Retail Sales Planning Manager
Sales & Business Development
Remote
About the Role
Blueland is seeking a highly organized, analytical, and proactive Retail Sales Planning Manager to serve as the operational backbone of our retail business. This role will partner closely with Retail Sales, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Customer Service, and Operations to ensure our retail customers have the right products, pricing, promotions, and execution to drive sustainable growth.
The Retail Sales Planning Manager will own many of the critical processes that keep our retail business running—from new item setup and promotional planning to retail execution, customer documentation, inventory management, and business reporting. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in a fast-paced environment, enjoys solving problems, maintains strong operational discipline, and is passionate about building scalable processes that enable commercial success. This role reports to the VP of Retail Sales.
Responsibilities
- Coordinate retailer promotions in collaboration with the respective account sales leader from planning through execution.
- Support retailer merchandising/marketing initiatives including endcaps, demos, sampling programs, in-store signage, digital campaigns, and more.
- Lead retail execution programs and field activity through third-party partners.
- Maintain and operationalize retailer-agnostic shopper marketing programs including reward apps, coupons, IRCs, community events, and other ad hoc opportunities.
- Manage new item setup and product onboarding across retail customers, brokers, and other third-party resources.
- Maintain retailer price lists, customer contracts, cost change documentation, and promotional calendars.
- Own retailer line review and reset calendars while ensuring all supporting materials are accurate and up to date.
- Manage SKU master files, retailer documentation, and commercial knowledge repositories.
- Maintain retail sales reporting, including updating latest performance data.
- Utilize automated and ad hoc analyses to inform shipment and promotional forecasts, working closely with account sales leaders to input monthly forecast adjustments.
- Analyze retailer inventory levels and ordering trends, quickly identifying potential out-of-stock risks or opportunities.
- Monitor excess inventory and partner with cross-functional teams to develop action plans.
- Facilitate retail sales team’s monthly S&OP responsibilities, ensuring forecast updates, review meetings, documentation, etc. are accomplished accurately and on time.
- Collaborate with Finance on deductions, reclaims, promotional planning, pricing updates, and customer financial documentation/reconciliation.
- Work closely with Supply Chain to ensure appropriate levels of inventory and ultimately orchestrate successful execution of customer plans.
- Coordinate with Marketing on shopper marketing programs and retailer activation opportunities.
- Serve as internal communications point of contact for various ad hoc retail requests.
Business Analysis & Forecasting
Cross-Functional Partnership
Qualifications
- 2-5 years of experience in the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry.
- Advanced proficiency in Google Suite, Microsoft Excel, and PowerPoint.
- Experience forecasting/demand planning and S&OP processes and tools preferred.
- Familiarity with Kroger, Meijer, UNFI, Whole Foods, Thrive, Target, and Costco and their portals preferred.
- Experience with Looker (or similar BI/visualization tools) is a plus.
- Strong track record of leveraging data to build compelling business cases.
- Exceptional organizational skills and attention to detail, ensuring data accuracy.
- Ability to travel 2-4X per year for customer & Blueland team meetings, demos, etc.