Customer Excellence Director

The Customer Excellence Director is the catalyst that gives sales professionals across Europe tools to be more commercially successful. This role has a major impact on the organization and is decisive in realizing ForFarmers’ ambitions.

About ForFarmers

ForFarmers offers the optimal feeding solution for every farm. With custom-made solutions, Total Feed solutions and international expertise, the company ensures better returns, higher efficiency and healthier animals. The agricultural sector is more relevant and dynamic than ever. ForFarmers works closely with farmers to meet these challenges. The company ensures that its customers produce meat, eggs or dairy of the highest quality and are at the top of their industry.

“For the future of farming” – that’s the mission of ForFarmers. The cattle feed producer focuses on the continuity of farming and contributes to a financially healthy sector that will last for generations to come. ForFarmers is also committed to a sustainable way of keeping cattle and producing cattle feed. This way, the company guarantees a sustainable future for the farmers and for our planet.

Over the past ten years, ForFarmers has grown rapidly. The company now employs approximately 2,700 people and its turnover in 2019 was in excess of 2.4 billion euros. This makes ForFarmers – active in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Poland, and the United Kingdom – the market leader in Europe.

Their biggest asset at ForFarmers is the right mix of a strong portfolio and a specialized sales team. With its own innovation center and partnerships with leading research institutes and universities, the company also invests heavily in research and innovation. This way, ForFarmers continuously strengthens its position as Europe’s leading animal feed company.

Vacancy: Customer Excellence Director

In recent years, ForFarmers has invested significantly in the development of customer excellence. This has resulted in a strong set of tools and working methods. The task ahead for the Customer Excellence Director is to roll out these powerful concepts across the board. This makes him/her a driving force in realizing ForFarmers’ ambitions.

“The demand for customer excellence really comes from the business. This ensures that a Customer Excellence Director who quickly sees connections, understands bottlenecks and, above all, gets a kick out of implementation can be very successful here.” – Stijn Steendijk, Director Strategy & Organization

The core of the role is customization. Each country and each category have their own dynamics. That is why the Customer Excellence Director searches for the optimal approach for each situation. This professional regularly travels to the various countries to show Business Unit Directors and Sales Managers the commercial value of the tools and working methods. The Customer Excellence Director creates the connections and inspires the local teams, but also knows how to put strength and seniority to good use.

This collaboration results in targeted customer excellence plans per Business Unit with commitment from the Business Unit Director involved. The Customer Excellence Director then actively supports the execution of the plans and monitors progress. Together with the Business Unit Directors, the Customer Excellence Director is responsible for achieving their commercial goals – such as profitability and market share growth – in the relevant Business Units.

The Customer Excellence Director is given every opportunity, with a strategic view, to contribute to the fine-tuning and further development of the concepts. The real challenge, however, is to improve and implement the tools throughout the organization, for example:

• A CRM system for effective prospecting and customer development
• An Online order platform that can be expanded into a broad e-commerce platform
• Segmentation and service models
• Methodology for improving and evaluating sales performance
• Monitoring tools to focus on sales, such as dashboards
• Sales excellence training courses
• Tools for (account) planning

What makes this role an interesting challenge is the need to be able to switch between different levels. The Customer Excellence Director is part of the MT of the Strategy & Organization Director and works closely with the Business Unit Directors and COOs. At the same time, this professional operates deep within the organization in which they lead the implementation of customer excellence hands-on and with a great understanding of the commercial processes.

ForFarmers works with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy.
Contact Annelijn Nijhuis at annelijn.nijhuis@topofminds.com for more information.