Assistant Regional Business Development Manager

About HEINEKEN Asia Pacific Beverages

HEINEKEN Asia Pacific Beverages is a subsidiary focused on developing and delivering comprehensive beverage solutions across the Asia Pacific region. Its services include trading HEINEKEN brands, innovating new products, and providing supply services to related HEINEKEN entities.

Position Summary

As an Assistant Regional Business Development Manager, your key responsibility is to identify and build strategic partnerships that expand our market presence throughout the region. Acting as the primary liaison for clients, you will ensure sustained customer satisfaction and successful collaboration.

This cross-functional commercial role requires autonomy in initiating and supporting marketing initiatives targeted through customers and distributors. You will coordinate sourcing from breweries and design efficient, cost-effective distribution routes maximizing customer satisfaction and brand value. Commercial efforts emphasize sustainable returns and leveraging established brand assets.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead sales efforts beyond the currently assigned markets through local distributors, ensuring adherence to business plans and commercial goals.
• Collaborate with distributors and market managers to align geographic launch plans, sales forecasts, market share targets, and profitability objectives.
• Take joint accountability with country sales teams for achieving targets related to sales performance, brand mix, utilization, and competitive insights.
• Develop cluster management strategies, set product pricing, and enforce pricing policies.
• Build and sustain profitable relationships with distributors and local sales teams to monitor industry and regional market trends.
• Engage in joint promotional campaigns and trade events to increase market penetration of new products.
• Facilitate communication, training, and documentation of market programs and sales support tools using customer and sales feedback as well as market research.
• Develop and maintain key channel partnerships to maximize revenue, customer satisfaction, and foster long-term engagement, including distributor performance evaluation and coaching.
• Negotiate contracts with international customers and distributors, managing renewals and terminations as needed.
• Optimize value chains and trading agreements to enhance efficiency.
• Support marketing initiatives aligned with sales calendar and shopper preferences.
• Contribute to trade marketing strategy development backed by data analysis to achieve targets across product lines.
• Manage execution and performance of programs aimed at growth within priority markets.
• Oversee advertising and promotion investments to ensure standards and effectiveness.
• Coordinate channel strategies with market managers and monitor plan implementation.
• Assess return on investment of trade promotions to maximize impact.
• Participate in designing promotional materials and oversee market promotional activities collaboratively with marketing teams.
• Guide trade promotional planning alongside market managers.
• Work closely with consumer planners and market managers providing category and shopper insights for performance improvement.
• Act as sales contact for implementation of digital strategies within the company.
• Prepare market budgets and ensure disciplined financial management.
• Develop, execute, and assess projects aimed at meeting diverse commercial objectives.
• Manage initiatives to advance company goals, increasing market share, customer satisfaction, and operational productivity.
• Improve customer experience by optimizing Net Promoter Scores.

Additional Duties

• Continuously analyze gaps in performance and identify improvement opportunities.
• Provide leadership in aligning marketing strategies with executable programs.
• Ensure coordination between sales and marketing on key projects, including legal compliance and budget management.
• Develop and communicate new product introduction plans.
• Implement and optimize processes linking marketing and sales to boost commercial effectiveness.

Qualifications and Experience

• A minimum of three years' experience in field sales or sales management within comparable environments.
• Proven expertise in analyzing business challenges, developing solutions, market segmentation, and financial analysis.
• Successful record of delivering impactful marketing initiatives with thorough understanding of marketing fundamentals in dynamic settings.
• Strong capabilities in marketing research techniques such as segmentation, profiling, and modeling supported by data analytics.
• Keen awareness of market trends and evolving consumer preferences.
• Good comprehension of the company's strategies, competitive landscape, and industry trends to proactively shape objectives.
• Experience in key account management within the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector.
• Familiarity with ecommerce channels and regional Asia Pacific market dynamics.
• Proven ability to drive systematic customer satisfaction improvements.