Head of Emerging Business at Diageo

About the role:

The Head of Emerging Business plays a critical role in achieving KBL’s short-, medium-, and long-term NSV ambitions. This role is accountable for delivering KES 35B in annual NSV, while driving operational excellence across distributors, route-to-market (RTM) operations, and the overall commercial ecosystem.

The role provides strong and inspirational leadership to the Emerging Business team through effective mentoring, coaching, and capability development. It ensures that RTM strategies, commercial capabilities, and key sales drivers are fully implemented and optimized.

In addition, the Head of Emerging Business motivates the team, identifies market opportunities, and ensures these opportunities are efficiently captured to accelerate growth. The position is central to building a high-performing team and unlocking incremental value within the commercial landscape.

Market Complexity:

Cultural - The alcohol market has a growing base of brews and locally made drinks that do not conform to set standards.

Distribution - EABL has 62 Distributors across the country who each face unique and area specific threats and require focused attention to achieve on targets

Role Responsibilities:

• Develop and implement a comprehensive strategy aligned to the business mission, ensuring sustainable growth and commercial excellence.
• Design and execute an effective Route-to-Market (RTM) strategy to capture and grow share within the informal alcohol market, ensuring strong market penetration and competitive advantage.
• Drive sales effectiveness by optimizing sales processes, strengthening execution standards, and ensuring the team consistently outperforms competition.
• Ensure disciplined budget management by controlling costs, reducing inefficiencies, and maximizing return on investment.
• Build people capability through consistent coaching, mentoring, and investing time in development to enhance team performance and readiness.
• Support the team through change, ensuring clarity, alignment, and commitment to business priorities.
• Embed and reinforce the sales incentive framework so that performance expectations are fully understood and consistently met.
• Develop and sustain a high-performing team that delivers exceptional results and demonstrates strong commercial capability.

Experience / skills required:

• A bachelor degree in a business related field
• Circa 10  years’ experience gained across commercial
• Track record of success in highly demanding sales organization
• Leadership of teams operating in multi-channel settings
• Experience of making strategic choices, evaluating alternatives, balancing short and long-term issues, and living with the consequences
• Solid understanding & demonstrated delivery in challenging trading environments, understanding of channel, pricing, negotiations and strategy development
• Exposure to and track record of resolving difficult situations