Position Summary The National Business Development Manager, Emerging Channels is responsible for identifying, developing, and securing new retail customers that accelerate Chemical Guys' growth across strategic retail channels throughout North America.
Reporting to the Senior Vice President, Global Sales, this individual contributor serves as the company's lead business development professional for emerging retail channels, with a primary emphasis on Grocery, Convenience Stores, Travel Centers, Drug, and other high-growth retail opportunities.
This is a true hunter role focused on identifying new opportunities, developing executive-level customer relationships, negotiating commercial agreements, and successfully launching new retail partnerships. The position owns the complete new-account lifecycle, from prospecting through customer onboarding, before transitioning ongoing account management to the appropriate commercial leader.
The successful candidate possesses a strong understanding of the distribution models, merchandising strategies, pricing architecture, promotional funding, and margin expectations required to compete successfully within Grocery, Convenience, Travel Center, and Drug channels. This individual will leverage Chemical Guys' position as the category leader in automotive appearance care to expand distribution, create incremental category growth, and establish long-term strategic partnerships with retailers, wholesalers, distributors, brokers, and buying organizations.
What This Role Owns- Building and managing a self-generated national pipeline of prospective customers across Grocery, Convenience Stores, Travel Centers, Drug, and other emerging retail channels.
- Owning the complete new-account sales cycle: target identification, prospecting, qualification, customer presentation, financial modeling, negotiation, closing, onboarding, and transition.
- Developing profitable route-to-market solutions that reflect retailer, distributor, wholesaler, and broker margin requirements.
- Delivering assigned quarterly and annual new-account revenue, distribution, and gross-margin objectives.
- Representing Chemical Guys with professionalism, credibility, urgency, and strong executive presence in customer meetings and industry events.
ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS National Business Development & Prospecting - Identify, prioritize, and secure new national and regional retail customers that align with Chemical Guys' long-term growth strategy.
- Build and execute strategic business development plans focused on Grocery, Convenience Stores, Travel Centers, Drug, and other emerging retail channels.
- Develop and continuously refresh a target-account list using market research, industry relationships, referrals, brokers, distributors, trade associations, and customer intelligence.
- Generate a self-sourced pipeline through direct outreach, industry events, trade shows, customer referrals, and strategic networking rather than relying primarily on inbound leads.
- Research prospective customers to understand their business model, assortment strategy, distribution structure, incumbent suppliers, buying process, and financial expectations before engagement.
- Lead customer presentations, product demonstrations, and line reviews that communicate Chemical Guys' category leadership, consumer relevance, innovation, and ability to drive incremental growth.
Channel, Distribution & Financial Development - Evaluate and recommend the appropriate route-to-market for each opportunity, including direct-to-retailer, wholesaler, distributor, redistributor, broker-supported, and hybrid models.
- Build financially sound customer proposals that account for retail gross margin, distributor margin, broker commissions, freight, promotional funding, allowances, rebates, slotting, returns, and other channel-specific costs.
- Understand the operating and margin expectations of Grocery, Convenience Store, Travel Center, Drug, wholesale, and distribution partners.
- Develop assortment, pricing, merchandising, and promotional recommendations tailored to each customer's format, consumer, store footprint, and category strategy.
- Identify white-space opportunities where Chemical Guys can create incremental category growth, improve productivity, and introduce new consumers to automotive appearance care.
- Negotiate pricing, terms, promotional programs, distribution agreements, and initial program structure within established company guidelines, escalating exceptions as required.
Pipeline Management, Forecasting & Accountability - Maintain accurate and current pipeline records in the company CRM, including account status, opportunity value, probability, next steps, decision timing, and expected launch date.
- Provide regular pipeline, forecast, and activity updates to the Senior Vice President, Global Sales, identifying risk and opportunity early.
- Manage a disciplined sales funnel from initial contact through signed agreement, prioritizing time against the highest-value and highest-probability opportunities.
- Track progress against assigned revenue, distribution, gross-margin, and new-account objectives and adjust activity levels to remain on pace.
- Develop realistic first-year sales forecasts and launch assumptions in partnership with Finance, Supply Chain, and Sales leadership.
Customer Onboarding & Cross-Functional Leadership - Partner with Finance, Marketing, Product Development, Supply Chain, Customer Experience, Operations, and Legal to ensure new opportunities are commercially viable and operationally executable.
- Coordinate customer setup, credit review, item setup, product data, samples, forecast development, inventory readiness, initial order flow, and launch timing.
- Work with Marketing to develop compelling sell-in materials, customer-specific presentations, merchandising concepts, and launch support.
- Ensure a complete and professional handoff to the appropriate account owner after the customer is successfully launched and stable.
- Share competitive intelligence, customer feedback, pricing trends, route-to-market insights, and emerging channel opportunities with Sales leadership and cross-functional partners.
Industry Engagement & Travel - Represent Chemical Guys at relevant industry trade shows, buying events, conferences, and customer meetings, including Grocery, Convenience, Travel Center, Drug, wholesale, and distribution events.
- Build relationships with key retailers, distributors, wholesalers, brokers, buying groups, and industry influencers.
- Travel frequently throughout the United States to meet prospective customers face to face; travel expectation is approximately 50 to 70 percent and may include overnight and weekend travel.
- Manage travel and entertainment expenses responsibly and within company policy.
SUCCESS MEASURES - New customer acquisition and number of qualified accounts opened.
- Incremental revenue and points of distribution secured.
- Gross-margin performance and quality of new business.
- Pipeline health, activity discipline, and forecast accuracy.
- Speed and quality of customer onboarding and launch execution.
- Strategic expansion into priority emerging channels.
- Cross-functional collaboration, professionalism, and successful transition of launched accounts.
COMPENSATION Job Level: Sales and Commercial family (Chemical Guys Career Level Framework). Multi-channel individual contributor; no direct reports.
Base Salary Range: $85,000 to $135,000 annually, depending on location, experience, qualifications, and business needs.
Variable Compensation: Commission and MBO blend tied to new-account revenue, distribution, and profitability, targeted at approximately 20 percent of base salary.
This range reflects Chemical Guys' good faith estimate of the base pay for this role at the time of posting and may vary based on experience, qualifications, location, and business needs, consistent with applicable pay transparency requirements.
PHYSICAL DEMANDS & WORK ENVIRONMENT - Regularly drives or flies to customer meetings and industry events; extended time on the road is expected.
- Sets up and breaks down trade show booths and product displays and may lift and carry product samples or display materials up to approximately 35 pounds.
- Works from a home office or while traveling between customer meetings, with occasional time at Chemical Guys headquarters in Torrance, California.
- Maintains a flexible schedule to accommodate customer availability, travel days, trade show dates, and occasional evening or weekend commitments.
Requirements
QUALIFICATIONS Required - Minimum of five (5) years of successful business development, national account sales, or channel development experience within Grocery, Convenience Stores, Travel Centers, Consumer Packaged Goods, wholesale distribution, or closely related industries.
- Demonstrated success opening new national or regional retail accounts and delivering measurable revenue and distribution growth.
- Proven experience developing business through retailers, wholesalers, distributors, brokers, and buying organizations.
- Strong understanding of Grocery, Convenience Store, and Travel Center distribution models, including direct, warehouse, wholesale, redistributor, broker-supported, and hybrid structures.
- Solid understanding of retailer and distributor gross-margin expectations, pricing architecture, promotional funding, freight, allowances, commissions, rebates, slotting, returns, and other customer economics.
- Proven ability to build persuasive, fact-based business cases and negotiate commercial agreements.
- Strong in-person selling skills, including needs discovery, executive presentations, financial discussions, negotiation, and closing.
- Highly self-motivated and comfortable operating with autonomy, accountability, and limited daily oversight.
- Strong organizational, project-management, and written and verbal communication skills.
- Proficiency with CRM platforms, Microsoft Office, and general sales productivity tools.
- Ability and willingness to travel approximately 50 to 70 percent, including overnight and occasional weekend travel.
- Valid driver's license and clean driving record.
Preferred - Existing relationships with national or regional Grocery, Convenience Store, Travel Center, Drug, wholesale, or distribution customers.
- Experience working with national sales agencies, regional brokers, distributors, wholesalers, and buying groups.
- Experience using syndicated data, customer analytics, category insights, or market research to support customer recommendations.
- Experience in automotive aftermarket, car care, consumer products, or another branded CPG category.
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Sales, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Salary Description
$85,000 to $135,000 annually
