Customer Development Intern in Woking

Colgate-Palmolive Company is a global consumer products company operating in over 200 countries specializing in Oral Care, Personal Care, Home Care, Skin Care, and Pet Nutrition. Our products are trusted in more households than any other brand in the world, making us a household name! Join Colgate-Palmolive, a caring, innovative growth company reimagining a healthier future for people, their pets, and our planet. Guided by our core values—Caring, Inclusive, and Courageous—we foster a culture that inspires our people to achieve common goals. Together, let's build a brighter, healthier future for all.

Location: Woking, UK

Salary Grade: 7

Reporting to: Snr Key Account Manager

Why Begin Your Career with Hill's Pet Nutrition?

• Learning & Development Opportunities: You will have the chance to nurture your commercial mindset and develop new skills. By collaborating with our friendly, cross-functional teams, you will gain valuable exposure to how a local market operates.
• Growth & Variety: Operating in a vibrant, collaborative environment, you will play a meaningful role in supporting our day-to-day business performance while gaining a sense of personal ownership over your projects.
• Global Exposure: You will get to work alongside trusted global brands and see how international strategies come to life, opening up exciting pathways for your future career.

Our Purpose: Every day, we work together to help enrich and lengthen the special relationships between people and their pets.

Job Purpose: This internship is designed to be a welcoming and enriching stepping stone into the professional world. Working within an industry-leading pet-food manufacturer, you will discover the inner workings of modern sales and account management. In this supporting role, you will act as a helping hand to our Customer Development Team as they work toward their commercial goals. By learning to turn daily insights into helpful recommendations, you will become a valued member of the team, assisting in strengthening important customer relationships and reaching our collective milestones.

Main Responsibilities:

• Nurturing Customer Relationships: Help the Hill's team and our retail partners by gathering and looking into sales analytics, sharing helpful observations along the way.
• Connecting with Others: Assist in building internal and external networks within retail accounts, helping to keep everyone engaged and aligned on business plans that ultimately deliver against sales objectives.
• Customer Support: Act as an accessible point of contact for routine customer inquiries as you gradually grow into a knowledgeable product expert.

Team & Operations Support:

• Data & Analytics: Help the wider Customer Development team by pulling together weekly updates from a variety of interesting sources, such as retailer data, websites, price scraping tools, and internal reports.
• Promotional Reviews: Assist the team in looking at how past promotions and events performed so we can learn what works best for the future.
• Market Observations: Learn to spot areas for improvement across the core sales and marketing principals and collaborate on ideas to help close those gaps.
• Essential Administration: Keep our daily operations running smoothly by assisting with administrative tasks like invoices, new line forms, promotional nominations, and price files.
• System Champion: Become the team’s planning and forecasting expert using the Atlas system. You will learn to comfortably navigate the system to help track sales progress and commercial spending.

Teamwork & Collaboration:

• Meetings: Join and contribute to internal and customer meetings whenever the opportunity arises.
• Project Support: Practice your communication skills by helping to coordinate and guide various ad-hoc projects across the team.
• Cross-Functional Exposure: Seize the opportunity to work alongside Marketing, Finance, Customer Service, and Logistics, gaining a well-rounded view of how a business grows together.
• Event Support: Lend a helping hand at trade shows and key consumer events from time to time.

Key Competencies: To be considered for this internship, you must meet the following criteria:

• University degree with a 2:1 classification or above
• Strong analytical skills with a customer focus and proactive approach to problem-solving
• Eye for detail and comfortable working with numbers, metrics and spreadsheets; familiarity with Excel / Google Sheets (like pivot tables and VLOOKUPs) and PowerPoint / Slides
• A positive, proactive, and 'can-do' attitude towards achieving objectives and learning new things.
• Cross-Organisational Collaboration and stakeholder management
• Works effectively across functions, channels and categories to align priorities, solve problems, optimise resources and drive efficient execution.

Travel Requirements: Joining the team for national sales meetings 2 to 3 times a year. Attending occasional customer meetings as needed (UK based).

Our Commitment to Inclusion: Our journey begins with our people—developing strong talent with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to best serve our consumers around the world and fostering an inclusive environment where everyone feels a true sense of belonging. We are dedicated to ensuring that each individual can be their authentic self, is treated with respect, and is empowered by leadership to contribute meaningfully to our business.

Equal Opportunity Employer: Colgate is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, marital status, veteran status (United States positions), or any other characteristic protected by law. Reasonable accommodation during the application process is available for persons with disabilities.