Culinary Sales Specialist - Outside Sales

Full Time Elk Grove Village, IL, US

25 days ago Requisition

Salary Range: $70,000.00 To $75,000.00 Annually

This is a unique opportunity for a driven sales professional to build and own a largely untapped territory with tremendous potential for growth. We are seeking a dynamic, energetic, and highly motivated individual who thrives on developing new business, building lasting relationships, and winning in a competitive marketplace. The ideal candidate is personable, self-directed, and aggressively pursues opportunities while maintaining a customer-first mindset.

If you are entrepreneurial by nature, eager to make your mark, and excited by the challenge of turning a greenfield territory into a thriving market, we want to hear from you.

To deliver quality service and cultivate community around the table.

To deliver quality by taking a team-oriented approach to building relationships, resolving issues, and making it easy to be an IGF customer.

IGF’s Sales Department members work together to approach markets with the objectives of securing strong business relationships and dominating the independent food sector within select areas.

Within this, the Culinary Sales Specialists are intellectually curious and understand that quality is the continuous improvement of every aspect of the business. They achieve continuous improvement by holding one another accountable to high performance standards and building rapport with IGF’s customers and vendors to cultivate in-depth knowledge of the products they sell and effective placement strategies.

• Work as a team to manage, expand, and compete for IGF’s share of the food distribution market
• Serve as subject matter experts on how to sell IGF’s products and work together to identify sales opportunities in the marketplace
• Meet and exceed individual and department targets and KPIs
• Develop, manage, and grow IGF’s customer base within designated markets
• Proactively pursue new business: cold-call and regularly follow up on inquiries, leads, and prospects
• Expand existing customer accounts and relationships to:
  • Increase overall sales volume
  • Sell a broad range (high percentage) of products IGF carries
  • Increase IGF’s market share
• Actively manage existing accounts
• Maintain an accurate portfolio of accounts, including customer contact information, targets, and updates
• Stay up to date on customers’ businesses and needs:
  • Visit customers in person to check in and introduce new products
• Develop and continuously improve industry and product knowledge
• Negotiate and manage contract rates, terms, and payment arrangements:
  • Coordinate customers’ contract terms and fees with Accounts Receivable to ensure payment and avoid lapses in service
  • Collect customer payments
  • Submit credit and product-return requests
• Serve as customers’ IGF point of contact:
  • Effectively communicate internally to resolve service issues
  • Effectively communicate issue resolutions to customers
• Attend sales meetings as required
• Comply with company and department policies and procedures
• Perform other duties as assigned

• A minimum of three years of hospitality or food industry experience
• A proven track record of success in the food sales and services industry
• Ability to deal with customers, vendors, and all channels of distribution to assess and analyze situations
• Demonstrated ability to effectively negotiate contracts and terms, and close deals
• Ability to build and maintain relationships across teams, departments, customers, vendors, and service providers
• Ability to work independently or as part of a team – changing gears when required, whether multitasking or adapting working hours; effectively manage time and prioritize…