Category Manager On-Premise & National Insights

Build your career at Sazerac! With almost 400 years of rich history, Sazerac Company has thrived as an independent, American family-owned company with operations in the United States and around the world. Since the 2000s, Sazerac has averaged double digit growth every year! Sazerac Company produces and markets the most award-winning bourbons and whiskeys in the world, including Buffalo Trace, Pappy Van Winkle, Eagle Rare, Blanton’s, and Sazerac Rye. Additionally, Sazerac owns many popular brands across a range of spirits, including Fireball, Southern Comfort, Seagram’s V.O., Myers’s, Goldschläger, Parrot Bay, 99 Brand, and Platinum Vodka. 

We’re proud of our award-winning culture and distilleries. Our Louisville office has been named one of the “Best Places to Work in Kentucky” four times, and our Buffalo Trace Distillery has earned the title of “world’s most award-winning distillery” through the dedication of our craftsmen for well over 200 years. Whether you’re a recent graduate or an experienced professional, Sazerac provides extraordinary opportunities for growth with competitive salaries and benefits in an exciting, entrepreneurial industry.

The Category Manager for On-Premise & National Insights directly works with the Category Leadership and Sales teams in developing consumer and customer focused strategies, tactics, and category grounded solutions. This individual will conduct high quality analysis and synthesize multiple data sources to generate national level insights and actionable recommendations, while leveraging effective communication & influencing skills to orchestrate action for channels across Total U.S. and On-Premise. The candidate must possess sound business judgment, excellent communication skills and demonstrate experience in the following areas: assortment planning, negotiation, creative selling and building productive relationships

• Contribute to Sazerac fiscal year growth by establishing himself/herself as a business partner, translating insights and analytics into top and bottom line business impact. This person leads identification and communication of customer insights, driving insights from the data into actionable solutions regarding product, pricing, distribution, placement, and promotion. Also, analyzes sales and competitive trends, identifies growth opportunities, and provides data and insights to fuel fact-based selling materials, Corporate Initiatives, NBD, and Category Reviews.
• Leads national account sales support with tools, customer insights, and compelling consumer and trade rationales to support fact-based presentations based on sales, velocities, pricing, distribution, product, and promotion analysis.
• Align individual priorities, time, and resource allocation, by brand, country, and state priorities. Support sales team with market analysis, opportunity identification, and review of progress against BCSP's. Develop compelling presentations to help secure customer & distributor support.
• Leads the framework and creation of all national insights in partnership with Sr. Manager of SS&I and VP of CL (solution selling, sell sheets, Nielsen reporting, etc.) and analytical tools needed to support Commercial Sales & Distributors.
• Reviews data partners and manages projects periodically in collaboration with the BI teams and Sr. Manager SS&I and VP of CL to maximize spend on insights and support the generation of BIC actionable insights
• Work effectively with Sales, Marketing, Shopper Marketing, Shopper & Consumer Insights, Brand, eCommerce, and other Category Leadership resources to establish, lead and maintain performance management including the streamlining of reporting cadences, macro assessments and opportunity gap analysis.
• Collaborate with Sales to establish best practice approaches to insight generation and fact-based selling. Drive introduction and organizational adoption of databases and tools to analyze quantitative execution standards.
• Keeps abreast of developments and best practices in Category Management, pursue the knowledge needed to improve departmental capabilities and professional agility.
• Provide ad-hoc category management reporting, trend analysis, customized reports, and special project work directly to internal / external leaders as necessary.
• Establish well organized priorities for yourself and define roles when leading initiatives/projects. Document project work flow when establishing new, best practice project work flows to facilitate future training and scalability of the process for the team and organization.

MUST

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Management, Accounting, Data Analytics, or related field
• A minimum of 5-7 years of experience in consumer goods, retail, or syndicated data with a focus on category management, sales, business analytics and/or shopper insights
• Extensive experience understanding, utilizing, and employing syndicated data, customer card/POS data, and panel data to drive internal and external wins through sales and share growth (experience with data sources such as Nielsen, IRI, Data Essential, Numerator,Kantar, CGA, etc.)
• Ability to distill complex data into simple stories
• Demonstrated ability to build indispensable, collaborative partnerships with retail customers and internal business partners, across functional teams
• Highly skilled in Microsoft Office Suite (Excel, Word and PowerPoint)
• Exceptional communication skills – verbal, written & presentation
• Strong planning/organizing skills; the ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously
• Working knowledge of retail merchandising and in store execution tactics
• Willingness to travel 10-25% of the time

PREFERRED

• Master’s degree