Sales Strategy and Category Lead, Ready Meals

mars; United States; On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Mars University

Competitive benefits

Industry competitive salary

Job summary

Mars is seeking a Sales Strategy & Category Management Lead for the Ambient Ready Meals platform in North America. You will translate venture strategy into retailer-focused plans, enable sales teams, and shape commercial activity across shelf sets and categories.

Lead cross-functional partnerships, own stakeholder management within Sales, and drive forward-looking sell-in strategies while aligning with category dynamics and retailer expectations.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in account sales, internal sales, category management or customer marketing.
• Strong customer, commercial, and category acumen.
• Ability to convert data and customer input into clear recommendations.
• Persuasive storytelling and presentation skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop and continuously improve the ARM commercial selling story and go-to-market approach.
• Translate venture strategy into clear customer and channel opportunities.
• Create retailer-specific sell-in materials, business cases, objections, FAQs, and sales training.
• Collaborate with account teams for priority meetings and milestones.
• Maintain ARM commercial tools, assumptions, proof points, and best practices.
• Differentiate common versus retailer-specific adaptations across channels.

Skills

Account sales

Category management

Customer marketing

Data-driven insights

Storytelling

Influence without authority

Planning & execution

Ambiguity tolerance

Job description

Job Description

The Sales Strategy & Category Management Lead serves as the commercial architect for the Ambient Ready Meals (ARM) platform in North America. The role translates venture strategy into retailer-relevant commercial plans, equips sales teams to win, and helps ARM compete effectively across the different shelf sets and category structures into which the portfolio is sold.

The role owns ARM stakeholder management across the Sales enterprise and serves as the primary voice of the customer and Sales organization within the venture. It does not own long-term category vision, the innovation pipeline, overall venture strategy, or enterprise-wide stakeholder management outside Sales.

What will you do?

Commercial Strategy & Sales Enablement

• Develop and continuously improve the ARM commercial selling story and go-to-market approach.
• Translate the venture strategy and consumer proposition into clear customer and channel opportunities.
• Build retailer-specific sell-in materials, business cases, objection handling, FAQs, and sales training.
• Partner with account teams in preparation for priority customer meetings, planning sessions, and sell-in milestones.
• Maintain a clear, current library of ARM commercial tools, assumptions, proof points, and best practices.
• Clarify what is common across customers versus what must be adapted by retailer, channel, or shelf set.

Category & Competitive Intelligence Across Shelf Sets

• Build and maintain a fact base across each shelf set and category into which ARM sells, rather than treating ARM as a single established category.
• Map how priority retailers classify, merchandise, and manage the ARM offer across the relevant shelf sets, including differences in category ownership, buyer priorities, competitive sets, adjacencies, and placement conventions.
• Monitor assortment, pricing, promotion, merchandising, shelving, and innovation activity within each relevant shelf set.
• Assess the distinct category dynamics, growth drivers, shopper missions, barriers, and retailer economics associated with each shelf set.
• Identify where one ARM story can travel across shelf sets and where the commercial proposition, evidence, language, or activation model must change.
• Compare opportunities and trade-offs across shelf sets to support clear choices on placement, assortment, customer prioritization, and launch sequencing.
• Translate cross-shelf-set learning into practical recommendations for account teams and the ARM venture leadership team.
• Establish a repeatable learning agenda so that customer feedback and in-market results improve future selling and execution.

Launch & Commercial Planning

• Lead the commercial workstream for Ambient Ready Meal launches, coordinating with account teams and cross-functional partners.
• Develop distribution assumptions, sales inputs, launch scorecards, milestones, and performance tracking.
• Support Customer Collaboration Planning and Joint Business Planning where ARM is in scope.
• Identify commercial risks, dependencies, and decisions early, and **escalate** them with clear recommendations.
• Capture customer and in-market learning and convert it into improvements for subsequent launches.

Sales Enterprise Stakeholder Management

• Serve as the primary ARM representative and point of coordination across the North American Sales enterprise.
• Build productive relationships with Sales leadership, Strategic Demand, account teams, channel teams, and other relevant Sales stakeholders.
• Represent ARM priorities in Sales forums, planning processes, customer readiness discussions, and performance reviews.
• Create clarity on decisions, asks, ownership, timing, and implications for Sales teams.
• Bring the voice of Sales and the customer back into ARM decisions without assuming ownership for broader venture or enterprise alignment.
• Build advocacy and accountability for ARM priorities within Sales while respecting account-team ownership of customer relationships.

What are we looking for?

• 10+ years of experience in Account sales, internal sales, category management or customer marketing.
• Strong customer, commercial, and category acumen-
• Ability to convert data and customer input into clear recommendations
• Strong persuasive storytelling and presentation skills
• Planning, prioritization, and disciplined follow-through
• Ability to influence across Sales without direct authority.
• Comfort operating with ambiguity while creating structure for others.
• Learning agility, resilience, and a practical, action-oriented mindset.
• Experience working with major retailers and channels with ability to flex story and sell-in to specific context.

What you can expect from Mars

• Work with diverse and talented Associates, all guided by The Five Principles.
• Join a purpose driven company, where we're striving to build the world we want tomorrow, today.
• A strong focus on learning and development support from day one, including access to our in-house Mars University.
• An industry competitive salary and benefits pa