Sales

Having worked in the FMCG industry for over 30 years (22 years with Nestlé) I can honestly say my personal and professional growth has been considerable. The opportunities to challenge yourself are limitless, in fact the hardest decision is choosing your own personal path, once you’ve done that strap in and enjoy the ride. I’ve achieved some goals in Nestlé I never thought I’d be capable of and will retire feeling accomplished. (Just not yet, I’m still having fun!)

In my 9 years in the Nestlé UK Sales team, I have enjoyed many roles working across different categories with many of our biggest and fastest growing retailers. In the last 4 months I was offered the exciting opportunity to work in one of Nestle’s recent business acquisitions called Egmont Honey, which is a small company producing Manuka Honey from New Zealand. It’s fantastic to work for a small, rapidly expanding company for 12 months to broaden my sales experience and to help build a new brand in the UK and across Europe.

I joined Nestlé in 2019 and have thoroughly enjoyed my roles working across a mix of categories such as Coffee, Food, Dairy and recently Confectionery, Waters and Nestlé Professional. Being in Sales at Nestlé is exciting, challenging and very rewarding as the experiences have helped me develop myself as an authentic people leader. In my current role, I am grateful to have a fantastic team who look after regional sales within the wholesale, foodservice and convenience channel for six categories. I wouldn’t have had such a fulfilling leadership journey without the support of my peers, my line managers and my stakeholders. At Nestlé, my passion for driving an inclusive culture is recognised & supported as I lead the Eradication Racism Network as a Co-chair.

While my career at Nestlé has only just started, I can honestly say it’s been the best decision of my sales career to date. I am fortunate to work with incredible people across various teams, not only in the UK but across continental Europe. My favourite part of working at Nestlé (apart from the amazing brands) is you can create your own career path in line with personal aspirations – there are no limits (literally!)

I joined Nestlé 16 years ago on the Sales Graduate Scheme and have enjoyed a varied career path in our commercial business, ‘zig-zagging’ between Account Manager roles and Category roles. I have experienced the excitement of working with our key customers to drive mutual growth and outstanding execution of our brands and been able to learn about the internal operations of the business and shape our future strategies. Six years ago, I became a mum and Nestlé has supported my need for flexible working at every turn giving me a brilliant work/life balance and every opportunity to succeed. I am currently leading our Field Sales Operations, working with our external partners to deliver maximum impact and availability of our brands to our shoppers every day.

I joined the Nestlé Sales Graduate Scheme three and a half years ago, spending the first two years rotating across Field Sales, E-Commerce, and Sales Operations, a brilliant fast start if you’re looking for a long-term career within FMCG. Since finishing the scheme, I continue to work within National Account Management, a very rewarding career path with large opportunity for progression across the expansive range of Nestlé categories. I’ve had the privilege to work with multiple customers and incredible brands along my journey so far, currently working alongside Sainsbury’s within our Coffee Division. What’s really stood out for me has been the flexibility and people culture embodied within our organisation that makes me super proud to work at Nestlé.

I’ve been lucky to work across a number of categories, channels and customers in my 10 years at Nestlé since joining on the Graduate Scheme. Most recently I was Head of Sales at Terrafertil working on the brand Nature’s Heart, a small business owned by Nestlé. It was great to see the retail landscape from a different perspective and to understand the challenges and opportunities for both manufacturers and retailers when it comes to selling smaller brands. Working at Terrafertil gave me a superb insight into the end to end running of a food manufacturing business and really helped me appreciate everything I’d learned at Nestlé so far!

After starting at Nestlé as a Sales Graduate, I followed several sales and category roles with Nestlé’s Coffee division. I then wanted to get more experience in innovation and building brands from the ground up.  Nestlé were really supportive and were able to find an innovation project for me to take on part-time alongside my current role.  This  has helped me learn to manage ambiguity more effective and the variety it provided was really refreshing.