Business Manager, East & West Africa at EPSON

The Business Manager for the East & West Africa is the ‘pivot point’ between local sales teams, business management, Business Unit (Product Marketing) & marketing communication teams for business and consumer sector.  Reporting to the Head of Sales, this individual will support in achieving the region’s targets by developing and executing a successful Go-to-Market plan, sales action planning, reporting & monitoring, together with all internal and external stakeholders.

This role is based out of our Epson office in Nairobi, Kenya.

Key Responsibilities:

• Through a thorough understanding of market situation, competitive environment and channel structure/dynamics, work with Sales Management, Business Unit and Marketing Services to develop and implement a ‘Go-to-Market’ plan for allocated channels
• Undertake ‘bottom up’ (from Region through Country to Channel) planning for submission and agreement with Sales Management and the Business Unit
• Analyse data and forecast submissions by in country / region Business Managers to provide consolidated reporting by channel (e.g. forecasts, achievement analysis etc.)
• Liaise with the BU to maintain the optimum implementation map by country (Product/Country)
• Using management reports provided by Finance and feedback from sales & regional Business Managers, develop and maintain a sales achievement commentary for use in regular business review meetings and reports
• Assess requests for special pricing, checking completeness of data, reasonableness of request and approve/decline/escalate as appropriate
• Track and report any gaps in achievement vs. target, and provide proposals to close the gap. Once approved, support implementation of the actions
• Support the Business & Consumer Sales Managers in contributing to the Commercial policy development
• Track the current and potential sales within the ‘Pipeline’ and use this knowledge to provide input to the sales forecast ‘enrichment’ process
• Provide comprehensive business review and support to the Sales Managers in the development of the annual Business Plan (BP), and quarterly BP reviews
• Actively and regularly engage with the Business Unit to ensure that the situation of the region is represented and understood at central level (e.g. market / competition commercial situation, channel requirements etc.)
• Ensure proper and early escalation to the Business Unit, of key region issues and follow-up to ensure necessary countermeasures are taken
• Support the Sales Leaders by facilitating the target setting process for the commission of sales people and the channel accounts
• Manage, motivate and develop direct report (if allocated) to maximise performance

Key Skills and experience:

• Product / Business Management background ideally from the technology sector
• Ideally from a sales environment
• Regional experience across East & West Africa is essential
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Capability to work with many key stakeholders in a matrix environment is essential
• Ability to logically assess and assimilate complex data & present information
• Good communication skills at all levels especially management level