Sales Operations Manager at Kenya Wine Agencies Limited (KWAL)

Job Purpose

Building a clear sales strategy and plans for short, medium and long term to protect and grow portfolio volumes and market share, monitoring of sales performance, coordination of sales operations, Coordination of all sales projects and Benchmarking against industry best practice.

Responsibilities and Accountabilities

Area 1: Leadership

• Assessment of team capability to deliver, recommend, select and implement training programs for field teams.
• Management of the Commercial Operations team to deliver superior operational support to the KWAL sales department, within budget.
• Gatekeeping responsibility - ensure that all activities tasked to the sales team are within strategy and adequately resourced.
• Provide leadership and accountability for the sales automation platform that will deliver superior Route to Consumer strategy.
• Overall co-ordination of all SLT meetings.
• S&OP coordination for the Commercial Team. Purchase plans within target accuracy ranges.

Area 2: Commercial Operations

• Deliver sales overheads budget plan by working with the CLT, Finance, Procurement teams and other relevant cross functional stakeholders on optimal cost management.
• Manage SFA solutions to drive Sales Force Effectiveness and/or distributor efficiency and effectiveness.
• Overall stewardship of the Trade Marketing team to deliver breakthrough brilliant execution of both marketing and trade strategy activities.
• Key in influencing the Regional teams towards delivering outcomes on 4As initiatives and overall market share growth.  
• Deliver cutting-edge Trade Insights and Analysis to enable the field commercial teams make valuable decisions that drive sales force effectiveness as well as distributor efficiencies and bottom-line growth.
• Deliver superior operational support to the sales team via proactive cross-functional and executive engagements to unblock any barriers to optimal sales Performance
• Promote a culture of continuous improvement in the function

Area 3: Trade Execution

• Work with Sales Leaders to identify the activities required to be executed by KWAL Field staff and distributor staff focusing on key areas of:
• oSales Team: 4As, Sales objectives, surveys, SFE, distribution checks and share of shelf
• oDistributors: Strike rate, Coverage, Optimal cost-to-serve.
• Ensure all promotions are in line with market guidelines on maximum number of promotions within a sales cycle
• Ensure all activities and journey plans effectively support the sales force capacity
• Take an active role in the process of reviewing the contact and coverage strategy with the sales leaders
• Work with sales leaders to capacity plan for the sales force.
• Review and share Commercial insights with the CLT (leveraging SFA and other market intel, Retail Audit etc).
• Ensure all activities are assigned in line with the contact strategy and activity brief

Area 4: People Management

• Support in the sales recruitment process and embedding the disciplinary process within sales
• Support in the design and execution of Sales Reward programs.  
• Deliver the Sales Capability agenda to transform the field sales teams’ functional and leadership skills.
• Champion the embedding and progressive evolution of the KWAL Way of Selling.  

Area 5: Data Management & Reports

• Champions the role of data management
• Act as an SFA super-user for Commercial Operations and ensure a backup person has been identified to take over your role during planned and unplanned absences
• Routine review of the performance reports. Generation of insights based on linkages between Team Capability, SFE and Performance.
• Have deep insights into Sales progress versus all objectives in the market and link this information to production planning.
• Develops principles and guidelines on the structures & definitions of externally sourced consumer & customer data.
• Support & coach Sales Managers with the reviewing of the reports to generate commercial insights and make value-based decisions

Minimum Requirements

• A Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration or related field
• At least five (5) years Sales Management or relevant Industry experience in FMCG, ideally beverage related with experience in dealing with Customers at all levels
• Experienced in Significant portfolio and category knowledge which is applied to understanding how best to service both customers & consumers
• Excellent Commercial & Financial Acumen

Competencies/Attributes

• Ability to recognize business critical activities and ensure organization is fully lined up to support.
• Ability to translate business objectives in to benefits for customers and consumers in a compelling commercial argument
• Practical experience in use of MS packages and ERP systems.
• Highly developed stakeholder management skills.
• Excellent verbal and oral communication skills.
• Excellent persuasion, negotiation and influencing skills.
• Demonstrate sound judgment and problem-solving skills.
• High level of integrity