and Category Presentations across the customer base, which allowed me to gain very diverse and detailed customer-facing experience early in my career.
After 2 years in this role, I moved from Category back into Sales as Business Account Executive on Palmer & Harvey. This move allowed me to gain valuable experience in dealing with National accounts, and also gave me a strong grounding in the elements of National Account Management.
As this role expanded, I then became the National Account Manager for Palmer & Harvey Independents, dealing specifically with the P&H Independent account base, and also had sole Account Management responsibility for the Mace & Supershop Symbol groups operated by P&H. This allowed me to develop knowledge of both the Wholesale and Retail elements of a Delivered Trade Wholesaler within one role.
Having spent six years in the Wholesale and Independent Channel, the time was right to broaden my experience into the Multiple Grocery area, and I was appointed Business Account Manager for Waitrose, Iceland and Netto. The diversity of these accounts gave me a very broad perspective of the multiple channel, and this position also became my first formal line management role, helping to develop my coaching and management skills.
Following this Grocery experience, I then moved across into the Multiple Convenience area of the business, as Business Account Manager for Co-op, dealing with their Head Office and Regional members across the UK. In this role, I was also able to attend a week-long Global Confectionery Business Seminar at Nestlé Head Office in Vevey, Switzerland, which provided a broad perspective on the products and markets which Nestlé operate in across the Globe, and allowed me to share learnings and best practice in Confectionery with other Nestlé markets.
Having worked across all three major trade channels, I then moved back into the Multiple Grocery channel as National Account Manager on Morrisons for a year, before being appointed as Senior Business Account Manager for Tesco, leading a team of Business Account Managers. Previous experience in dealing with different store formats proved invaluable, as I required a detailed understanding of all types of outlets from the Convenience formats to the large Supermarkets to perform effectively in this role.
Most recently, as a result of the move to the Nestlé 1st Choice organisation, I have now been appointed Customer Business Manager for the Asda Confectionery Business, thereby gaining experience of the Asda-Walmart international business model.
Over the last 11 years, I have been able to build extensive experience of Confectionery, predominantly within the Sales area of the business across all trade channels. I have also benefited from extensive training in all elements of Commercial Management, including Selling and Negotiation, Category Management, Finance, Supply Chain and Leadership Coaching and Development.
Looking ahead, it will be important to extend my category and people management experience further to build a solid platform for continued progression into senior leadership roles in the future.
Fiona
I joined Nestlé in 2006 after studying Marketing BSc Hons at Lancaster University. I knew I wanted to pursue a Marketing or Sales role within FMCG as I felt the dynamic, competitive and aggressive nature of the industry could offer me a challenging and exciting career.
Through visiting career fairs, websites and employment publications, I gained an understanding of which opportunities were open to me. The Nestlé Sales graduate scheme stood out from the rest. Not only tailored to my individual needs, it also offered continuous support in my career development.
I felt that I’d benefit greatly from a scheme offering experience in a number of roles. Theirs consisted of three different placements: one in Field Sales, one in a Head Office based Sales role, and the third, either another Sales role or a role in Category and Channel Sales Development. I began my career at Nestlé as a Business Development Executive (BDE), based in Sheffield. As part of a regional team, I was responsible for managing my own territory and the accounts within it. These ranged from small Co-ops to massive Tesco Extras. Each call involved ensuring stores were compliant with Head Office agreed activity, influencing additional orders and negotiating discretionary space for incremental displays. As you can imagine, an integral part of my role involved building up great customer relationships.
For my second role, I relocated to York to work in Head Office as a Field Operations Executive. Unlike the BDE role, this role involved working within the wholesale and convenience channel. I was responsible for ensuring account priorities and activities were stretching but achievable, and managed all communication to the national field team. A highlight of this role was organising the field sales’ annual conference.
In January 2008 I started my third role as a Customer Account Executive for the Booker account. This has certainly proved to be my most challenging role to date, but I’m enjoying every minute! I am accountable for all invoices (ensuring we have accrued enough money to pay them), reports, field briefings, promotion proposals, communication to the customer regarding new product development and pack changes, and monitoring a local clearance budget for the field sales team. I am also heavily involved in implementing consumer competitions and trade press advertising campaigns in Booker. This involves meetings with our customer’s media agency, and regular meetings with our internal marketing department in order to gain sign off.
When I first started this role, I had no idea as to the level of interaction I would have with the customer. Booker is a key customer when it comes to the sale of confectionery, and therefore the success of hitting (or exceeding!) the targets set on the annual Customer Account Plan is significant to Nestlé’s year end figures. Given my limited experience I did not expect to be given such exposure to the buyers at Booker so early on in my placement….I was wrong! I accompany my line manager (Business Account Manager) to many meetings held at Booker Head Office. It is an educational experience to witness the negotiation techniques used by both my line manager and the buyer to secure a deal. It is not uncommon for the confectionery buyer at Booker to contact myself with queries.
Having been in the role for 4 months I can definitely say I am still on a steep learning curve! I have recently been given a project to manage on Kit Kat catering opportunities. Through this project, last week I was able to arrange a meeting with Booker’s Catering Director to sell in the initiative and gain feedback on how best to execute the scheme through Booker’s catering field sales team. This is just one example of how the Sales Graduate Scheme offers you the chance to truly implement your selling skills, and put to practice learnings taken from training courses!
I have recently had my development meeting with my line manager. Nestlé are dedicated to every individuals’ development plan, and ensure objectives are put in place with quantified timings. These are reviewed regularly. The outcome of my development plan was that I am now going to be given the opportunity to look after the biscuits category within Booker! I will be accountable for the biscuits annual sales target on the Customer Account Plan. Now that’s what I call a fast-track Grad scheme!
James
I joined Nestlé Confectionery UK Division in July 2002 as a New Business Executive (aka field rep), after working for a small company in Sheffield selling professional hand tools to the trade! Whilst I enjoyed the role, I realised that there was no structure in place, little opportunity for training and development and ultimately career development! I realised that a larger, more structured company would provide this, and Nestlé gave me the opportunity – I haven’t looked back since.
I started my time at Nestlé working as a New Business Executive (moving to Guildford in the process), which meant that I was calling on ‘out of home’ sites to try and achieve incremental selling opportunities. Basically, if I saw an opportunity to sell sweets, then I called on it e.g. cafes, golf clubs, camp sites. The role was all about cold calling and developing relationships from scratch… it was hard but very rewarding when the successes came off.
After 18 successful months in this role, I moved to York to take on the New Business Manager role. Working for the same team, I was specifically responsible for the development of new business head office accounts. However, after 6 months, the New Business team was re-formed to become the current Business Development Team and my role was changed to Retail Account Manager, calling on similar head office accounts. I was responsible for accounts such as Mecca Bingo, and developing confectionery opportunities.
In January of 2004, I moved roles to work on the Spar account, reporting into the lead account manager, I looked after 2 Regional Distribution Centres (RDC’s). Each RDC was a head office in its own right, and I had the responsibility and accountability for delivering the execution and plan, whilst developing the relationships between all involved. After 1 year, I was given additional responsibility looking after a 3rd RDC.
In December 2006, I was then offered my first lead account managers role on the Today’s Group. Whilst I had enjoyed my previous role, I wanted the challenge of my own account, being the lead account manager, developing the strategy, managing the total budget, and working towards my goal of managing people, this role gave me it I had an account executive reporting into me, which gave me my first taste of people management. I also worked very closely with the field to help develop their understanding on my account and to ensure that they were best equipped to go out and do their job. It was a tough year in the sense that I spent most of my time away from York, visiting customers, developing relationships & opportunities - but at the same time, reaping the rewards. If you put the effort in, you get the results.
It is now 2008, and I am now working as a customer business manager on Morrisons. Working on such an important account is a real opportunity. I look after the core confectionery category, reporting into the lead account manager. This means that I am responsible and accountable for delivering the execution and plan as well as building and developing the relationship with my Morrisons contacts. I work closely with internal people from supply chain to CCSD to marketing to finance, which gets me great exposure across the business and helps me understand more and helps my continual development.
The best thing about my career so far is that I have had a variety of roles, enjoying a good cross section of accounts across different sectors that I hope will put me in good stead for the future.
