Top sales director

Nicky Robinson
winner Sales Director category

“I am responsible for managing and inspiring a field sales team of over 320 people who all locally drive the performance of our soft drinks portfolio across the national supermarkets of Great Britain. Retail sales value for this channel is £1.4 billion.

“I initially started out in research and marketing but quickly learned that, when I understood what customers would like, I wanted to be the person who directly acted on delivering against it. I also love the responsibility of feeding back and inputting into all the functions based on customer feedback and market developments.

“I think there are fewer women in sales leadership partly because of perception and partly because of reality. The assumption still persists of a prerequisite to be aggressive and have the capacity to thrive in a cutthroat, long-hours working environment. This is far from the truth and I think businesses don’t necessarily recruit with this in mind, and yet some women do not put themselves forward.

“However, as a business function, we are often not good at supporting flexible working requests. A lot of senior sales positions are still full time and require considerable travel when there could be flexing for job shares and part-time roles. For the right circumstances, I firmly believe that the cost of doing this would be more than offset by the benefit of retaining more women’s perspective, capability, passion and experience.”

Nicola Robinson is Director – Field Sales
at CocaCola Enterprises