Account Manager
Description
About the role
We are seeking an energetic, enthusiastic, and charismatic Account Manager to manage and grow current accounts while finding and developing new customers. This role is responsible for building strong customer relationships within an assigned sector, ensuring PastryStar’s products meet customer needs, introducing new products, and recommending new concepts and applications that support customers’ businesses.
The Account Manager will manage the new-business sales process from identifying target customers and key decision makers to qualifying leads, coordinating samples, meetings, and demonstrations, and closing sales. The ideal candidate has experience in bakery, pastry, and ingredient sales, excellent written communication skills, and the ability to understand customer needs and communicate the value of PastryStar’s products.
What you'll do
· Growing current business: Manage and grow current accounts within an assigned sector, building strong relationships and identifying opportunities to expand business.
· Product performance and customer support: Check in with customers to ensure products are working well for their applications and coordinate with internal teams to address questions or concerns.
· New products and concepts: Keep current customers informed about new products and recommend concepts, applications, and ingredient solutions that may work for their businesses.
· Generating new business — Lead generation: Create and maintain a list of target customers and identify key decision makers within each targeted organization.
· Lead qualification — Initial outreach: Create targeted emails to initiate contact with leads and communicate relevant product benefits.
· Lead qualification — Follow-up conversations: Conduct follow-up phone conversations to understand customer needs, applications, purchasing requirements, and potential fit with PastryStar’s products.
· Lead qualification — Samples, meetings, and demos: Coordinate and send product samples, set up customer meetings and demonstrations, and follow up on feedback and next steps.
· Closing leads and attaining new customers: Prepare and follow up on quotes, address customer questions, and close sales to convert qualified leads into new customers.
· Sales records and coordination: Maintain accurate account, contact, opportunity, and follow-up records in Dynamics 365 and use Excel to organize sales information. Coordinate with internal teams to support customer onboarding and ongoing account needs.
Qualifications
· Experience in bakery, pastry, and ingredient sales.
· Knowledge of CRM systems, particularly Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365 and proficiency with Excel.
· Energetic, enthusiastic, and charismatic, with the ability to build relationships with current and prospective customers.
· Strong mental math skills for quick sales-related calculations.
· Fluent in English, with the ability to communicate clearly during customer conversations, meetings, and demonstrations.
· Excellent written communication skills, including the ability to write targeted outreach emails and professional customer follow-ups.
Education and Experience
· Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, or a related field required; equivalent related experience may be considered.
· 5–7 years of sales or account management experience preferred, ideally in food manufacturing, bakery, pastry, foodservice, B2B sales, consumer packaged goods, or a related industry.
· Experience prospecting, qualifying leads, preparing quotes, presenting products, and managing customer follow-up preferred.
· Experience working with distributors, customer service teams, product teams, or cross-functional departments preferred.
· Experience using CRM systems, tracking sales opportunities, and preparing sales activity reports is a plus, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, Dynamics 365.
· Experience with bakery ingredients, food applications, product samples, or customer demonstrations is a plus.
· Job Type: Full-time
· Location: On-site
· Salary: up to $125,000 inclusive of commission