Senior Account Manager - Chemical Sector

Overview

Role: Senior Account Manager - Chemicals Sector

Location: UK Flexible/ Home-based

Salary range: £50,000 - £65,000

Role ID: 2023-1831

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Are you an accomplished Account Manager ready to take the next step in your career?

We are looking for a passionate and experienced account manager who is focused on both team leading a small group of 3-4 account managers, as well as developing and growing the relationships and corresponding order book within their own account portfolio of accounts with a suite of sustainability, emergency response, and regulatory compliance solutions within the chemical industry. This role would also act as a de facto deputy to the Head of Account Management.

The primary focus is on the chemical sector under the banner of our National Chemical Emergency Response Centre (NCEC) brand. As Senior Account Manager, you’ll have a two-fold focus:

Firstly, you'll lead, support, and develop a group of generalise account managers working within our NCEC customer suite. Your role will primarily involve team leadership and providing coaching support to help them achieve their objectives. You'll also contribute to the development of our account management function and assist the Head of Account Management in customer development activities.

Secondly, you'll provide excellent account management to a set of existing accounts within our chemical profile. By building strong client relationships, you'll gain a deep understanding of their business challenges across the NCEC and wider Ricardo product suite. You'll identify market trends, competitor insights, and seize opportunities to upsell and cross-sell our services, all while ensuring maximum customer retention.

As part of Ricardo's dynamic Sales Team, you'll report to the Head of Account Management. This role is one of three different levels within our account management team, offering room for growth and advancement.

If you're ready to take on this exciting challenge, apply now and become a valuable member of our team at Ricardo.

We encourage you to apply for this role if you have the following key competencies and experience:

• An aspiring leader with experience of coaching or managing a team of account managers to success.
• Broad experience of Account Management sales and retention best practice.
• Demonstrable experience of quickly establishing relationships within accounts and leveraging relationships to achieve personal and business objectives.
• Experience of over-performance against individual account management development and retention targets
• A professional, organised and disciplined individual who has a proven track record of effectively and efficiently managing a large customer base.
• An awareness of how to make effective decisions in a complex delivery environment, balancing the business development objectives with the client’s requirements.

Desirable experience

• Experience of working within a consultative sales environment, for example within a consultancy, software, or similar environment.
• Experience in working within a sustainability, risk management, chemical response, regulatory or safety business area.
• Experience working with a CRM system, especially MS Dynamics, would be an advantage.

As Senior Account Manager you should have the following skills and behaviours:

• An organised, commercially aware, target focused Account Manager professional who appreciates excellent customer service and client relationships are critical to the achieving this.
• A team player able to work with a wide range of stakeholders both inside and outside of the organisation, being comfortable and confident in working with clients to ensure they are getting value from our services, and seeking further support opportunities
• Committed to continuous improvement of the business, the service delivery, and the clients risk management.
• Enthusiastic about sharing knowledge and expertise with the team to encourage improvement in the function of the customer service team as a whole
• Comfortable working in a dynamic operational environment, occasionally involving elements of quick decision-making
• Willing to embrace Ricardo’s values of Passion, Innovation, Integrity and Respect and aim to lead others towards high standards of behaviour and performance.

As Senior Account Manager your main responsibilities will be:

• Team Lead - Lead, support, develop and inspire a team of c. 3-4 account managers, driving collaboration, activity, innovation, and success. Owning each team members individual career development plans and maintain the culture of personal and functional development.
• Relationship Development – working directly with their own accounts to develop and expand the relationships we hold within them. The purpose is to work with them to identify business challenges they face across chemical risk and sustainability and create solutions alongside these.
• Account management - Help implement specific activities which support the account management strategy and execution; to ensure client satisfaction and efficiency of delivery, communications and service management. There will be an emphasis on external communications in order to raise the profile and leverage cross sell/up sell opportunities
• Engagement- Focus on engaging directly with the client base to achieve the above, and also to identify key market insights, including market trends, regulatory challenges and competitor activity. They will input into the business development strategy internally which ensures we are demonstrating our value and differentiation versus our competitors, whilst identifying new product development opportunities.
• Managing risk - They will act on any issues affecting prompt payment, satisfaction, long-term retention, etc. recognising, and where possible, preventing any risks arising from non-standard delivery, working with the respective teams.
• Guidance - Liaise with internal teams whose roles relate to service delivery, e.g.: consultants, customer services, product delivery team (emergency responders, procedures, data, accounts) and sales teams to advise and provide guidance on elements of Account Manager enabling others to deliver a high-quality service.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on.  Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Next steps

We are a disability confident employer, please advise the recruitment team via recruit.ee@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.