Business-to-Business Pricing Bid/Contract Management Director – Office Products

Business-to-Business Pricing Bid/Contract Management Director ? Office Products

 

 

PURPOSE

 

Responsible for all aspects bid management across all business segments.  Full accountability for managing bid/contract initiatives and driving incremental gross profit for this large, international business to business retailer.  Drive execution of all bid related activities (e.g., including terms and conditions, eliminating price caps).  Create more centralized contracting and bid management process designed to deliver consistent best practices regarding the setting of initial price points, proposing specific contract terms and conditions, and the inherent trade-off between the two areas.  Build a world-class bid organization, while developing critical skills in initiative execution and improved bid/contract management.  Manage the successful integration of technology into the bid environment (e.g., integrating more sophisticated price algorithms, supporting implementation of bid manager).

 

Serves as representative to group responsible for outlining all bid related activities (group includes SVP of Sales, VP of Marketing, Head of Sales ? Strategic, Head of Sales ? Commercial).  Enable field to drive improved customer profit and margins without affecting long-term sales growth targets.

 

This position will be measured on ability to drive incremental GP dollars through systemic improvements and specific initiatives, while building a world class bid management organization to drive continuous improvement

 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES in order of importance. Other duties may be assigned.

 

1. Build a world-class bid organization to implement new processes to achieve specific customer profit targets

? Create an organization capable of providing innovative ideas to improve pricing through bid based actions

? Develop skills and acquire talent necessary to take a proactive, influenced-based approach to driving field-level bid/contract improvement

? Ensure adequate succession plan is in place by attracting and retaining pricing expertise and general management talent

? Lead creation of bid win/loss database and utilize to draw insights about competitive behavior and improved initial price points

? Utilized customer profitability information to improve evaluation of price/contract term trade-offs

? Create new company standard contract template and push integration into the bid process

 

2. Set strategy and direction for bids/contracting

? Build and utilized comprehensive contract database to better understand company?s exposure and strategic contract direction

? Create clear trade-off analysis between pricing and contract terms and their ability to impact customer profitability

? Broadly communicate and build support for initial pricing/contracting strategy within the field and senior leadership

 

3. Create and drive broad initial pricing initiatives

? Successfully implement price indexing and risk factors into the setting of all initial price points

? Identify and build new pricing programs to create lifetime profitability enhancements

? Significantly expand our product and customer segment patterns to leverage opportunities relative to product life cycles and buying behaviors

 

4. Develop bid/contract management center of excellence

? Identify and quantify key contract terms and conditions that drive operating profit

? Develop initial bid pricing strategy based on analytic view of market conditions and current contract exposure

? Develop actionable insight from pattern recognition gained through win/loss analysis

 

5. Drive awareness of margin importance and build support for margin agenda throughout senior leadership and all business units

? Across all markets, build a fact-based case for change, including specific account level recommendations

? Lead communication to senior leadership (meetings, presentations) regarding customer performance and potential actions, while supporting senior leadership in creating margin messages for the field

? Enable line leaders to take action by providing proper tools (including IT enabled reporting), recommendations and business support (including business rationale for actions for both internal and customer communication)

 

6. Support administrative tasks associated with the Managing Director role

? Train executive and sales teams on Bid/Contracting reports, processes, and analyses.

? Prepare and update the organization budget.  Monitors spending variances to assure compliance with budget.

 

PRIMARY INTERACTIONS

 

Primary interaction with the VP, Pricing, Margin & Bids, COO, SVP ? Sales, VP ? Marketing, VP Sales ? Strategic, VP Sales ? Commercial, Region VP?s, Market Leaders

 

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES

 

Will supervise two Directors and supporting staff.  This function is targeted at a total headcount of 30 (1 Exec, 20 Bids, 9 Contracts & Bid Analytics)

 

COMPETENCIES:

 

? Hands-on leadership skills/ability to drive and execute in a P&L environment

? Strong strategic thinker

? Considered future leader with strong prospects to move into more senior (e.g., general manager, corporate leadership) position

? The individual must be able to synthesize marketing and pricing information to draw insights and actionable recommendations (e.g., structure the problem, collect data, identify issues, and present results)

? Ability to balance price and contract terms to deliver the most gross profit positive and likely pocket margin bid for the company (often using lower headline prices win bids)

? Conceptual thinking skills to recognize and capitalize on both price/T&Cs as well as negotiation patterns based on repeated deals against common large competitors (Max, Depot, Staples)

? Willingness to challenge status quo and promote change with influencing skills necessary to build field/senior management consensus around bid activities

? Strong communication skills to develop and deliver compelling rationale for bid improvements

? Deep understanding of office products market

? Experience delivering sustained results in a profit & loss environment

? Practical knowledge regarding customer profitability, which can be leveraged to drive pocket margin

? Coaching skills necessary to build skills in direct reports, which could be significantly different from original expectations of the roles

 

EDUCATION and/or EXPERIENCE

 

Bachelor?s Degree in Accounting, Finance, or Business Administration.  Six plus years of direct experience doing the aforementioned.  Six plus years of related management experience interfacing with Sr. Executives.

 

Location: Denver, CO

Full Relocation Assistance Provided.

 

Interested candidates with the aforementioned experience, email your resume as an MS Word attachment in confidence to: steve@pri.jobs   Put ?Pricing/Bid Director? in the subject line.  Include your daytime phone number and compensation requirements.  Thank you.