About this Director of Sales, Asia-Pacific - APC role at Lauridsen Group
APC is the world’s largest producer of functional proteins, dedicated to producing safe and effective products that create value. We do this by holding true to our values: Performance, Entrepreneurship and Leadership.
As Director of Sales, Asia-Pacific, you will shape and lead our commercial strategy across a diverse and dynamic region. You will lead and develop a regional sales team, strengthen partnerships with customers and distributors, identify new markets and applications, and translate growth opportunities into sustainable business results.
This is more than a role focused on hitting a sales number. You will have the opportunity to influence where we focus, how we grow, and how we serve customers across the region, while connecting market insights and customer needs with teams across APC. Your leadership will directly influence regional revenue, volume, margin, customer retention, and market expansion.
Key Accountabilities
1. Regional Sales Strategy & Execution
- Lead annual and longer-term sales planning for Asia-Pacific, aligning regional priorities with APC’s overall sales strategy and growth objectives.
- Establish regional sales priorities, account strategies, market-development activities, and action plans.
- Achieve established sales, volume, margin, and customer-development goals for the region.
- Identify opportunities to grow existing markets, enter new markets, expand product applications, and develop new customer relationships.
- Translate broader commercial objectives into practical country, distributor, and account-level plans.
- Periodically evaluate regional performance and adjust strategies in response to market, customer, or competitive changes.
2. Customer & Key Account Management
- Develop and maintain strong relationships with customers, prospects, distributors, and other commercial partners throughout the region.
- Create and execute account plans for key customers and strategic prospects.
- Maintain regular communication with customers to understand their business needs, monitor satisfaction, and identify opportunities for growth.
- Coordinate timely resolution of customer concerns by engaging the appropriate internal resources.
- Develop relationships with relevant customer decision-makers, influencers, and stakeholders.
- Support customer retention through responsive communication, reliable follow-through, and a strong understanding of customer needs.
3. Team Leadership & Talent Development
- Lead, develop, and coach regional sales team members to achieve individual and team objectives.
- Establish clear performance expectations, priorities, and accountability measures aligned with business goals.
- Conduct regular coaching, development discussions, and performance reviews.
- Identify and develop succession and talent-development plans for team members.
- Support recruitment, selection, onboarding, and retention of high-performing sales talent.
- Foster a culture of collaboration, accountability, customer focus, and continuous improvement.
- Ensure team members are equipped with the tools, training, product knowledge, and market insights necessary for success.
- Facilitate communication and alignment across geographically dispersed team members.
- Model company values and leadership behaviors while promoting engagement, inclusion, and professional growth.
- Build strong partnerships between the regional sales team and internal cross-functional stakeholders.
4. Distributor & Channel Management
- Develop and manage distributor and channel-partner relationships across assigned markets.
- Establish clear expectations, priorities, and performance objectives with distribution partners.
- Work with distributors to develop country-specific sales plans, customer-development activities, and market-growth strategies.
- Monitor distributor performance, market coverage, sales activity, and pipeline development.
- Evaluate regional sales coverage and recommend changes to sales organization structure, distributor representation, and resource allocation to support growth.
- Support distributor product knowledge and commercial effectiveness in coordination with internal subject-matter experts.
5. Business Development & Market Expansion
- Identify and evaluate new customers, markets, product applications, and commercial partnerships within the Asia-Pacific region.
- Develop a qualified pipeline of prospective customers and growth opportunities.
- Assess the commercial potential, anticipated value, resource requirements, and risks associated with new opportunities.
- Support the introduction of existing products into new markets and applications.
- Partner with Marketing and other internal functions to create regionally appropriate customer-development and promotional approaches.
- Represent APC at relevant trade shows, conferences, customer events, and industry meetings.
6. Forecasting, Pricing & Commercial Performance
- Lead preparation of regional sales and expense forecasts and provide sales assumptions for annual budgeting and longer-term business planning.
- Provide timely updates regarding customer demand, projected volume, business risks, and significant changes in market conditions.
- Monitor regional sales, volume, margin, and expense performance against established goals.
- Lead customer pricing and sales contract negotiations within established company strategy and approval limits; obtain approval for commitments outside delegated authority.
- Provide market and customer information to support budgeting, demand planning, inventory planning, and broader business decisions.
- Manage travel, promotional, and other assigned regional expenses within approved budgets.
7. Market Intelligence & Competitive Awareness
- Maintain a current understanding of the industries, customer segments, and markets served within the Asia-Pacific region.
- Monitor economic conditions, customer trends, competitive activity, pricing dynamics, regulatory developments, and other factors that could affect regional performance.
- Share relevant market intelligence and customer feedback with Sales leadership and cross-functional partners.
- Identify emerging market opportunities and potential commercial risks.
- Use market information to recommend adjustments to regional priorities, product positioning, and customer strategies.
8. Cross-Functional Commercial Coordination
- Serve as the primary commercial link between Asia-Pacific customers and APC’s internal teams.
- Connect customers and distributors with Technical Services for technical advice, product application support, trials, and research needs; retain responsibility for sales follow-through rather than delivery or management of technical support.
- Partner with Customer Service, Export, Logistics, Regulatory, Quality, and Operations to support successful order fulfillment and customer service.
- Work with Marketing to support regional sales materials, market-development activities, product positioning, and trade-show participation.
- Communicate customer forecasts, priorities, and concerns to appropriate internal stakeholders.
- Help align customer commitments with product availability, regulatory requirements, operational capabilities, and company priorities.
9. Sales Administration & Business Discipline
- Maintain accurate and current customer, prospect, opportunity, and activity information in the designated customer relationship management system.
- Prepare regional business reviews, sales updates, forecasts, account plans, and other reports as requested.
- Maintain appropriate documentation of customer commitments, distributor arrangements, pricing discussions, and significant commercial activities.
- Protect confidential customer, distributor, pricing, product, and company information.
- Conduct business in accordance with company policies, applicable laws, and ethical business standards.
SCOPE & IMPACT
- Accountable for regional sales strategy, sales performance, and profitable growth across the assigned Asia-Pacific region.
- Manages relationships with customers, distributors, prospects, and other commercial partners in multiple countries.
- Provides direct leadership and management for regional sales professionals and/or country sales representatives within the Asia-Pacific region.
- Responsible for team performance, employee development, succession planning, talent acquisition, and employee engagement within the assigned region.
- Influences regional business results through both personal commercial contributions and leadership of the broader sales team.
- Allocates sales resources and establishes territory, account, and market priorities to maximize regional growth.
- Accountable for achieving regional revenue, volume, and margin goals and for driving customer retention and market expansion.
- Provides regional forecasts and market information that affect supply planning, operational priorities, budgeting, and resource decisions.
- Leads regional sales and coordinates with functional leaders, who retain responsibility for Technical Services, Regulatory, Customer Service, and Logistics. The role does not manage technical support staff or own technical support delivery.
- Operates across countries with differing market conditions, business practices, regulatory environments, languages, and distribution structures.
- Exercises independent judgment in prioritizing markets, accounts, travel, customer activities, and business-development opportunities within established company direction.
Job Qualifications:
Education:
Bachelor’s Degree in Agribusiness or related field required, and/or equivalent combination of education and experience.
Experience:
- A minimum of 3 years of relevant experience is required; 5 or more years is preferred. Relevant experience may include feed or ingredient manufacturing, commodity trading, international trading or ingredient sales, or live animal production management (swine or poultry).
- Demonstrated sales leadership experience across multiple markets is required, including responsibility for sales growth, strategic customer relationships, distributor management, forecasting, and pricing negotiations.
- Experience in leading and developing sales teams is required.
- Sales experience in Asia-Pacific markets is preferred.