Senior Manager, Retail Strategy

COMPANY OVERVIEW

We exist to make food the world loves. But we do more than that. Our company is a place that prioritizes being a force for good, a place to expand learning, explore new perspectives and reimagine new possibilities, every day. We look for people who want to bring their best — bold thinkers with big hearts who challenge one another and grow together. Because becoming the undisputed leader in food means surrounding ourselves with people who are hungry for what’s next.​

General Mills is seeking a Senior Retail Customer Manager to lead retail strategy, execution priorities, and field performance across a key portfolio of customers in the West region. This leader will help connect customer and operating unit strategy to clear action across the National Retail Organization (NRO) while playing a critical role in the organization’s ongoing transformation.

This is a highly visible leadership opportunity for someone who can bring strong external perspective, modern retail capabilities, and a passion for building better ways of working. You’ll be expected to drive execution, raise the organization’s capability level, and lead through significant change while partnering across customer teams, NRO business development, capabilities, analytics, and cross-functional functions to turn strategy into action and improve field effectiveness at scale.

The role is based in Minneapolis at General Mills World Headquarters, and includes leadership of a large, multi-level field organization. This role follows our 4x per week in-office model when not traveling and requires regular air travel and overnight travel across the United States, including monthly retail store visits and periodic visits to customer markets and headquarters.

What You'll Do

• Lead retail strategy, priorities, and execution governance for the West region to deliver short- and long-term volume, share, and execution performance.

• Translate operating unit and customer strategies into clear direction, communication, and execution plans across the National Retail Organization.

• Partner with customer teams, NRO business development, capabilities, and cross-functional teams to build aligned, winning plans.

• Serve as an active partner with customer teams in planning conversations, executive business discussions, and customer-related forums, helping General Mills show up as one sales team by bringing a strong field and execution perspective, shaping recommendations, and helping turn ideas into action.

• Use data, analytics, and retail intelligence to identify growth opportunities, optimize execution strategies, and make sound resource tradeoff decisions.

• Bring an external lens to the organization by leading benchmarking efforts, distilling and communicating key takeaways, and driving partnership and retail innovation opportunities from idea through implementation to strengthen capabilities and business strategy.

• Lead and coach a large, complex organization by fostering an inclusive, high-performance culture grounded in accountability, development, and follow-through.

• Provide oversight for escalated execution issues, strengthen leadership capability through multiple levels of the organization, and help leaders navigate people, performance, and operational challenges.

• Drive adoption of transformation initiatives, operating model changes, and new tools or processes that improve retail effectiveness and organizational agility.

• Build strong working relationships with customer-facing leaders and ensure the organization is translating retail conditions, store insights, and field learning into better decisions and stronger execution.

• Help evolve how the organization uses retail technology, reporting, field intelligence, and coverage models to speed learning and improve effectiveness in market.

• Travel regularly by air to stores, customer markets, and customer headquarters across the United States, including overnight travel, to stay close to retail conditions, reinforce execution standards, and bring back actionable insights for the business.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree.

• 10+ years of experience in sales, retail operations, marketing, category management, shopper or consumer insights, customer-facing account management, analytics, and/or trade funding.

• 5+ years of leadership experience, including leading teams, organizations, or multi-level field structures.

• Experience leading large, multi-level teams in a matrixed, cross-functional environment across functions such as Supply Chain, Replenishment, Marketing, Sales, and Retail, including influencing leaders through layers and driving accountability at scale.

• Strong analytical skills and experience using internal and external data sources such as Nielsen, IRI, CPM, sales data, or similar tools to build compelling recommendations.

• Proven ability to recruit, develop, coach, and motivate talent in a complex organization.

• Strong strategic thinking, planning, financial management, decision-making, and negotiation skills.

• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, changing environment, demonstrate strong learning agility, and move seamlessly between tactical execution and strategic leadership.

• Demonstrated ability to lead through ambiguity, organizational change, and competing priorities.

• Willingness to be based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, work in office four days per week when not traveling, and travel regularly across the United States.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in retail execution, field sales, direct store delivery, or retail operations leadership.

• Experience introducing or scaling new capabilities in areas such as retail intelligence, business intelligence, field technology, route optimization, territory management, or coverage model design.

• Experience managing or maximizing third-party broker or agency partnerships.

• Strong customer-facing presence with the ability to influence planning and executive discussions, strengthen customer team recommendations, and help drive implementation.

• Experience leading teams through significant transformation, change management, and operating model evolution.

• Familiarity with tools such as Salesforce, Tableau, Microsoft Office, Teams, mobile-first field technology, or similar platforms.

• Experience identifying external trends, competitive threats, and innovation opportunities and translating them into practical business action.

Additional Considerations

• International relocation or international remote working arrangements (outside of the US) will not be considered.

• Applicants for this position must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. General Mills will not sponsor applicants for this position for work visas.

SALARY RANGE

The salary range for this position is:

At General Mills we strive for each employee's pay at any point in their career to reflect their experiences performance and skills for their current role. The salary range for this role represents the numerous factors considered in the hiring decisions including, but not limited to, educations, skills, work experience, certifications, etc. As such, pay for the successful candidate(s) could fall anywhere within the stated range. ​

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Beyond base salary, General Mills offers a competitive Total Rewards package focusing on your overall well-being. We are proud to offer a foundation of health benefits, retirement and financial wellbeing, time off programs, wellbeing support and perks. Benefits may vary by role, country, region, union status, and other employment status factors. You may also be eligible to participate in an annual incentive program. An incentive award, if any, depends on various factors, including, individual and organizational performance.

ELIGIBILITY

Applicants must meet a minimum 18-year age qualification.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER (EOE)​

General Mills is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, marital or familial status, status regarding public assistance, or membership or activity in a local human rights commission.

REASONABLE ACCOMODATION REQUEST

If you need to request an accommodation during the application or hiring process, please fill out our online accommodation request form by following this link: Accommodation Request.