Main Responsibilities of a Category Business Manager at Google
Christopher, a Category Business Manager for Google Pixel, is primarily responsible for sales strategy planning, determining the best ways to sell the product into the market by leveraging promotional and marketing strategies alongside incentives for store representatives; however, "knowing how to just deal with people and negotiate with people and not take things personally" is essential to navigate internal and external stakeholders, especially when delivering difficult news regarding budgets and strategy effectiveness. This requires "strategic thinking, planning, analysis process" and excellent interpersonal skills to effectively support both sales and strategy teams.
Sales Strategy, Marketing Strategy, Promotional Strategy, Interpersonal Communication, Negotiation
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Christopher Speed
Category Business Manager
CSU San Marcos
MBA University of San Diego
Economics
Manufacturing, Operations & Supply Chain, Technology
Strategic Management and Executive
Took Out Loans, Worked 20+ Hours in School
Video Highlights
1. Sales Strategy Planning: Developing promotional and marketing strategies to effectively sell Google Pixel products, including incentives for salespeople.
2. Stakeholder Management: Dealing with diverse and sometimes difficult personalities, including salespeople with targets and budget constraints, requiring negotiation and interpersonal skills.
3. Key Skills: Beyond analytical and organizational skills, the ability to manage relationships and negotiate effectively with both internal and external stakeholders is crucial for success.
Transcript
What are your main responsibilities within your role?
My main responsibilities in my role are sales strategy planning. I work for Google Pixel as a category business manager.
That's a loaded title, but effectively it means we have our product, we need to sell it into the market, and we need to determine the best way to sell it. This includes deciding on the promotional strategy, the marketing strategy, and whether we need incentives to get salespeople to sell our products.
For example, when you launch a phone, you have to get the store's attention. We might allocate funds for pizza and Red Bulls for every Verizon or AT&T store in the country. That's one strategy. Another is making the phone free with a trade-in.
In my role, I look at a couple of levers: our promotional strategy, our marketing strategy, and what we're doing for the store reps at Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Best Buy to get them excited about our phones.
My job requires strategic thinking, planning, analysis, process, and most importantly, dealing with very tough personalities. I support salespeople and strategy people. Salespeople have targets to hit to achieve their goals and bonuses.
Sometimes I have to deliver bad news, like when a strategy doesn't work because it's outside the budget. So, you have to deal with cranky stakeholders. Knowing how to deal with people, negotiate, and not take things personally is probably the top skill for this job.
You obviously need analytical thinking and organizational skills, but I really feel that to be super successful in my role, it's about understanding how to deal with people internally and externally to the business.