About this Position At Henkel, you’ll be part of an organization that’s shaping the future through innovation, sustainability and collaboration. With our trusted brands like Persil®, ‘all®, Loctite®, Snuggle®, and Schwarzkopf® and our cutting-edge technologies, you’ll have countless opportunities to explore new paths and grow.
This position is with our Adhesive Technologies business unit – where we empower our people to transform industries and provide our customers with a competitive advantage through adhesives, sealants and functional coatings.
Dare to learn new skills, advance in your career and make an impact at Henkel.
What you’ll do
- Position Purpose The Sales Key Account Manager is responsible for developing and executing the commercial strategy for assigned strategic customers. The role builds trusted, long-term relationships, expands profitable business, protects the existing portfolio, and aligns internal teams to deliver customer commitments. Acting as the primary commercial interface, the Key Account Manager converts customer priorities and market insights into actionable growth plans, negotiations, and cross-functional execution.
- Account strategy: Develop and maintain a comprehensive account plan covering customer priorities, growth opportunities, competitive position, decision makers, risks, and required actions.
- Revenue and profitability: Deliver sales, margin, pricing, working-capital, and portfolio objectives for assigned accounts; identify and close gaps against plan.
- Customer relationships: Build effective relationships across purchasing, engineering, operations, quality, finance, and senior leadership to strengthen preferred-supplier status.
- Opportunity management: Identify, qualify, prioritize, and convert new business opportunities; maintain an accurate opportunity pipeline and lead pursuit strategies through award and launch.
- Commercial negotiations: Lead quotations, contracts, pricing actions, cost-recovery discussions, payment terms, and other commercial agreements while protecting long-term value and compliance.
- Customer advocacy: Translate customer requirements, future platforms, technology roadmaps, and pain points into clear internal priorities and value propositions.
- Cross-functional leadership: Coordinate application engineering, product development, operations, supply chain, quality, finance, legal, and customer service to deliver commitments and resolve issues.
- Launch and program support: Provide commercial leadership during qualification, launch, transfer, and change‑management activities, ensuring clear ownership, milestones, and customer communication.
- Issue and escalation management: Lead timely, fact-based responses to supply, quality, service, or commercial escalations; align recovery plans and maintain customer confidence.
- Forecasting and reporting: Maintain accurate sales forecasts, pricing records, opportunity data, customer intelligence, and executive account updates.
- Market and competitive insight: Monitor customer strategies, industry trends, competitor activity, and market dynamics