The Position
An extremely experienced Head of Sales for Africa to build an African sales team and create distribution partners throughout sub‐Saharan Africa. Our partners should ensure products reach our customers deep in rural areas, and work with us to create innovative marketing that generates product pull and creates a new and powerful brand.
This position will report directly to the CEO, and work closely with the President, Head of International Sales, and Head of Product Design to continuously launch innovative and affordable solar consumer products.
This position is an incredible opportunity to impact the lives of millions of families. Our mission is to enable households without reliable electricity to attain the same quality of life as those with electricity.
To do this we will become the market leader in delivering safe and affordable solar lighting and power solutions to over 1 billion Africans who currently do not have access to electricity.
You
You are an extremely competent and motivated sales executive eager to work outside a corporate environment in a fast paced and energetic start‐up. You want a long‐term challenge building an Africawide enterprise.
You are confident of attaining great results, have a track record of achievements, and will build a hands‐on, results oriented culture.
You have managed the rapid distribution build‐out and sales of consumer products across multiple countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, and participated in innovative and aggressive marketing campaigns with a limited budget.
You have delivered strong sales growth particularly in rural markets in Africa and you have successfully contributed to building new brands in Africa by launching new consumer products in new product categories.
You are known for successfully closing sales, and you have 15+ years experience executing sales and marketing initiatives in rural and semi‐urban Africa.
You are extremely entrepreneurial in acquiring distribution partners and leveraging resources. You are driven to succeed and willing to travel extensively and work long hours.
You are strongly motivated to improve the lives of millions of families with high hopes but little income. You must be comfortable selling and marketing through various distribution channels simultaneously, including commercial distributors, corporates, NGOs, governments, institutions, and microfinance organizations.
You will be expected to oversee a sales and marketing strategy that will lay the foundation for a pan‐African brand. Finally, you are a team builder, ready to build increasingly sophisticated multi‐cultural sales teams and a leader who inspires others and acts at all times with the utmost honesty and integrity.
This position will be based in a key African capital city, and will have the following responsibilities:
- Create a comprehensive execution oriented 5 year sales and marketing strategy for Africa
- Grow top‐line sales & bottom‐line profitability for all products as per budget
- Achieve mutually agreed and aggressive sales targets for new and existing product lines in countries with existing distributors, and create new national distributions in additional countries
- Increase our market share by expanding distribution networks and fill distribution gaps in both existing and new countries
- Create and build scalable alternative sales channels (MFIs, NGOs, etc) that support distributor sales
- Manage the launch, product life cycle, pricing, channel and promotional strategies for all products in Africa in alignment with global objectives
- Develop a high functioning sales and marketing organization
- Deliver key financial metrics and manage a resource constrained budget
- Oversee the development of our brand strategy and achieve key brand awareness targets
Sales
- Partner Creation: Creating distribution partners throughout Sub‐Saharan Africa capable of distributing and marketing to low/mid income rural and semi‐urban families.
- Partner Development: Managing product pricing, sales promotions, and retail channel incentives.
- Ensuring timely payments and rolling forecasts.
- Reporting: Sales and Marketing P/L. Budgeting & forecasting responsibility in an environment of limited resources and cash constraints.
- Team Building: Hiring and training a best‐in‐class sales team. Ensuring clear deliverables and compensation planning.
- MIS: Working with ERP systems. Exposure to Salesforce.com preferable
- Sales Analysis: Implementing competitor, partner, and sales performance metrics
- Product Category Creation: Selling new products into new categories. Developing and implementing category positioning and comm.
- Brand Creation: Selling a new brand in Africa.
- Developing and implementing brand positioning, theme, and communication
- Brand Development: Growing and maximizing brand retention and value
- Marketing Strategy: Developing and implementing pricing, launch, promotions, and lifecycle management for product portfolio
- Communication Strategy: Creating innovative ATL/BTL promotional and marketing activities/materials.
- Hiring and managing promotional agencies to execute.
- Marketing Analysis: Reporting and improving budget, ROI, market penetration, and customer acquisition and retention targets
- Product Development: Collaborating with product design teams, tracking consumer trends, creating new products and features
- Excellent communicator and presenter. Very comfortable in front of large corporate partners, distributors, or media to represent the company
Interested parties should contact caroline@vjhommessolutions.com and provide a resume, a statement of interest and current and expected compensation. Compensation is commensurate with experience level. Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
