This role is an office position based in Louisville, KY. Regular domestic travel to engage with distributor partners, key customers, and Heaven Hill’s U.S. commercial organization will be required.
What the Role Is
The Chief Sales Officer leads and advances Heaven Hill’s U.S. and Canadian commercial organization, strategy, and execution. The role is responsible for route-to-market strategy and design, distributor and customer relationships, and sales execution to deliver profitable growth and strengthen the company’s competitive position across the portfolio. The role owns the translation of long-term strategy into disciplined execution and is accountable for delivering the commercial function’s annual revenue, distribution, and business results.
As a member of the Executive Leadership Team, this executive will help set overall corporate strategy and work across departments to connect brand priorities and consumer and customer needs with sales plans and execution.
How You Will Spend Your Time?
Commercial Strategy and Route to Market
- Lead and evolve the planning and execution of Heaven Hill’s commercial planning and route-to-market strategy to strengthen distribution, market coverage, and profitable growth
- Anticipate and respond to distributor changes, emerging channels, retail changes, and evolving customer and consumer expectations
- Continuously monitor and evolve the commercial organization, distributor network, and resource allocation in response to changing market conditions and route-to-market economics.
Distributor, Customer, and Channel Strategy
- Lead senior relationships with distributors, control-state agencies, national accounts, and key regional customers, representing Heaven Hill in executive discussions, negotiations, and initiatives
- Evaluate distributor capabilities, economics, market coverage, portfolio priorities, and performance to inform commercial strategy, market plans, and resource allocation
- Drive joint business planning, performance management, and accountability with distributor partners, tailoring strategies by market, brand, channel, and opportunity, and ensuring those plans are appropriately adjusted and implemented as conditions change
- Develop customer and channel strategies, using segmentation, differentiated coverage models, and customer-specific growth plans to capture priority opportunities
- Partner with Legal and Compliance to ensure commercial practices, distributor arrangements, and customer programs align with applicable regulatory requirements and company policies
Revenue Growth Management and Commercial Capabilities
- Partner with Finance and Marketing on pricing, promotion, trade investment, revenue and margin management, forecasting, and commercial planning
- Lead commercial planning that connects brand priorities, customer opportunities, distributor strategies, and financial objectives
- Advance the organization’s use of AI, data, technology and insights to strengthen selling capability, decision making and investment returns
Sales Leadership and Succession Planning
- Lead the sales organization and translate enterprise and portfolio priorities into market plans with clear execution standards across field sales, national accounts, sales planning, and support functions
- Lead the continued development of national accounts capabilities, including strategic account management, differentiated customer strategy, coverage models and accountability of long term business planning
- Ensure the sales organization continues to evolve in line with company priorities and market conditions
- Partner with Human Resources on talent assessment, leadership development, succession, and organizational planning of commercial function
- Responsible for maintaining and enhancing a high-performance culture grounded in the Heaven Hill Way of Selling, that has clear priorities, shared measures of success, and strong customer and distributor partnerships that achieve or exceed expected results
Enterprise Organizational and External Leadership
- Serve as an active Executive Leadership Team member, contributing to enterprise strategy, financial performance, resource allocation, and the identification of short and long-term priorities
- Partner with Marketing, Finance, Operations, Supply Chain, and Human Resources to align commercial decisions with brand strategy, profitability, talent needs, forecasting, inventory, and customer service
- Represent Heaven Hill with key external stakeholders, industry partners, and trade associations, reinforcing the company’s reputation, values, and long-term relationships
Who You Are…
Required Skills and Experience:
- Bachelor’s degree in Sales, Market, Business Administration or related field; Advanced degree preferred
- Minimum fifteen (15) years of senior sales or commercial leadership experience in wine and spirits, ideally complemented by additional consumer packaged goods experience outside beverage alcohol
- Expertise in commercial strategy, route-to-market models, distributor management, national accounts, customer and channel development, and revenue growth management
- Strong knowledge of the U.S. three-tier system, distributor economics, trade dynamics, and the beverage alcohol market; distributor-side experience is a plusDemonstrated history of delivering revenue, profit, and market performance through sound planning, pricing, analytics, and resource allocation
- Track record of successfully leading large, geographically dispersed organizations through clear direction-setting, motivation and influence
- History of identifying and growing top talent for positions of greater responsibility, leading and developing senior leaders, and the creation and execution of succession plans to support long-term organizational continuity
- Strong strategic judgment, executive communication, relationship-building, and influencing skills
- Valid Driver’s License
Leadership Attributes:
- Strategic Perspective: Anticipates market change, evaluates business models, and identifies ways to strengthen Heaven Hill’s position
- Commercial Acumen: Understands distributor, customer, and channel dynamics and uses sound financial and analytical judgment
- Enterprise Orientation: Balances commercial priorities with broader company strategy and objectives
- Collaborative Leadership: Builds trusted relationships across employees, customers, and distributor organizations and leverages those relationships to influence positive outcomes
- Executional Discipline: Turns strategic priorities into clear objectives, alignment, and consistently successful results
- Talent and Organizational Leadership: Develops leaders, builds organizational capability, and maintains succession readiness
- Integrity and Values: Leads in a way that reflects Heaven Hill’s family-owned heritage, Spirited Commitments, long-term view, and commitment to strong relationships
Physical Requirements
While performing duties of job, employee is occasionally required to:
- Stand, walk, use hands and fingers to handle, or feel objects, and use of computer; reach with hands and arms.
- Occasionally lift up to 20 pounds
Benefits
- Paid Vacation
- 11 Paid Holidays
- Health, Dental & Vision eligibility from day one
- FSA/HSA
- 401K match
- EAP
- Maternity/Paternity Leave
Heaven Hill and its affiliates are committed to fostering a diverse workforce as an Equal Employment Opportunity company. We invite applications from candidates of all backgrounds, without regard to race, religion, color, sex, sexual orientation, natural origin, gender identity or expression, age, disability, veteran status, or any other legally protected characteristic.
