Strategic Account Manager

Sonoco; United States; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Sonoco is seeking a Senior Account Manager for Protective Packaging to lead strategic accounts across procurement, engineering, operations, quality, and supply chain. You will partner with plant and regional teams to drive growth, profitability, and customer satisfaction.

Responsibilities include developing account plans, coordinating pricing and contracts, and delivering value projects that reduce total cost of ownership while improving service and sustainability.

Qualifications

• Ability to build and manage relationships with key customer stakeholders.
• Experience in strategic account planning and growth initiatives.
• Strong collaboration with multiple internal teams to deliver value.
• Understanding of packaging solutions and related value propositions.

Responsibilities

• Owns assigned Protective Packaging strategic accounts, including strategy, growth, profitability and customer satisfaction.
• Prepare and maintain strategic account plans with relationship mapping and opportunity pipeline.
• Lead cross-functional execution of account plans with plant, sales, operations, engineering, quality and finance.
• Coordinate pricing, contracts, bids, specifications, quality, service, and commercial commitments.
• Identify and lead customer value projects that improve total cost of ownership.
• Maintain awareness of market trends and competitive activity for assigned accounts.

Skills

Relationship building

Strategic account management

Cross-functional leadership

Pricing strategy

Job description

From a small family business to a multi-billion-dollar global company, Sonoco has been changing the face of products and packaging since 1899 - all while keeping the heart of "People Build Businesses" alive.

Our talented people are at the core of our growth, constantly reinventing the Sonoco wheel with brilliant solutions every year. Today we are a world leader in global packaging solutions with diversified operations in over 34 countries. We're extremely proud of our portfolio of brands, our achievements in sustainability and industrialization and the groundbreaking work accomplished by our people.

The safety and health of employees takes precedence over any other duties of this position.

What you will be doing:

• Develop and manage strong relationships with key customer stakeholders across procurement, engineering, operations, quality, supply chain, and executive leadership.
• Owns assigned Protective Packaging strategic accounts, including account strategy, growth plans, profitability, customer satisfaction, and execution across all participating Sonoco locations.
• Prepare and maintain strategic account plans, including relationship mapping, opportunity pipeline, pricing strategy, revenue and margin objectives, competitive position, value-creation initiatives, and long-term growth plans.
• Lead cross-functional execution of account plans with plant, regional sales, operations, engineering, quality, customer service, finance, product development, and division leadership teams.
• Monitor protective packaging, appliance, HVAC, electronics, durable goods, material, logistics, sustainability, and manufacturing trends that impact assigned accounts and provide regular updates to management.
• Analyze customer potential, sales performance, forecast changes, and volume trends to support account planning and business decisions.
• Coordinate pricing, contract, bid proposal, specification, quality, service, and commercial commitments with appropriate internal stakeholders.
• Identify and lead customer value projects that improve total cost of ownership, including packaging performance, damage reduction, freight and logistics efficiency, labor productivity, material optimization, SKU rationalization, quality improvement, and manufacturing flow.
• Keeps line and staff personnel informed as to competitive activity at accounts assigned to include share, price, quality, product offerings, and all other areas of involvement
• Work with design, engineering, operations, and product development resources to identify protective packaging solutions, new applications, material substitutions, productivity improvements, sustainability improvements, and expanded use of existing product platforms.
• Partner with plant and regional teams to resolve customer complaints, quality issues, service concerns, and open action items in a timely and professional manner.
• Communicates regularly with other Sonoco businesses and functional teams to coordinate activity on common accounts, identify cross-selling opportunities, share customer intelligence, and present one coordinated Sonoco approach to the customer.
• Protects assets, confidential and restricted information, developments, specifications, materials, legal obligations, and other such data in contacts with external parties
• Complies with all company policies
• Is responsible for ensuring AR/DSO is managed and kept within the terms of the customer agreement.
• Coordinate regular business reviews with assigned accounts to review performance, service, quality, forecast changes, open issues, innovation priorities, and joint value-generation opportunities.
• Attend appropriate industry events and customer-facing forums and develop subject‑matter expertise in targeted Protective Packaging markets, including appliance, HVAC, electronics, durable goods, and industrial manufacturing.
• Reports to the Senior Director, Protective Packaging & Partitions.
• Demonstrates knowledge and understanding of Sonoco including businesses, organizational structure, value drivers, products and services, and competitive market position
• Can deliver Boa