Key Account Manager - Quadrille

Can you help make some of the world’s biggest cookery brands even bigger? Are you excited about seeking out new opportunities in the dynamic UK market? If you’re driven, ambitious and looking for your next role in sales then, look no further, a rare and exciting opportunity has arisen for a Key Account Manager to join the Quadrille Sales team and work on some of the biggest lifestyle books in the UK.

Quadrille is a global, award-winning food and lifestyle publisher. We believe in the transformative power of books – our mission is to enrich readers’ lives, feed minds and fuel creativity. Home to experts, household names and bright new talent in cookery, craft, lifestyle and gift, we combine cutting-edge design with inspiring content for audiences around the world. 

The role:

We are looking for a confident, commercially minded individual to join our Sales Team and lead our supermarket business with Tesco, Sainsburys and Asda, as well as managing trade wholesalers, and our business with independent bookshops.

We are looking for someone with a customer first approach, who is a strong communicator and has a track record of building excellent relationships with a variety of internal and external stakeholders. Reporting to the UK Sales Manager, this role involves implementing strategic sales initiatives and identifying new opportunities with the biggest Supermarkets in the UK, who are vital to our success. We want you to become an expert in this area, maximizing turnover through skilled negotiation, and bring a market-focused perspective back to the business.  Much of your success will come through being a great relationship-builder, an agile decision-maker and a proven team player.

Key responsibilities:

• Presenting key titles to the mass market and securing support for relevant titles

• Building and maintaining excellent relationships with buyers

• Organisation and preparation for customer meetings, completing title information grids and building PowerPoint presentations.

• Driving sales, in a profitable way, to contribute to achieving our divisional annual budget and growth targets

• Proactively feeding your expert market knowledge back into the division and working with key stakeholders to influence and drive strategy across the business

• Working collaboratively across sales, marketing, publicity and editorial teams, as well as other UK account managers, in order to maximise sales opportunities and to help connect readers with our authors and books

• Reporting and analysing sales and contributing to relevant divisional meetings

What you’ll bring

Essential criteria:

• Experience in sales and account management.

• A passion for publishing and demonstrable interest in working specifically for Quadrille

• Excellent presentation and negotiation skills

• Brilliant at building and maintaining exceptionally strong relationships

• Excellent communication, persuasion and organisational skills with the ability to prioritise, adapt and multitask a varied workload in a fast-paced environment

• Keen attention to detail

• A pro-active and entrepreneurial mindset with the ability to problem-solve

• Numeracy and analytical skills

• Competent Excel skills

Preferred criteria:

• Direct experience working with supermarkets is advantageous but not essential.

Application instructions

Please apply with your CV and cover letter outlining why you are the right candidate for the role by 11:59pm on Monday 5th May.

Please ensure you include a cover letter, as it is a crucial part of our assessment process. The cover letter offers an opportunity to show how your experience and interests align with the role requirements. Typically, we expect the cover letter to be no more than one or two pages in length.

Salary

Up to £36,000 dependent on how your skills and experience align to the role, plus bonus and benefits.

Hybrid working

While our offices across the UK are places to connect, collaborate and celebrate with colleagues, we recognise that flexibility around where you work is just as important. For this role we have a hybrid approach, the expectation is that you will be working a minimum of two days a week from the office. 

About Penguin

We’re the UK’s largest publisher; made up of some 2,000 people and publishing over 1,500 books each year. Our doors are open to all kinds of talent. In a constantly evolving industry, we work hard to stretch the definition of the word publisher. Here, you’ll work with a breadth of talent who all play their part to make each of our books a success. Together, we make books for everyone because a book can change anyone.

The recruitment process

As a Disability Confident Committed organisation, we offer interviews to candidates with a disability who meet the essential criteria for the role, and opt-in on their application form. The essential criteria for this role are listed as part of the ‘What you’ll bring’ section. There may be times when the volume of applications means we cannot take all eligible candidates to interview.

We encourage you to tell us about any reasonable adjustments you may need by emailing PRHCareersUK@penguinrandomhouse.co.uk. Remember, you only need to share what you are comfortable to for us to support your request.

Please note, we are not able to accept agency CVs for this role. Any CVs sent speculatively will not be eligible for a fee.

Company: Penguin Books Limited 

Country: United Kingdom 

State/Region: London 

City: London 

Postal Code: SW11 7BW 

Job ID: 279371