Sales Director

Our client is looking for an outstanding Sales Director who will help drive their company forward in terms of creating a world-class, disciplined sales force and transformational sales results.  

WHO THEY ARE:

They a for-profit, consumer goods catalog order and delivery service for the peri-urban and rural populations of the developing world.  Using mobile communication technology, the Internet and a network of Agents, they are opening up distribution to hundreds of millions of the world’s populations who cannot conveniently access affordable goods. 

THE POSITION:

They are growing extremely fast and seeking an outstanding hands-on Sales Director to play a critical role in exponentially growing and driving them towards profitability. This is an exciting and challenging role at the forefront of selling to Base of the Pyramid customers. Working extremely closely with the Head of Sales – Retail and Head of Sales – Institutions, you will manage a team of people and lead analysis and projects yourself.

Key responsibilities include:

• Ensuring sales workforce efficiency by working closely with field team Heads of Sales on sales team capacity utilization, territory management and workplace planning as we expand. Introduce key metrics to monitor sales force efficiency.   
• Development and management of Agent and Customer relationship management systems – especially as related to geo-location and Agent visits.
• Centrally own and drive revenue and high margin sales for the Chama and rural remote shopping programs (which are executed through the field sales teams)
• Developing, maintaining and ensuring execution of the daily, weekly and monthly Sales calendar regarding reporting, decision making, and follow-through.
• Ensuring that all sales reporting (Tableau and Excel) is effective in identifying key issues for action by field sales teams and analyzing and effectively communicating insights from sales reporting that will drive sales growth.
• Developing and implementing processes and systems around all sales activities and communications so that the sales team are able to smoothly and consistently execute.
• Development, communication and execution of Sales team commission structures as well as Agent commission structures and payments.
• Work with the Learning and Development specialist to determine training needs and a training calendar for the sales teams and overseeing development of appropriate training materials and sessions.
• Overseeing administration of all back-end sales operations such as fleet management, Agent sign-up, transport and airtime disbursement, Sales team communication tools, Sales team activity reporting, database management and ERP functionality development.
• Reporting to the Chief Growth Officer, you will also have significant interaction with our marketing and customer care teams and be a key member of the broader leadership team.

ABOUT YOU:

• You love process, structure and detail! Getting things running smoothly and putting in disciplined work systems makes you excited to get up every-day.
• You love developing insights from analysis. Reviewing a report and understanding where there is opportunity for growth and improvement and then communicating that to those who can act on it is one of your favorite things.
• You have proven that you know how to work with people who do not love process, structure and analysis as much as you do. Much of what you create and want to implement will need to be executed on by your peers and you need to know how to get buy-in from them by communicating in a clear, effective and constructive way.
• You believe in and care about training and have proven you are thoughtful about the needs that sales teams have and how to effectively train them on these needs.
• You have experience developing sales incentives and commissions.
• You have advanced proficiency in MS Office including Excel and PowerPoint.
• You have 10+ years of experience – ideally in a sales or sales operations role dealing with large field-based sales forces who are geographically dispersed and often in their first job out of campus. This means you understand the challenges in field-based sales role from the employee’s perspective.
• We are willing to consider alternative work profiles (e.g. management consulting) if you can demonstrate significant operational experience and flexibility.
• You love mentoring and developing your team members.
• Experience in high growth organizations would be ideal – where there is ambiguity and a very fast pace and constant new initiatives.
• You are equally proficient at seeing the big picture and thinking ahead of the curve, while paying attention to the smallest details.
• Knowledge of Tableau or another Business Intelligence tool would be advantageous.
• Experience in other East African countries would be an advantage.
• At the end of the day, you know that results are all that matter – and that’s what you strive for – day in, day out.