Job Description

Responsibilities:

As part of the leadership of our Store Level Team,  the responsibility falls to you to reach out to the instore level team in your area and provide localized support for the instore programs they have been assigned.

Building relationships with your instore team is an important aspect of this role because it will allow for improved communication, so you can drive our clients’ instore objectives. You are responsible for ensuring that your team is executing all the programs that they are assigned and that they are reporting on time.

Help contracted instore staff to execute their responsibilities and encourage them to:

• Build relationships instore and convert instore staff into instore advocates
• Become “Doers who Think”
• Identify problems, determine solutions and take action to generate value for our clients

Basic Responsibilities:

• Assign and route instore staff for each program
• Assign and approve expenses within the budget provided
• Speak with instore staff
• Ensure they your team understand and have the ability to execute the instore tasks assigned
• Check on schedules, reports and compliance, then follow up
• Train and support your team
• Perform instore checks and provide guidance
• Perform work-withs, and provide additional training where needed
• Hire and evaluate instore staff in concert with your Regional Manager & HR team
• Report to and work with your Regional & Program Managers

Communication with your Program Managers:

Communication is a two way street. While it is the responsibility of the Regional & Program Managers to be reaching out to you, you need to be reaching out to them too. Make sure that they understand your instore team and the uniqueness of your market. The better they understand your unique challenges the better they can become your advocate for budgets.  This will also affirm that you are supervising your people.

Reporting:

For each program, it is your role as Area Manager that your team understands not just the instore task, but HOW and WHERE they need to report. Reporting is 50% of all tasks. Work not accurately reported in a timely manner (24hrs max) is of no value to us and more importantly – will not be approved for payment.

You will be reviewing the reports and questioning the data which will keep your team accountable and also will help you better understand how well they are executing their tasks.

As the Area Manager you are the first line of defense to solve problems before senior management and clients identify them.

Action Items:

As your team identifies problems they cannot solve, they will turn to you first. You need to be prepared to answer their questions and provide direction about the next steps to provide the better feedback and value to our clients.

Tips on how to do that:

• Read everything – there will be lots of email and memos to your staff. Make sure you are up to date on the direction and reference material.
• Understand the bigger picture.
• Completely understand the instore tasks and make sure the instore staff do too.
• Speak with your merchandisers frequently – emails are our mail line of communication however you must speak with your reps as well and not reply on email only.

Wave Your Banner:

As Area Manager you will be responsible to recognize and tell everyone when you and your team go above and beyond, experience great success or simply solve a problem that would have gone missed had you not been doing the job. Sharing success stories and sending in pictures of those great success is critical as it provides us with the opportunity to show the client how GREAT you and the teams are!!  

We often run incentives and offer rewards for GREATNESS – nothing better for morale than winning cash & prizes.

Accounts Payable:

Invoices are processed every two weeks. Work is reported in two ways:

1. Paper based reports and invoices must be submitted together.
2. Web-reporting via http://www.ex-sell.com which generates the invoices to be processed.
3. Via Client Websites which generates reporting and invoices to be processed.

Invoices that are unclear or have unsubstantiated expenses will not be processed with the others each cycle.  They will be set aside for follow up and resolution for the next payment period. You will be responsible for ensuring that rates and billing amounts are as agreed upon, and clearly laid-out. Part of your job will be to review the inconsistencies between what staff expected to be paid and what they received.

You will be responsible to making sure that your people are aware of the time lines and get their reporting in on time. Most on line reporting should be completed at the end of each day. Check on staff reporting frequently.  As well look at their invoicing to make sure that they are on budget.

Staffing – Hire or Fire?

Part of the Area Manager responsibilities will be to make sure your stores and routes are covered by qualified & motivated staff and to make any adjustments required.

Supervise your teams and discuss changes as needed with your Program Managers, Any specific changes in contracted staff will come from their recommendations.

The Ex-Sell HR process, has been carefully designed and built to attract and maintain the best people. As the Area Manager, you have a key role in this process, and must adhere to it.

For English speaking markets – the HR Manager will provide you with screened and interview candidates for you to choose from. In the case of French Only markets, you will be asked to execute the HR process, (review resumes, application surveys and interview them) and share your observations with the HR Manager, to best determine which candidate will best suite our goals.

Our Goal for HR include

1. INCREASED REACH ACROSS CANADA
2. INCREASED DEPTH IN ALL KEY MARKETS
3. INCREASED VERSATILITY AND SKILL SETS IN ALL KEY MARKETS
4. PROVIDE INSTORE EXCELLENCE
5. REDUSED TRAVEL/MILEAGE COSTS
6. REDUSED DEPENDENCE ON INDIVIDUAL REPS

Other Duties:

As part of the team, we hope and expect that you will look for ways to contribute and collaborate in way that drive efficiency and our customers’ goals while staying true to our values.

Support our Culture:

As the Area Manager you our leader in your market. There is inspire your team, drive our vision, share our values and execute our mission.

We do this through cooperative and collaborative engagement and support of each other. Focus on the positive, celebrate our successes and attack the challenges together.

The Vision and Mission:

Our Vision:

To build a grow a family of people who commit their energy, experience and enthusiasm to providing packaged good vendors in Canada, exciting, cost effective and measureable solutions to increasing product sales.

Our Mission:

To develop and deploy at team of dedicated, smart and committed people who build relationships in retail stores across Canada, and can leverage those relationships to solve instore problems, take advantage of instore opportunities and grow our clients’ retail sales through improved instore execution.

Our Philosophy:

“Building relationships at store level will create better sales opportunities for our clients.”