National Account Manager

Lincolnshire 

£50,000

This is a high-profile commercial role with ownership of Kyoto’s largest customer account. The National Account Manager will build a strong, forward-looking partnership that delivers sustainable sales and margin growth, strengthens of clients position as a trusted supplier, and creates value for both businesses.

This role is broader than day-to-day account management. It requires strategic thinking, commercial confidence and disciplined follow-through. You will understand our key customer objectives and our customers trading priorities, then turn insight into clear plans covering range development, promotions, forecasting, availability, service and profitable growth.

Key responsibilities

Strategic account leadership

• Own and develop the overall relationship with our key national accounts, acting as Kyoto’s lead commercial contact.
• Create and deliver a clear joint account plan with agreed priorities, actions and measures of success.
• Build trusted relationships across buying, merchandising, marketing, supply chain, technical and operational teams.
• Prepare for and lead account reviews, range reviews, trading meetings and senior-level updates.
• Ensure commitments are clearly recorded, communicated and completed.
• Grow sales, margin and the overall value of the account in a sustainable way.
• Identify opportunities to expand existing ranges and introduce new products, categories and routes to market.
• Develop compelling commercial proposals supported by customer insight, market knowledge and sound financial thinking.
• Plan and evaluate promotions, launches and sales initiatives, ensuring activity has a clear commercial purpose.
• Lead negotiations on pricing, terms, promotions and range opportunities while protecting Kyoto’s commercial position.
• Use sales, margin, stock, availability, returns and promotional data to identify risks and opportunities.
• Maintain a reliable account forecast and work with internal teams to support stock and production planning.
• Monitor performance against plan and take prompt action where results, service or profitability are off track.
• Turn analysis into practical recommendations rather than simply reporting the numbers.
• Work closely with product development, marketing, customer service, operations, finance, quality and supply chain teams.
• Coordinate product launches and range changes from initial proposal through to successful delivery.
• Ensure account requirements are understood and that Kyoto delivers a consistently high level of service.
• Pro actively resolve issues, keeping the customer informed and protecting the long-term relationship.
• Delivering sustained, profitable growth across all National accounts.
• Increasing the breadth, relevance and performance of our clients product range.
• Improving forecast accuracy, availability and execution of launches and promotions.
• Creating a strong pipeline of commercially viable opportunities.
• Building trusted relationships and a reputation for responsiveness, reliability and commercial value.
• Giving our clients leadership team clear visibility of performance, risks, actions and future opportunities.
• Proven experience managing and growing a major national retail account, ideally within furniture, homewares, consumer goods or a related sector.
• A strong record of delivering measurable commercial results, such as sales growth, margin improvement, increased listings, stronger distribution or successful promotional activity.
• Commercially astute, confident with numbers and able to build a persuasive business case.
• Comfortable using customer data and market insight to shape decisions and challenge constructively.
• A skilled relationship-builder who can influence at buyer, cross-functional and senior leadership level.
• Highly organised, with strong forecasting, planning and project management skills.
• Proactive, resilient and accountable, with the determination to see actions through to completion.
• A collaborative team player who communicates clearly and works effectively across departments.

Commerical Growth

• Grow sales, margin and the overall value of the account in a sustainable way.
• Identify opportunities to expand existing ranges and introduce new products, categories and routes to market.
• Develop compelling commercial proposals supported by customer insight, market knowledge and sound financial thinking.
• Plan and evaluate promotions, launches and sales initiatives, ensuring activity has a clear commercial purpose.

If this role is of interest to you and you would like to appluy please get in touch with the team.

Contact information

Fraser Hendry