Commercial Assistant

Our well-known client in Hertford is recruiting a Commercial Assistant to join their Commercial team. This is a full-time temporary to permanent position offering hybrid working after 3 months of office-based work. The hours required for this position are 8.30am - 5.00pm Monday - Friday, offering a salary of £25,000 + depending on experience.

As a member of the commercial team, the Commercial Assistant acts as the customer's main point of contact, regarding the sales order management process, ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty. Provides clear direction to sales administrators, enabling efficient processing of customer orders. Works closely with the sales team and planner to provide accurate sales demand forecasting, along with reviewing and challenging the GM2 contribution on orders, maximising GM growth and customer profitability.

**Main Accountabilities**
- Inform Customers of any amendment to handle blocking points (credit limits, overdues, shortages etc.).
- Optimise orders (bundling, GM2 maximization).
- Perform Sales Order Reviews: challenge sales, financial and logistics feasibility.
- To represent company sales, stock and logistics operations with support from the planners and back-office teams. Ensure that customer request can be handled operationally and commercially.
- Prepare sales prices for the Sales Managers where needed.
- Respond to customer requests - sds, specifications, samples requests.
- Follow up customer quotations either directly or via a prompt of the external sales manager.
- Ensure prices are updated on CRM and are communicated to customers where appropriate.
- Follow customers purchasing behaviour, detect opportunities and develop the commercial relationship.
- Sales Forecasting/planning assistance in conjunction with the relevant planner.
- Accountable for tracking pricing & margin development; running relevant reports (e.g., GM1 tracker, next sales prediction, price check order intake, unit price evolution) to identify instances where pricing actions not taken or margin below target and/or negative, enabling corrective action can to be taken in conjunction with the business manager / sales manager.
- Assist the sales team in setting up new customers, managing the new customer set up process from initial request through to population of CRM.
- Master specific tools (AX, BI, CRM).
- Ensure customer accounts completeness and accuracy in AX (logistics specifications, product requirements etc). Ensure that correct instructions appear on warehouse documentation.
- Record blanket orders in the ERP system and instruct the sales back office to know when the next shipment is required.
- Interact with Customers actively to support Credit Control with collection of overdues.
- Coordinate customer complaints to ensure that all are dealt with and responded in a timely and robust manner.

**Experience, skills and education**
- Commercial and dynamic mindset
- Passionate about achieving goals/targets
- High service level standards
- Understanding of customer and market dynamics and requirements
- Strong relationship building and negotiation skills
- Excellent organisational skills
- Team player but with the ability to work independently
- Ability to adapt to new & changing requirements and a flexible approach to working under pressure
- Strong communication skills
- Very good IT skills (CRM, AX Dynamics, Excel)
- Confidence in decision making when dealing with customer versus company challenges.
- Assertive when dealing with both customers and company internal stakeholders.

**Internal and external stakeholders of the role**
- **Internal**: Business Manager, Sales Manager, Inside Sales, Product Manager, Sales Administration, Supply Chain Administrator (Order Fulfilment), Logistics, Planning, SHEQ, Credit Control, Finance
- **External**: Customers, Forwarders, Warehouse

**Job Types**: Full-time, Temp to perm

**Salary**: From £25,000.00 per year

**Benefits**:

- Work from home

Schedule:

- Day shift
- Monday to Friday

Ability to commute/relocate:

- Hertford: reliably commute or plan to relocate before starting work (required)

Work Location: In person