Sales Assistant Manager, Personal Care, Tokyo

About the role

BASF is looking for a Sales Assistant Manager based in Tokyo to drive profitable and sustainable growth in the personal care market in Japan. The role develops new business opportunities, strengthens relationships with key customers and distributors, manages assigned product portfolios and works closely with Technical Service, Marketing, Product Management, R&D, Supply Chain Management and regional/global teams.

Key responsibilities

• Customer and key account management: develop account strategies, deepen customer understanding, expand networks and present products and business cases
• New business development: identify and launch new business in the personal care market, build a sales pipeline and collaborate with cross-functional teams to accelerate commercialization
• Sales and business management: run sales strategies and action plans, forecast sales, manage inventory and customer visits, monitor performance and support commercial negotiations
• Distributor management: partner with distributors, share product, technical and marketing information and review their performance
• Market and competitive intelligence: benchmark competitors and share insights with Japan and regional/global teams
• Local product management: act as the local product management representative for assigned portfolios, coordinating with regional Product Managers on supply, inventory, raw material prices, margins and pricing guidance
• Regional and global collaboration: act as the interface between Japan and regional/global teams and build an internal network across functions

Required profile

• Bachelor's degree or above; Chemistry, Biology, Business, Marketing or a related field preferred
• Minimum 5 years of experience in sales, business development or marketing, preferably in personal care, cosmetics or specialty chemicals
• Experience in the Japanese personal care/cosmetics market strongly preferred
• Business-level Japanese and English