Customer Category Manager

Nestlé; Crawley; Hybrid; GBP 45,000 - 65,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading company in nutrition seeks a Customer Category Manager to join their Nutrition Commercial Development team. The successful candidate will play a key role in enhancing customer relationships and driving category growth through innovative strategies and insights.

Qualifications

• Previous category or commercial experience required.
• Strong analytical and commercial instincts.
• Experience in FMCG preferred.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute customer category plans to ensure strategic partnerships.
• Drive category initiatives and brand growth across major retailers.
• Monitor industry activity and adapt strategies accordingly.

Skills

Analytical capabilities

Commercial instincts

Relationship building

Data insight

Influencing skills

Job description

Position Snapshot

Business Area: Nestlé Nutrition

Customer Category Manager

Location: Gatwick (Hybrid working – approx. 2 flexible days a week in the office)

Attractive Salary + potential bonus + other fantastic benefits

Championing diversity and inclusion is so important to us; when we embrace different perspectives and give everyone the chance to be the best they can be, we can think in new, creative ways that grow and enhance our business.

At Nestlé, we are proud to support and provide equality of opportunity that supports employees to effectively blend their work life and commitments through hybrid and flexible working arrangements, so speak to us to understand what this could look like for you.

Position Summary

We have a fantastic opportunity for a Customer Category Manager to join our Nutrition Commercial Development team. This is an exciting and pivotal role in the team that will see you develop, manage and execute our customer category plans working in partnership with our major multiple customers. We are looking for an experienced commercial or category professional who has the ability to always ‘put the category first’ ensuring we operate as a real impartial strategic partner to our customers. What’s key is that we deliver value added insight that drives category growth for the long term with our customers.

A Little Bit About Us

For more than 155 years, our Nutrition products have been welcomed into homes around the world, and our long history has established us as the nutritional partner of choice for families and individuals.

We provide a wide range of products and services across every life stage - from newborn to adult - to support lifelong health and well-being for all. Grounded in our deep understanding of today's nutritional challenges and the link between food and health, we leverage our R&D expertise to offer tasty and balanced diets which cater to the different needs of mothers, babies, young children, teens and adults.

Together with like-minded partners, we will continue to be there for everyone, every day, at every stage of life.

Our ecosystem has continued to evolve, with new partnerships to help consumers connect with our brands, and our social platforms provide invaluable support, information, fun and connection for our consumers.

A day in the life of a Customer Category Manager...

As Customer Category Manager, you'll be at the intersection of commercial strategy and brand growth, driving category initiatives and brand innovation that helps the lives of millions of consumers.

Every day brings fresh challenges and opportunities as you orchestrate our category vision across major retailers. You'll partner with marketing teams to transform category & consumer insights into compelling category strategies for our brands that unlock incremental category growth for retailers. Building credibility and trust with retail partners will be key to enabling a collaborative partnership so that you can bring these plans to life at point of purchase.

You will be responsible for developing and deploying tailored channel and category plans at a customer level, including point of purchase solutions to deliver overall category growth resulting in market share growth for Nestlé, whilst ensuring impartiality with the customer.

You will also:

• Lead category strategy development for some of the UK's largest retailers
• Build and nurture key stakeholder relationships across the business & externally with customers
• Drive the category rationale and sell in story for Nestlé innovation and be a driving force to determine how our brands show up in store
• Build great external relationship by being the first port of call and a trusted source for Buying/Merchandising Teams relating to any category questions, insight and recommendations
• Execute Nestlé Category Strategy, personalisation of the Category Strategy to meet the retailer’s needs and generate engagement and commitment.
• Successfully execute the category drivers for the channel within your customer via the delivery of the point of purchase (POP) Vision, through adjacency and flow recommendations to retailers at range reviews and throughout the year.
• Deliver best in class insight, engaging retailers with promotional insight to influence the effective use of promotions, developing and implementing best in class examples of latest online and in store executions.
• Have a deep understanding of the role of the shopper within your customer.
• Lead the Category agenda within the integrated commercial planning (ICP) process, ensuring our internal plans are fit for purpose for our Customers.
• Closely monitor industry and competitor activity, to ensure our strategic commercial vision is in line with market demands in a constantly changing, competitive environment that we work in.
  
  

What Will Make You Successful

While previous category or commercial experience is essential (FMCG experience is a plus), what truly matters is your ability to influence, engage, and deliver results. You will be passionate, tenacious, results focused and enjoy working in a highly energetic and exciting environment. Acting as an ambassador for our Nestlé brands, you will have commercial capability and have experience of influencing across all levels internally and externally, ideally within a matrix structure.

The ideal candidate will bring:

• Sharp commercial instincts backed by strong analytical capabilities
• Proven ability to spot opportunities in data and turn them into compelling business opportunities
• Track record of building strong relationships and influencing at all levels
• Talent for navigating ambiguity and spotting the opportunity in difficult situations
• Experience in creating and selling category plans that retailers want to execute
  
  

We're looking for someone who gets energized by understanding the 'why' behind shopper behaviour and isn't afraid to challenge the status quo. You'll need to be equally comfortable diving into data, presenting to senior stakeholders, and collaborating across teams to drive change.

Most importantly, you'll bring fresh thinking and the courage to disrupt – always with the end goal of driving category growth through our brands.

What You Need To Know

We will be considering and interviewing candidates as they apply and we will occasionally close job advertisements early in the event we receive sufficient applicants, so please don’t delay in submitting your application.

Job advert posting date 03/07/2025

Job advert closing date 17/07/2025

At Nestlé, our values are rooted in respect. When we embrace diversity and give everyone the chance to be the best they can be, we can think in new, creative ways that grow and enhance our business. People of all gender identities, ethnically diverse individuals, people with disabilities, and members of the LGBT+ community are strongly encouraged to apply. If there is anything we can do to accommodate you to participate fully in the application process, please let us know. We take pride in championing inclusion and diversity, our people make up a number of Colleague Networks who represent different experiences and communities who hold us accountable in creating a sense of belonging for all, and our values create the conditions for us to respect the unique contribution you bring. Find out more about our Colleague Networks here: Diversity, equity and inclusion | Nestlé (nestle.co.uk)

We are committed to equal opportunity for all and we may collect relevant data for monitoring purposes during our candidate registration process. Be yourself, everyone else is taken!