Heidi E. Bonwell

Spearhead business development initiatives for a leading domestic manufacturer of specialty lipids, covering a multi-state territory across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. Drive sales growth by maintaining and expanding portfolios for existing accounts, while aggressively targeting and securing new business opportunities in the nutraceutical, food, personal care, and HI&I industries.

• Lead transition project management for onboarding a new Master Distributor, including strategic planning, weekly meetings, task management, and cross-functional training for Food/Nutritional, Personal Care, and HI&I divisions.
• Established relationships with key decision-makers within customer's organization to promote growth and retention.
• Monitored market trends and competitor activities to identify areas of potential opportunity.
• Proficient in Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce CRM, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.

Charged with growing sales and gross profit in a five state territory region. Deploys a problem-solving approach to complex formulation challenges, routinely leveraging internal and external technical support. Sells across multi-functional and multi-level tiers within the customer to ensure total and aligned value creation.

• Created and implemented a territory management plan to optimize results at key strategic accounts, while maintaining the territory's commodity base.
• The pipeline yielded 10% growth in 2024.
• Reactivated non-buying and dormant accounts by investing time and energy.
• Updated and maintained the company's CRM platform to improve project management, resource allocations, and prioritization of time and focus.

Developed new accounts and strengthened existing and dormant accounts for food, personal care, pharmaceutical, and nutraceutical manufacturers across 5 states.

• Increased sales (2021) by 157%, gross profit by 130%, volume by 58%.
• During Covid-19 lockdowns, created and deployed an innovative sales approach that featured self-created LinkedIn videos entitled “Chemicals for Dummies.”
• This novel approach literally opened doors and increased the number of interested accounts significantly, all while increasing company brand equity during a time when sales people were routinely shut out.
• A link to a typical video is attached: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6965692227327057921/

Responsible for growing sales and securing new clients in the Food & Fragrance Division.

• Routinely built and executed sales campaigns based on in-depth market and customer research.
• Created twelve new customers within my first sixteen months in the Chemical industry.
• Invigorated Gehring Montgomery's overall presence and positioning by producing creative marketing and outreach via LinkedIn.

Managed the operations of six tasting rooms across New Jersey, with 6 reporting managers, and 35 associates. Was responsible for all marketing communications and sales activities at all corporate and publicly attended events.

• Reported directly to the President and Vice President.
• Under my leadership, I doubled the wineries numbers in a year's time. Multiple locations continued to hit all-time high performances in sales.
• High sales numbers was achieved by training my associates on the differences between NJ wines and wines globally so they could promote our product with confidence by level setting expectations and opening the customers mind to a terroir they were unfamiliar with.
• Grew sales by introducing “Farm to Table” events, where I worked directly with the chefs for pairings, and lead wine education events throughout the state of NJ.
• This position began as a Tasting Room Associate where I was promoted to Regional Manager in three months time.