2022 Star Women in Convenience winner: Marian Steffler

National account manager

Nestlé  Canada Inc.

 

What was the biggest challenge of your career?

Most recently, the challenge has been meeting the needs of customers virtually for the past two years – we’ve been missing the face-to-face dialogues, work sessions and in-field store visits.   Time spent in stores allows us to identify opportunities in real time and work on practical solutions.

What's the best advice you ever received? Spend time at retail to observe, learn and communicate. Listen to truly understand opportunities and challenges. This makes internal and customer discussions more productive.

What excites you most about the future of this channel?

The channel is redefining itself through home delivery, social media, digital engagement, vehicle energy needs, and sustainability just to mention a few. To me, all of this represents new opportunities, creativity, and growth.

How has the business changed since you started?

The last two years due to COVID has seen the most amount of change in both ways of working and shopper trends and habits. We have to continue to be agile in our go-to-market strategies and approaches.

What is your management or leadership philosophy or approach?

Being approachable and creating strong relationships are essential to developing great working relationships. I am a firm believer that customers/stores come first. My job is to provide them with the best products that will turn quickly and create mutual value. We can come up with great plans, but making them come to life successfully means we heavily depend on the stores to execute with excellence.

Anything else you would like readers to know?

I never saw myself going into the convenience side of the business earlier in my career as I didn’t fully understand it. But now that I am here, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. The people, the stores, and my accounts have made this such a rewarding experience. I continue to be energized with the knowledge that every day will bring something new in both terms of learning and new challenges.