Lasko Products, a market leader in home comfort products for over 100 years, is looking to add a Director of Sales Strategy & Business Operations to our West Chester, PA corporate headquarters.

This role serves as the commercial architect for Lasko’s category performance and channel strategy across retail, commercial, and e-commerce customers. The Director owns category strategy, assortment architecture, national promotion planning, and PLR leadership while also driving forecasting excellence and sales operations effectiveness. This leader will operate as the senior category strategist for the organization, spending approximately 60–65% of their time driving category strategy, portfolio management, trade planning, and performance leadership.

The Sales Strategy and Business Operations Director partners closely with Sales, Finance, Supply Chain, Product Management, and E-Commerce to ensure customer strategies translate into profitable growth, optimized portfolio productivity, and disciplined commercial execution.

This position reports to the Chief Customer Officer.

Key Responsibilities

Category Strategy & Portfolio Management

 Own Lasko’s category strategy across channels, ensuring alignment with long-term brand and revenue objectives
• Lead development of customer-facing category strategies grounded in data, insights, and performance analytics
• Design and optimize assortment architecture, SKU rationalization, and portfolio expansion strategies
• Drive SKU productivity initiatives and SMI (slow-moving inventory) reduction efforts
• Own category KPIs including:

• Share growth
• SKU productivity
• SMI reduction
• Trade effectiveness
• Margin performance
• Lead PLR (Product Line Review) preparation and presentation strategy, positioning Lasko as a strategic category partner
  • Develop fact-based selling narratives and insights that influence retailer assortment and space decisions
  • Partner with Product Management to shape innovation pipelines based on white space and performance analysis

National Promotion Planning & Trade Strategy Ownership

• Own national promotional planning strategy across key customers and channels
  • Lead annual and seasonal trade planning frameworks in partnership with Sales and Finance
  • Evaluate and optimize trade investment allocation based on ROI and incremental performance
  • Drive trade effectiveness measurement and post-event analysis
  • Ensure promotional cadence aligns with seasonality, weather patterns, and supply readiness
  • Establish disciplined guardrails around discounting and margin management

Sales Operations & Execution

• Own customer supply coordination, serving as liaison between Sales and Supply Chain, Transportation, Manufacturing, and Warehousing.
• Drive OTIF performance while balancing inventory risks and service levels
• Align sales execution to Objectives, Goals, Strategies and Measures (OGSTM)
• Lead order management optimization in a highly seasonal, weather driven environment

Business Intelligence & Performance Management

• Develop and manage KPIs, dashboards, and reporting to enable data-driven decision making.
• Drive data-driven decision making across the Sales organization
• Analyze revenue, production, and service metrics to optimize order management and fulfillment in a seasonal, weather-driven business.
• Establish clear performance rhythms and business review cadences

Cross-Functional & Customer Leadership

• Represent category and commercial strategy in executive forums
• Lead cross-functional alignment between Sales, Product, Finance, and Operations
• Participate in key customer meetings, PLRs, and trade events as category authority
• Position Lasko as a strategic partner rather than a transactional vendor

 Team Leadership & Culture

• Lead, coach, and elevate a high-performing sales operations team.
• Foster a culture of accountability, agility, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Build scalable processes that support long-term growth and operational excellence.

 

Competencies & Leadership Attributes

• Commercial strategist with strong category management expertise
  • Deep understanding of assortment architecture and portfolio optimization
  • Analytical leader with ownership mindset toward KPIs and P&L performance
  • Strong trade planning and ROI discipline
  • Influential communicator capable of driving alignment across senior stakeholders
  • Decisive, action-oriented leader in a seasonal business model

Required Education & Experience

• 8–12 years of progressive experience in Category Management, Sales Strategy, Business Operations or Commercial Leadership
• Demonstrated ownership of category performance and portfolio strategy
• Experience owning national promotional planning and trade ROI optimization
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Finance, Communications, or related field (MBA preferred)
• Consumer durables experience preferred
• Ability to travel as needed