National Sales Manager – Modern Trade

The Practical Detail

Location: Colombo
Working Model: Onsite
Contract Type: Permanent

Why this role matters
In your first year, you will lead Flora Food Group’s Modern Trade business in Sri Lanka to deliver sustainable, profitable growth by driving strategic customer partnerships and superior execution. This role acts as a mini-General Manager for the channel, owning end-to-end performance across revenue, market share, and customer contribution. Your work will shape how our culinary essentials reach kitchens nationwide, ensuring better food solutions are embedded in key customer strategies. This role is vital now as we strengthen our position in a rapidly evolving retail landscape, integrating commercial and operational excellence to unlock growth.

What you'll do

• Lead and execute the Modern Trade channel strategy, managing the full P&L to drive net revenue, gross margin, and customer contribution.
• Develop and maintain multi-level partnerships with key accounts, embedding joint business plans that align with mutual growth ambitions.
• Drive revenue growth management by optimizing price-pack architecture, promotions, trade spend, and margin mix for maximum return on investment.
• Oversee flawless in-store execution through Perfect Store principles, ensuring availability, visibility, assortment, and merchandising excellence.
• Coordinate integrated business planning and forecasting, aligning demand plans with customer activities and ensuring service level excellence.

Performance
You will own the Modern Trade channel’s commercial results, delivering on net revenue, market share, and customer profitability targets. Your data-driven approach will embed a culture of disciplined commercial management and execution excellence. By leading integrated business planning and trade spend governance, you will ensure every investment drives measurable growth and operational success.

Care
Reporting to the Country Business Head & Sales Director, you will lead a team of Key Account and Modern Trade Managers while collaborating closely with marketing, supply chain, finance, and brand teams. Your leadership will foster a culture of ownership, accountability, and customer obsession, ensuring sustainable growth and long-term value for Flora Food Group and our retail partners. You will champion governance and financial discipline, building a future-ready organization that delivers on its promises.

Passion
You are a food enthusiast who understands how culinary essentials influence consumer choices and retail success. Your curiosity about taste, nutrition, and functionality drives you to innovate and raise the bar in category leadership. You take pride in translating shopper insights into winning in-store solutions that enhance the food experience for consumers across Sri Lanka.

About you
You bring strong experience in managing large modern trade portfolios with a proven track record of delivering profitable growth and P&L ownership. Your expertise in key account management, revenue growth management, and shopper marketing is complemented by your ability to influence across functions and senior stakeholders. You combine analytical rigor with commercial intuition and agility, thriving in a complex retail environment. You are confident leading teams and driving cross-functional collaboration to achieve ambitious goals.

You are genuinely interested in food culture and curious about how consumer behaviour and future food trends shape innovation. You understand that strong brands are built by anticipating what’s next in taste, nutrition and functionality, and by translating insight into meaningful consumer experiences.

Where this could lead to
This role typically leads to senior leadership positions within sales or commercial management, such as Country Sales Director or Head of Customer Development. Growth into these roles usually occurs over several years, depending on performance and business needs, offering a clear path to broader strategic influence within Flora Food Group.

What's next
If this opportunity sounds exciting, we'd love to hear from you.

Apply before 24-Sep-2026.

We understand your resume might not be up to date and recommend that you apply with what you have or your LinkedIn Profile. Flora Food Group is dedicated to building an inclusive and diverse workplace, we understand that you might not meet all the requirements stated in the description, but we encourage you to apply anyway. You might be the right candidate for this role or other roles. 

Flora Food Group is an employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and equal opportunities for all. We recruit based only on values, qualifications, performance, skills, behaviours, experience, and knowledge. We ensure job advertisements are free from unintentional bias.

No personal characteristics should be a barrier to joining Flora Food Group. We prohibit discrimination and harassment based on race, color, sex, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or other personal characteristics.