Head of Customer Engagement at Watervale Investments

What you'll do

We’re looking to for a self-driven and analytical leader to manage all customer-facing activities of our largest business unit, from sales to product development. You’ll be a strategically-oriented professional who can ensure your team’s day to day operations are in line with the company’s goals. You’ll have outstanding analytical ability and judgement, identifying trends and weighing evidence to make major tactical decisions. You’ll be an effective people manager, eager to grow your team and develop the individuals who comprise it.

The role in brief

• Develop and lead a high performing customer engagement team
• Invest in building, coaching and developing your team - hiring new members and growing responsibilities of existing team members
  Maintain a high-performance culture, designing a motivating compensation policy and rewarding outstanding accomplishment
• Oversee the company's customer portfolio while driving expansion
• Coordinate efficient prospecting and customer management functions
• Create an effective system to ensure that the team collects accounts receivable on time
• Work with management to design and implement ideas and strategies to launch new products and break into new segments
• Propose and lead the implementation of out-of-the-box marketing ideas to drive increased market penetration of existing products lines
• Directly manage the relationship with key accounts in the portfolio
• Implement and manage systems to effectively track activities and sales
• Find opportunities to develop and improve systems, delegate responsibilities to enable the team to handle more work with increasing complexity
• Coordinate activities with the operation and production teams ensuring smooth collaboration with the customer engagement team and improve processes based on customers’ and other teams’ feedback
• Inculcate a data-driven decision-making culture
• Effectively utilize customer relationship management (CRM) and sales tracking platforms to ensure that the customer engagement team operates efficiently and meets its targets
• Manage our product portfolio and ensure an efficient use of resources
• Regularly update product weekly consumption – keeping in mind previous stock out, seasonality and market trends - to ensure that an optimal level of inventory is held
• Liaise with supply chain team to ensure timely reordering
• Direct market research and offer data-driven recommendations about new products and/or designs
• Closely monitor market trends and competitive landscape to define pricing strategy for each product category

Career growth and compensation

You’ll join the leadership team of one of East Africa’s most successful start-ups, playing a key role in our growth toward a major enterprise. You’ll learn first-hand how a thriving venture is operated, with opportunity to grow your skills and responsibilities as your team and our company grow.

We believe this distinct experience is the most valuable benefit we offer new leaders who join our team. In addition to this, you’ll earn a competitive salary and benefits package benchmarked against lean mid-sized companies. You’ll also be awarded stock options, allowing you to participate in the value you create as a leader of our team.

Qualifications

• You are an out-of-the-box thinker and enjoy coming up with creative ideas.
• You are a strong leader, and you have at least 3 years’ experience managing individuals across different functional areas. You have a proven track record of motivating and developing your direct reports.
• You preferably have at least 2 years’ experience in leading a company’s business development strategy and a track record of achievement in growing a company’s portfolio.
• You have the ability to manage key customers’ relationships in another organization and are effective at building, maintaining and growing such relationships independently.
• You have an entrepreneurial streak and have drawn energy from working in a young company, start-up environment or other environment of rapid growth and change. You enjoy working on multiple diverse projects and tasks simultaneously.
• You thrive when you are able to take initiative, you are considered very self-managing and do best in an environment where you are given high-level goals and take initiative to achieve them.
• You are confident in your own ability to perform and inspire others to perform, and you are eager to take on responsibility for a key team within our company.
• You find the prospect of being rewarded according to your ability to grow a team extremely motivating.
  You have experience developing and implementing management systems within an organization, and value the structure and predictability they bring.
• You possess a strong analytical toolkit, and you frequently apply quantitative analysis to decision-making.
• You can troubleshoot complex problems and offer ideas about possible solutions.