Senior / Key Account Manager

Location: Hybrid London, UK (3+ days office based)

Seniority: Mid-level

• Closing: 12:55am, 2nd Mar 2025 GMT

Perks and benefits

• Work from home option
• Wellness programs
• Employee Assistance Programme
• Enhanced maternity and paternity leave
• Mentoring/coaching
• Cycle to work scheme

Job Description

An exciting opportunity has arisen to join our HQ, Pavilion, Mills & Boon and Avon divisions, working with retailers, the publishing division, as well as the wider UK sales team. The Key Account Manager is an integral part of the UK Sales team, reporting directly into the Divisional Sales Director.

The role requires the ability to form strong working relationships with internal and external stakeholders, excellent organisation skills and a desire to be involved in the whole publishing process. Ultimately, we are looking for someone who can take the initiative and is truly eager to work on our amazing lists. The successful candidate will be responsible alongside the Sales Director for delivering the adult sales budget, through effective development and implementation of the company sales strategies.

This role offers the opportunity to gain great experience working across a variety of commercial fiction and non-fiction brands. HQ is an award-winning imprint that spans a range of fiction and nonfiction, including Adele Parks, Linwood Barclay, Sarah Morgan and Erica James as well as genre busting non-fiction such as Joe Wicks, Davina McCall, BOSH, and Joe Swash. Avon has hand grown some of the strongest commercial authors in the market, from C L Taylor and Helen Fields to breakout successes from the likes of Alice Hunter and Alex Pine. It is also one of the most digitally innovative publishers in the industry.

The person will need to be able to collaborate with colleagues across the business to ensure overall business goals are met and play a key role in ensuring the commercial success of the divisions' key authors and brands across the key UK accounts, from supermarkets and mass market channels to online and high-street.

The Team are open to considering those at the Key Account Manager or Senior Key Account Manager level. Job title will be determined by the hiring manager and will depend on interview performance and experience level.

Core responsibilities:

1. Account management for Avon on all key accounts plus account management for HQ and Mills & Boon on some UK trade accounts.
2. Manage retail budget, adding value and securing optimum promotional space across varied sales environments.
3. Channel lead responsibility championing a key retail account for the group and liaising across divisions.
4. Working with the Sales Director to help pull together sales strategy and analysis on divisional titles.
5. Liaising with divisional contacts across Marketing, PR, Editorial, Publishing Operations, Production Design and Commercial Finance. Becoming the 'go to' person for sales on your accounts and communicating market feedback clearly back to division.
6. Involvement in publishing processes such as print meetings, publishing meetings, Acquisitions and Cover meetings.
7. Working with the wider Home Trade sales team to ensure our priority titles are represented in relevant meetings.
8. Acting as divisional contact for the Digital Sales team and Field Sales team.
9. Be a passionate advocate of our books internally and externally.

Experience required:

• Experience of maintaining and developing working relationships.
• Knowledge of Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• Experience of working in a busy environment and managing priorities effectively.

Skills required:

• Ability to communicate at all levels, both written and verbally.
• Organised, detail oriented, able to work quickly under pressure, hit deadlines and use own initiative.
• Effective team player.
• Willing to learn and take on new challenges.
• A passion for commercial fiction and non-fiction.