Business Development Manager at Balloon Ventures Ltd

Role summary

The role’s key purpose is to create sustainable impact through supporting the recruitment and analysis of new businesses brought on board, negotiating, and closing business relationships, creation of high-quality business pipelines that will enable Balloon Capital to achieve scalable revenue. A secondary purpose is to initiate and maintain strategic partnerships. The role holder will primarily be based in Nakuru – Kenya, with a lot of travel across the Rift Region.

Ideal candidate profile

Balloon Capital is a mission-driven, for-profit, development finance organization that is run on strong commercial principles. We recruit people that believe in the power of capital and market development to bring about positive change and lasting social impact in local communities. We therefore seek to employ people who are passionate about our sector and what we do, are strong on ethics and are committed to the success and sustainability of our clients and of Balloon Capital.

Balloon Capital works with local entrepreneurs who are looking to professionalize and grow their businesses at least 5 times in 3 years. We support them with specific practical and relevant business advice. This requires us to be accessible, down-to-earth, pragmatic, hands-on, professional, respectful and honest. Learning is part of the Balloon Capital culture. Each employee, at every level, is conscious of the need to continuously raise her/his knowledge and skills. The willingness to learn and share knowledge is therefore a non-negotiable condition of employment.

Job Description

Deal Origination – A quality pipeline of small businesses with massive potential:

• Identify and record new businesses that can potentially be engaged by Balloon Capital
• Carry out industry analysis to identify trends that are in tandem with our objectives and potential future challenges
• Engage entrepreneurs to assess their openness to partnership
• Carryout market research to compare our offer and that of competition and advise on how to improve ours

TransactionDevelopment– Great deals signed that are attractive to investees and profitable for Balloon

• Analyze the business to understand its current operations
• Examine the historical financials of the business to understand its current financial health
• Identify the challenges currently being faced by the entrepreneurs and propose ways of mitigating them
• Assess the levels of risk of investment in the businesses and suggest ways of mitigating them
• Investment plan and post- investment action plan
• Draft 2-year projections for the business
• Identify entry points into partnership for Balloon Capital and identify the opportunities for investment with the entrepreneur
• Clearly define the additional support to be offered to the businesses (post-investment)
• Develop follow-on investment plans for all the businesses under consideration
• Suggest ways of protecting Balloon’s investments

Knowledge Management – Insights collected, stored, shared and leveraged systematically and with precision

• Capture all experiences, contacts and addresses in the “play book”
• Create linkages between entrepreneurs, especially those in the same industries
• Share knowledge (challenges and successes) captured with the Balloon team

Required experience, qualification and skills

• 5+ years of a demonstrated track record in Credit, Loan Processing, Business Identification & Analysis for Investment. Preferably experience in the Rift Valley Region 
•  A Business degree is required. An MBA or Msc. Financial Analysis is preferred. CPA and ACCA are an added advantage
• Excellent business analysis skills
• Ability to design financial models and business management plans
• Excellent sales skills
• Excellent communication, presentation, sales and marketing skills