Sales Director at Schneider Electric

The Sales Director will be responsible for the IT Business Segment for East Africa and will be a senior member of the Management Team reporting to the East Africa Country President and responsible for:

• Managing, driving and exceeding IT Business East Africa Region revenues and profit expectations
• Build, drive, lead, manage the IT Department team in East Africa – Channel and Direct End-User teams, within the guiding principles of the ITD Business Unit
• Achieve/Exceed IT Business P&L objectives within the boundaries of financial and strategic guidelines
• Revenue growth, profit, market share, incremental business and people’s development will be key metrics by this the candidate will be measured

Principal Accountabilities

Sales development

• Provide leadership and direction to assigned geography sales teams in the development and execution of Sales Strategies and Business Plans
• Identify and remove key obstacle to growth
• Implement key performance indicators (KPIs) to achieve revenue and segment share targets.
• Execute and develop strategic initiatives for the assigned geography in cooperation with the Country President & Business Regional VP
• Develop and coordinate a cohesive Sales & Marketing strategy and messaging to the market for all channel models and key global customer segments
• Develop solution business, in coordination with the other BU’s on ITB assigned verticals (Cloud & Service Providers, Telco’s, Financial Services Industries)
• Manage different business models (transactional and solution sales) and possible channel conflicts.
• Develop new business strategies in Cross-BU focus areas for Datacentre and Critical Buildings solutions aligned with ITD guidelines.
• Actively develop and maintain contacts with customers at C level
• Enforce policies, tools and processes

People Management

• Build, manage and lead sales and marketing team in assigned geography to drive revenue and increase market shares within the guidelines set forth by both Country President and Regional Business VP.
• Provide professional development for team to ensure long term relationship with employees and targets achievements.
• Manage and develop team skills to drive and expand business in East Africa.
• Responsible for hiring, providing training and developments of employees
• Utilize all required reporting processes and tools to ensure total clarity to the organization.
• Maintain active partnership with all other market access groups to learn and deploy best practices
• Enforce policies, tools and processes

P&L Management

• P&L responsibility for East Africa (sales, margin, SFC), within the framework of the ITD BU expectations
• Contribute to company strategies regarding market and customer needs and opportunities
• Provide weekly forecasts and necessary updates against the forecast
• Participate in East Africa’s budget planning activities and action plans development

Marketing & Reporting

• Provide understanding of market trends, customer needs and partner performance to Country management and ITD management.
• Work with Product Marketing and Marketing Intelligence Team to develop and manage product/solution pricing structures when relevant
• Report updated projects funnel twice a month
• Managing and maintaining accurate weekly forecasts in BFo

Education Requirement

• Bachelor’s Degree minimum, Master’s Degree preferred.
• At least 10 years of experience in sales,5 being at management level in the IT Space
• Experience in key segments: Telco, Financial Services Industry and Colo / Service Provider / Cloud Giants/Data Centers
• Prior experience in a similar role in tech companies is an added advantage
• Strong working knowledge of marketing and analysis fundamentals, including: value proposition, competitive benchmarking, price management, product positioning, promotion and market segmentation

Knowledge Requirement

• Technical background
• Good finance literacy
• Understanding IT markets
• Channels management
• Solution Selling
• Marketing
• Strategic thinking

Skills Requirement

• Strong management and leadership skills
• Business development capabilities
• Spoken and written fluency in English.
• Result oriented
• Hard worker – career motivated/passion for business
• Strong team player able to collaborate
• Ability to work in inter-disciplinary and inter-cultural teams
• Understanding of local IT/overall markets
• Global understanding of P&L mechanism
• Open to change and must embrace the concept of continuous improvement.
• Strong self-organization and hands-on attitude with no reluctance to seeking for help.