Recruitment: BASF - Senior Manager, Technical Service, Animal Nutrition Asia Pacific

The objective of this position is to:

1. Promote and support sales of the Animal Nutrition Portfolio with technical services
2. Train and develop a regional tech sales support team 
3. Act as voice of the region to support global technical marketing in decision making and prioritization

Responsibilities:

1. Promote and support, directly or via technical service team, the sales of Animal Nutrition Portfolio:

• Support the successful conversion of opportunities in the region to improve Net Sales and Volume growth
• Identify, design, and drive technical trials in the region
• Prioritize, assign, and steer resources and budget to support country sales via cost vs. benefit evaluation (financial benefit and/or strategic relevance vs. budget and/or resources)
• Engage in a regular dialogue with the country sales manager to assess needs and priorities for support
• Provide quarterly transparency on trial status and planned initiatives of the Tech Service team towards the sales organization
• Invite guest speaker and knowledge experts to share insights and news with the sales team, followed by a structured reflection on insights and usage to promote ENL portfolio products
• Lead or assign technical dialogues with key customers in Asia Pacific to support country sales in differentiating and positioning of BASF’s Animal Nutrition Portfolio
• Support the launch of new products with technical expertise
• Closely collaborate with key regional functions as Product Management, Marketing etc. to sharpen unique value preposition (UVP) and differentiation messages towards the customers
• Organize and conduct seminars, webinars and workshops with customers, including Distributors, to share technical insights and position as a science-based Animal Nutrition supplier
• Participate in seminars and publish science articles to foster positioning as science-based Animal Nutrition supplier

2. Train and develop a regional technical service team

•  Develop a regional needs profile for technical services and expertise across APAC
•  Assess and review technical service capabilities and identify potential mismatch with existing capabilities in the region
• Identify key needs for resources and expertise in the region and align with the business on measures to close the potential gap
• Identify strengths and development needs of individual tech service team team-members and develop tailored development and training plan on an annual base
• Conduct regular team feedback session and adjust individual development on a regular base
• Support the business to drive focus and efficiency across the team in line with strategy and regional guidance

3. Act as voice of the region to support global technical marketing in decision making and prioritization

• Gather regional market intelligence on competitive products (technical attributes, raw materials, processing technology, performance) and share pro-actively relevant information with the global technical marketing team
•  Feedback technical trends in the region to the global marketing team to assess needs for portfolio adjustments
• Pro-actively develop business cases for new product innovations in line with regional needs and discuss proposals with the global Technical Marketing team
• Own the regional inputs of product innovations into the GBU’s innovation process and innovation management tools
• Discuss and align with the Head of Technical Marketing on regional budget for trials and regional innovation pipeline

Requirements:

• Master's degree or PhD in animal nutrition, Veterinary Medicine, or related discipline
• At least 10 years of experience in animal nutrition and/or feed additives
• Experience in feed formulation software
• Experience in collaborating with universities on research projects
• Experience in designing, coordinating, and managing feed trials
• Experience in managing teams is an advantage
• Experience in a customer facing technical role
• Strong technical and analytical skills
• Structured problem solver with a business mindset
• Strong interpersonal skills with the ability to influence customer and lead teams
• Ability to communicate structured and with focus with individuals across diverse cultures
• Solid MS Office 365 skills (Power Point, Teams, Word, Excel, Outlook)