Technical Support Manager Plastics

The Company

As a  technical support manager for polymers, your role is to:

• Lead the commercial technical support activities pre and post sales, in particular sell existing products and solutions from a technical standpoint, support to innovation activities, technical support to customers, complaints investigation, product benchmarking and technical lobbying towards market stakeholders (standardisation, academics and owners)
• Act as an ambassador on technical side, representing the company externally as expert, namely participating in university networks, standardisation committees and presenting at conferences and exhibitions, customer events
• Lead the sustainability initiatives for the subsegment notably in terms of product life cycle assessment

JOB SCOPE/DIMENSIONS

REVENUE MANAGEMENT:

• Volumes: 100kt
• Revenues: 60m€

CUSTOMER CENTRICITY 

• Voice of the customers (including Exclusive sessions, Technical Seminars)
• Complaint management and reporting

NEW BUSINESS GENERATION:

• New products: help translate developing market needs and trends into new product
• New customers: Provide technical support to potential customers to adopt Imerys products
• Cross sell: Support existing customer use additional or new products from Imerys portfolio
• Geographical zones: France, Iberia, Italy, Greece, Levant (Israël, Turkey mainly), Middle East and Africa 
• Number of direct reports: none
• % of travel time: up to 50% 

Technical Sales

• Participate in client discussions for technical sales on identified opportunities by the Sales Manager
• Work closely with the sales manager to support the development process of the customer along the opportunity process until final application 
• Lift customers' technical objections along the opportunity process
• Identify technical opportunities with existing products to optimize value proposition
• Business Development : identifies the right opportunities for organic growth through technical discussions and act as project manager for large technical development projects in collaboration with the R&D teams
• Upon request by marketing, perform benchmarking analysis of Imerys and competitors products, alternative technologies and new commercial products from customers to support structuring of product offering and positioning as well as pricing activities.

Customer innovation

• Identify unmet technical needs of customers and therefore potential new products/ solutions
• Translate performance requirements into product specification requirements
• Act as link between customers and S&T/Operations on new product development
• Lead trial management at the customer site and supervise trials at Imerys plant on new products
• Manage qualification process at customers for new products

Management of significant customer quality issues

• Respond to customers on significant quality issues (outside packaging, logistics or pure specifications problems)  and analyse causes and possible solutions

• Liaise with operations/ quality managers on solution identification and implementation

Acting as expert internally and externally

• Manage technical training of sales/ marketing people on his/ her area of expertise
• Act as technical ambassador for his/ her area of expertise in external communication (customer technical training, participation in external knowledge sharing, fairs & conferences, standardisation committee, etc.) 
• Build a network among the customers’ technical community

Sustainability

• Act as sustainability ambassador in internal/external communication
• Lead sustainability discussions with customers 
• Support the sustainability team in preparation of LCA and other Sustainability documentation requests from customers

JOB SPECIFICATIONS

• Master’s Degree in Chemistry or related field or equivalent experience
• 3 to 8 years of relevant experience either in R&D roles or technical sales
• Strong competencies and experience in Polymer applications, preferably for automotive applications
• Mineral knowledge is a plus
• Technical background is required in chemistry and /or polymers 
• Ability to decode the customer needs and to design adapted solutions 
• Customer oriented, enable to build up strong relationship internally & externally
• Able to work with a variety of stakeholders across a business
• Good Communication skills with customers and with technical committees
• Strong organisational skills, a self-starter
• Flexibility, resilience, pro-activity, autonomous and motivation
• Interest in working in dynamic groups - team player
• Taste for challenges - entrepreneurial mentalityAbility to use common IT tools (Excel, Word, G Suite, Web tools)
• Salesforce CRM would be an advantage
• Regular and weekly local and international trips (up to 60%) by car and plane
• Driving licence required
• Job location : France or Belgium
• Languages : Full professional proficiency in French; Mandatory use of English (technical and commercial); Italia, Spanish or other european languages relating to perimeter a plus
   

and

Only technical issues will be monitored through the below inbox:

recruiting.support@ imerys.com

PLEASE DO NOT SUBMIT RESUMES OR APPLICATIONS TO THIS EMAIL, AS THEY WILL NOT BE REVIEWED. 

To ensure fairness and legal compliance in our recruitment processes, only applications received through the online application process will be considered. 

IMERYS is an Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity Employer and it is our policy to not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, disability, veteran status, or any other status protected by federal, state or local laws.