Reporting to the Chief Customer Officer
Role Purpose:
The Sales Manager: East and West Africa is accountable for delivering profitable, sustainable growth across the company's African markets. This is a highly visible, hands-on commercial leadership role for an individual who is energised by travel, new-market development and building business across diverse African territories. The role combines leadership of the east and West Africa sales team with direct personal ownership of market expansion, strategic customer development and the opening of new countries, channels and accounts. Travel is fundamental to the role: the incumbent is expected to spend a minimum of two weeks out of every month travelling and working in the African territory, with additional travel where business opportunities require it.
Key Objectives:
Take overall accountability for sales, gross profit, market share and customer growth across the Africa region.
Build and lead a high-performing sales team while remaining personally active in the market and with customers.
Personally identify, enter and develop new African markets, taking opportunities from market assessment through to first customer wins and sustainable commercial growth.
Expand the company's footprint by developing new customers, distributors, strategic partners and routes to market across priority African countries.
Retain and grow strategic customers by acting as a trusted commercial and technical partner and identifying opportunities for deeper collaboration.
Provide market, competitor and customer insight that supports the company's product, pricing and growth strategies.
Key Accountabilities:
Africa Growth Strategy & Market Expansion:
Develop and execute the Africa sales and market-development strategy in line with the company's overall growth objectives, with clear priorities by country, segment, channel and customer.
Personally own the identification and opening of new African markets. Assess market attractiveness, customer potential, competitive dynamics, route-to-market options, regulatory or operational barriers, and the commercial case for entry.
Create practical country-entry plans and convert them into action through in-market prospecting, customer visits, distributor/partner engagement, trials, commercial proposals and first sales.
Build the company's presence in underdeveloped and white-space territories rather than relying only on the existing customer base or sales team pipeline.
Maintain a disciplined pipeline of new-country, new-customer and strategic growth opportunities, with defined actions, owners, values and timelines.
Recommend where the company should invest time and resources based on commercial potential and the probability of building a sustainable position.
Hands-on Business Development & Customer Acquisition:
Act as a senior business developer in the field and personally pursue high-value prospects, strategic accounts and new-market opportunities.
Generate opportunities proactively through market mapping, referrals, industry networks, trade events, targeted visits, distributor relationships and direct prospecting.
Lead senior-level customer engagements, uncover customer needs and position the company's products and technical capabilities as commercially compelling solutions.
Own opportunities from initial contact through qualification, technical engagement, trial, quotation, negotiation, commercial close and early-stage account development.
Use value-selling principles to demonstrate measurable customer benefit rather than competing primarily on price.
Sales Leadership & Performance Management:
Take overall accountability for achievement of regional sales, gross profit and customer-growth targets, ensuring that individual team plans support the regional plan.
Lead, coach, motivate, develop and retain the Africa Technical Sales Advisors, setting clear standards for activity, pipeline quality, customer coverage and commercial performance.
Spend regular time in the field with team members to observe customer interactions, coach selling capability, improve opportunity conversion and maintain the company's standards of professionalism.
Hold regular sales and pipeline reviews and intervene early where activity, conversion, margin or customer performance is below expectation.
Ensure the team maintains strong product and technical knowledge and uses the company's CRM consistently and accurately.
Key Account Management & Customer Retention:
Build senior relationships with strategic and key customers and establish the company as a long-term partner and advisor.
Develop account plans that protect existing business, identify cross-sell and growth opportunities and increase the company's share of customer spend.
Monitor competitive activity within key accounts and ensure appropriate response strategies are developed and executed.
Make sound commercial decisions regarding the allocation of time, technical resources, trials, pricing support and other investment in customer opportunities.
Ensure significant customer complaints or service issues are resolved promptly in collaboration with the appropriate internal teams.
Commercial Planning, Pricing & Execution:
Prepare and manage the regional sales plan, budgets, forecasts and activity priorities, with accountability for delivery against agreed targets and expense budgets.
Work within the company's pricing and margin frameworks and ensure commercial proposals are compelling, accurate and aligned to required profitability.
Monitor sales performance, gross profit, pipeline conversion, customer retention and new-business contribution and take corrective action where required.
Provide reliable forecasts and clear recommendations to the CEO on risks, opportunities and resource priorities across the region.
Market Intelligence, Competitors & Product Input:
Maintain an informed view of market conditions, customer trends, competitive activity, product positioning and emerging opportunities across the African territory.
Provide management with clear commercial insight on changes in competition, customer behaviour, product availability, pricing and market potential.
Capture customer feedback and unmet needs and work with the Product and Technical teams to support new product development, product improvement and successful launches.
Maintain strong personal product and technical knowledge in the relevant company categories.
Internal Collaboration & Sales Discipline:
Align effectively with Product, Technical, Marketing, Pricing, Supply Chain, Logistics and other stakeholders to deliver on customer commitments and growth opportunities.
Ensure material sales activities, opportunities, customer interactions and next actions are accurately recorded in the CRM and progressed to conclusion.
Provide concise, regular management reporting on regional performance, market development, pipeline, team effectiveness, risks and opportunities.
Continuously improve sales processes and regional ways of working to increase speed, accountability and customer responsiveness.
Travel & Territory Commitment:
This is an Africa-based field leadership role with extensive travel as an essential and non-negotiable requirement.
The incumbent must be willing and able to spend a minimum of two weeks out of every month away from home, travelling and working within the assigned African territory; travel may exceed this level when business priorities require it.
The successful candidate should genuinely enjoy being in-market - meeting customers, opening doors, visiting new countries, developing relationships and building commercial opportunities from the ground up.
The role requires resilience, independence, adaptability and sound judgement when operating across diverse markets, cultures and business environments.
Success Measures:
Achievement of regional sales, gross profit and market-share targets.
Value and quality of new-business pipeline and conversion to profitable revenue.
Number and quality of new African markets entered and developed.
New customers, distributors/partners and strategic accounts acquired.
Growth and retention of key accounts and share of customer spend.
Sales-team performance, capability, activity discipline and CRM quality.
Quality of forecasting, market intelligence and execution of agreed growth priorities.