General Manager.Americas at Kenya Airways

Description

The General Manager will be the entrepreneur who will oversee all the Kenya Airways operations in the American market, understand competitive activities and trends and takes full ownership for the financial results, customer experience, staff activities and brand perception. We are looking for a hands-on leader who will embrace our vision and agile management, and who  will help to implement and further develop our sales transformation strategy.

Key accountabilities will include;

• Strategy Execution
  • Act as a key change agent and driver of success in a market and make the new commercial sales strategy alive.
  • Develop the market specific sales and operational strategy and detailed plan for execution, based on data. 
  • Own the country/ regional targets and deplore a robust strategy on how to meet and exceed the targets.
  • Harness support of key business enablers to support realization of the strategy.
  • Lobbying with local authorities and creative cooperation strategy and keeping relations with key partners and customers b2b, b2c.
  • Focus is on solution-oriented selling and what the teams are actually doing in order to make progress around the buying journey and to create excellent customer experiences and build an outstanding reputation for Kenya Airways. 
  • Develop area market vision and strategy, including distribution, pricing, contracting, CRM and marketing (communication)
• Revenue, Margin & Market Share
  • Lead the Country team to optimize revenue, margin & market share
  • Achieve Revenue and Performance targets as defined.
  • Take decisions of business potential of existing and new market segments and changing market needs.
  • Ensure that the organization adapts quickly & effectively to changes in the market by prognosis and tactical planning.
  • Lead the annual country/ regional revenue/cost/Staff/Capex budget negotiation with the Commercial Controller and Business Performance Manager.
• Business Development
  • Represent the company amongst customers, partners & authorities and promote/maintain the reputable image of the company in the country.
  • Build trusted relationships with both Corporate and High Net worth Clients and other key stakeholders with an aim to expand market and grow wallet share.
  • Unlock key business opportunities and manage key relationships and clients.
  • Work together with clients, ideally daily, through the sales cycle and beyond.
  • Customer engagement and direct customer contacts have not been pro-actively pursued.
  • Assist salespeople in focusing on forward looking activities with which they can influence results and in discerning the best opportunities to spend time on.
  • Acts as a liaison between Global sales and the geography under their remit.  
• People Management
  •  Reflect regularly with the team how to become more effective and adjust accordingly. 
  •  Attention to behavioural excellence and continuous improvement
  •  Identify key skills gap and training and mentoring requirements for local teams and develop plan to support. 
  • Plan daily short and sharp stand ups (even digital if necessary) to agree behavioral goals and key actions. 
  • Implement the quick wins identified in line with the agreed timelines
  • Own and drive performance management by establishing clear KPIs coupled with regular performance reviews.
  • Execute people management responsibilities in line with the HR Policies and Procedures.
  • Liaise with HR to steer  staff development and optimal training to reach maximum levels of quality and productivity.
  • Lead & coach managers by target setting and guidelines.
  • Ensure effective relations with stakeholders: staff representatives, local authorities, embassies etc. 
• Compliance
  • Ensure local compliance with Kenya Airways health/safety at work; regulatory delegation responsibilities.
  • Manages Internal & External processes and interfaces to safeguard compliance
  • Officially represents Kenya Airways in a Country and applicable facilitates airline political discussions.
  • Oversee integrity of administrative and financial processes.
  • Think quickly and with clear objectives in mind, making adjustments daily to overcome buyer objections effectively, to ensure a differentiating customer experience and cost-effective management of the country/region with an entrepreneurial spirit.   
• Customer Experience
  • Build a strong team, overcoming objections from staff, helping to engage existing customers and prospects and to tailor the sales process to best serve the market needs. Ensure central support develops strongly the toolboxes and analytics needed whilst local availability of respective activities. 
  • Develops and implements strategies and action plans to meet customer satisfaction targets.
  • Put measures in place for monitoring and mentoring. 
  • Ensure operational efficiency in the airline operations at the airport and the offices for the geography under remit.
  • Oversight operational issues in the geography under their remit with the relevant leads in operations.
  • Think quickly and with clear objectives in mind, making adjustments daily to overcome buyer objections effectively, to ensure a differentiating customer experience and cost-effective management of the country/region with an entrepreneurial spirit.
  • Build a strong team, overcoming objections from staff, helping to engage existing customers and prospects and to tailor the sales process to best serve the market needs. Ensure central support develops strongly the toolboxes and analytics needed whilst local availability of respective activities. 
  • Develops and implements strategies and action plans to meet customer satisfaction targets.
  • Put measures in place for monitoring and mentoring. 
• Operations (ground services, IT, technical)
  • Ensure operational efficiency in the airline operations at the airport and the offices for the geography under remit.
  •  Oversight operational issues in the geography under their remit with the relevant leads in operations. 

Qualifications

• University Degree in a business-related field.
• 8-10 years’ experience in an aviation or travel headquartered organization at a mid-senior management level.
• Ideally at least 3 years in a sales role, in aviation or consumer goods or other industry, b2b and b2c related.
• Operational experience in an airline and / or at an airport will be an added advantage.
• Needs to demonstrate good knowledge of airline commercial policies, agile sales and marketing strategy and processes, end to end customer/travel experience and digital.
• Needs to have experience of best in class sales processes and tools, including CRM, contracting systems.
• Ideally demonstrated knowledge of commercial and sales processes for the end to end customer travel experience.
• Advanced user in MS office and internet.
• Fluency in written and spoken English with knowledge of official language in the market.
• Must have strong strategy, problem solving, decision taking, negotiating, influencing and communication skills.
• An entrepreneurial mindset.

Interested candidates are requested to submit their application online.

Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.