- Business: emap
- Brand: Quality Food Awards
- Base Location: Croydon/Hybrid ( 3 days from home, 2 days in the office)
- Employment Type: Full time, 12-13 months Fixed-term contract ( Maternity cover) until 31/05/2024
- Salary: £55,000 DOE+ 30% OTE + Benefits
About the company and the brand:
Trading as emap for its B2B division, Metropolis International is a fast-growing business, privately owned Media Group with over £50m of annual revenue, structured in two divisions – consumer media, and business-to-business media. In both parts of the business, we run print magazines, digital content and both face-to-face and virtual awards, conferences and other events. Metropolis is actively looking at acquiring more media businesses. We employ over 480 people in offices in West London, Croydon, Fleet street, Devon and Dublin.
As Commercial Director, you will be responsible for managing the UK and Irish Quality Food Awards. The UK Quality Food Awards is now in its 44th year, and the Irish Quality Food and Drink Awards this year celebrates its 10th birthday. These awards are open to anyone who creates a food product (and drink in Ireland), whether they be sold in supermarkets, wholesalers, online, farm shops, or are for foodservice, any product is eligible.
emap has a long and rich heritage of being the custodian of a portfolio of world-class media brands. We produce content that informs and progresses some of the largest and most respected businesses within the fastest moving and most influential sectors in the UK.
Our industry leading brands sit at the heart of business powerful communities like packaging, grocery, automotive retail, health, property, construction, architecture and fashion. emap people are ambitious, curious by nature and use this to create great products and solutions. emap people are great communicators to our customers and have deep personal integrity. We are a performance-driven growth business with an entrepreneurial and sociable spirit.
Overall Purpose of the Role:
This role is a one-year (up to 13 months with handover either side) contract to run the Quality Food Awards Portfolio. The two awards programmes (one in UK, one in Ireland) have grown to be hugely successful and are the longest running in the UK (44 years) and now 10 years in Ireland. The role involves managing the relationships between the key accounts on the brand, such as retailers, who provide around 75% of the entry revenue, to assist them with their entry strategy and assist them in making the process smooth. Additionally, the role also includes selling sponsorship and agreeing partnerships, and managing those relationships through the awards programme. The events team manage the judges and judging dates/schedule, but to attend some of the judging and meet some of the key judges too. The Irish Qs culminates in a black tie awards dinner in September, and the UK Qs will be a more informal awards centring on a networking focus.
Key Responsibilities:
- Assist the MD in being the figurehead of the Quality Food Awards brands within the marketplace.
- Identify new revenue streams (NPD on and offline) to generate sustainable growth, year on year.
- Maintain and grow share of entry/sponsorship revenues.
- Together with the MD and finance team, prepare budgets and forecasts.
- Manage divisional costs according to budget (e.g., expenses, ad promotion, recruitment costs, P&L of NPD).
- Demonstrate excellent face to face and presentation skills.
- Demonstrate exceptional time management skills- You will be required to manage your time very effectively.
Strategy and Sales Development
- Develop and implement the operational sales plan for each product you are responsible for, in line with the brand strategy as directed by MD.
- Ensure effective communication of the strategy to your team.
- Forecast accurately on a rolling basis, and annualised revenue/profit contribution where applicable.
Market & Product Knowledge
- Ensure a thorough working knowledge of the product sectors for which you are responsible, their brand extensions and the markets in which they operate.
- Ensure full awareness of all competitor activity across events, including target audience and sales stories.
Relationship Management
- Develop and maintain relationships with the brands key accounts, based on an understanding of their business and market dynamics.
- Understand the customers business environment and their needs.
- Work with your Peer Group i.e., Commercial Directors to develop and implement sales best practice across the wider business.
Sales Performance
- Deliver/exceed against brand annual sales targets (revenue/share/yield)
- Demonstrate clear sales leadership by assisting your direct reports to deliver best practice and revenues.
- Focus on retention and growth, both revenue and customers.
- Define sales patch, segment opportunity; focus effort and manage, measure market shares and pipelines.
People Management
- Retain and develop high achievers.
- Manage, Coach, and develop direct reports in accordance with HR guidelines.
- To conduct regular appraisals with your direct reports, identifying stretching and developing objectives as appropriate.
- Join weekly meetings with the Events and Marketing team to discuss the events and planning
- Proactively encourage collaboration to achieve team goals.
- Develop an open, honest, and supportive team environment
Skills and Experience:
- Strong commercial awareness
- Ability to demonstrate significant experience in leading a team in a fast-paced environment.
- Hard working
- Excellent communicator with exceptional negotiation and influencing skills.
- Experience of creating urgency and closing.
Core Competencies:
- Planning & Organisation.
- Commercial Awareness.
- Sales structure & process.
- Relationship Building.
- Communicating and Influencing.
- Ability to work with skill and at pace.
- Experience of coaching.
- Effective time management.
- Maintains high accuracy, and attention to detail.
Personal Attributes:
- Professional and well-presented.
- Polite and highly articulate.
- Positive and enthusiastic attitude
- Strong interpersonal skills.
- Maintains professionalism.
- Drive and determination.
- Competitive and results orientated.
- Problem solver.
- Appreciation of wider business strategies within emap and across the group.
- Self-motivated.
Learning & Development
At emap, we believe that employee learning and development are the key drivers of our success. To ensure continuous growth and meet the ever-changing demands of the workplace, we provide an environment that fosters continuous development for our employees.
Our employees are encouraged to identify their areas of personal and professional development aligned with our strategic areas, including management development, health, safety & wellbeing, sales, events management, marketing strategy, editorial, and information technology. We have a structured framework designed to help equip our employees with the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to excel in their job roles, contributing to achieving our organizational objectives.
To support our employees’ career development, we have designed specialized programs, as well as other stand-alone role-specific and generic courses, under the emap academy.
This exciting position is a full-time hybrid role. 2 days in the office, 3 days from home. This could change over time depending on business needs.
Benefits: emap is part of Metropolis Group. Together we are committed to providing a happy and healthy place to work, so we offer fantastic benefits and perks to our employees.
- 25 days of holiday per year (with the option to buy or sell)
- Health plan
- Life assurance
- Cycle-to-work scheme
- Discounted gym memberships
- Retail discount vouchers
- Rail season ticket loans
- Private virtual GP access
- Pension scheme
- Income protection and more
- Continuous learning & development opportunities
- Seasonal flu jabs on site
- One paid volunteer day per year
- Summer and Winter parties
- Work from home during August
- In-house Excellence Awards and other innovation projects
Privacy: Metropolis Group respects the privacy of every person for whom we have personal data. We comply with data protection legislation such as the Data Protection Act 1998 and the General Data Protection Regulation which regulates the processing of data and ensures that your data is processed fairly and lawfully, is kept secure and only that data necessary for any processing is kept. You can see our privacy policy at www.metropolis.co.uk/privacy.
Diversity and Inclusion: We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity and inclusion. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, age, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity, marriage and civil partnership, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, or disability status.
How to apply: Please send your CV and covering letter to bobby.pepelyashka@emap.com . Due to the volume of applications, we receive, we are unable to give individual feedback at the application stage, however if you are successfully shortlisted you will be contacted within 10 working days of the closing date.