Job Description

Can you help make some of the world's biggest children's 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, we might have the perfect opportunity for you.
The UK children's trade team is excited to welcome a proactive, commercially aware individual to join us as a Key Account Manager. Reporting to the Sales Manager, this role involves implementing strategic sales initiatives and identifying new opportunities for two of the biggest retailers in the UK, Waterstones and Tesco.
You will work across the Puffin, Ladybird, and Penguin lists for Penguin Random House Children's (PRHC), managing renowned names in children's publishing including Tom Fletcher, Katie Kirby, and Bluey.
Your mission will be to manage key relationships with retailers, maximise turnover through skilled negotiation, and bring a market-focused perspective back to the business.
Relationships are central to this role. You will collaborate with publishing and communications colleagues within PRHC, as well as other UK account managers, to proactively drive sales opportunities and connect our customers with our authors, brands, and books.
Key responsibilities:

• Presenting key titles to the mass market and highstreet retailers and securing support for relevant titles.
• Building and maintaining excellent relationships with buyers and working closely with them to launch some of our biggest authors in the UK.
• 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, brands and books
• Reporting and analysing sales and contributing to relevant divisional meetings

What you'll bring
Essential criteria:

• Proven experience in a sales role or similar, with demonstrable customer relationships and accounts management experience.
• A track record of strong negotiation skills, which you'll use to secure the best space for PRHC's books at retail.
• Genuine interest and passion for children's books and sales; you will be an advocate for the children's division within the wider UK sales structure.
• The ability to persuade and communicate confidently. You'll be working closely with a wide variety of stakeholders internally and externally, so this will drive success in this role.
• A knack for numbers, data, and analytics will add rigor to your conversations. You will regularly share market data with our publishing teams, so analytical ability is important.
• An eye for detail, with experience of working with a physical supply chain advantageous.
• Strong organisation and time management skills, with the ability to work autonomously and use initiative.

Preferred criteria:

• Experience working within a creative industry.
• Direct experience working with supermarkets and/or high street retailers 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 Sunday 19th October.
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
Circa 42,000 dependent on how your skills and experience align to the role, plus 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 expect that you will work from our office in London 2 days per week.
Interviews
For candidates shortlisted to interview, we will be seeking to hold interviews on week commencing 27th October.
Company: The Random House Group Limited | Job ID: 283417

Skills Required