Business Development Manager at Appruve

As a business development executive at Appruve, you will drive our future growth across key African markets ,by building relationships with prospective clients and turning them into partners and customers. You are an adept salesperson, capable of engaging in business-level and technical conversations at multiple levels of the organization, including the CTO, COO, and CFO. You have a network across at least two major Anglophone African markets/regions and experience working with upper middle market and enterprise companies within financial services, telecommunications or government based organizations.

You have an in-depth understanding of the buyer journey and can lead a complex, multi-party sale in a highly consultative manner. You are used to building value in competitive situations and enjoy working on products that require deep product understanding, combined with technical knowledge. You are naturally analytical and enjoy digging into business models and helping customers quantify their investment decisions.

You get excited about prospecting, and are capable of independently leading a sales cycle from start to finish. Finally, you enjoy building – you like to actively participate in the development of our sales process, the articulation of our value proposition, and the creation of key tools and assets

You will be responsible for

• Lead customized complex negotiation with our strategic partners
• Provide a strategic perspective to product and engineering teams, delivering critical business insights and launching initiatives that support the Appruve strategy
• Provide thought leadership on identity, open banking in Africa, relationship management strategy across product areas, working with leads and Appruve Senior PMs to define and implement Appruve’s approach to partner management
• Maintain a deep understanding of Appruve’s competitive landscape, emerging business trends at the global and regional levels, identify emerging disruptors, and ensure all stakeholder awareness, as necessary and appropriate
• Ability to represent partners internally and Appruve externally in ongoing strategic discussions with partners such as Ecobank Transnational ,MTN Group and other top tier partners
• Work cross-functionally with the product and engineering teams to define product priorities and roadmap; work with the marketing team to define partner marketing initiatives.
• Enable partner deal support, cross functional planning, relationship management, and analytical insights
• Ability to work with multiple stakeholders and collaborate with all levels of management internally and externally to strengthen partnerships and maximize benefit for Appruve and its partners
• Develop new business opportunities with existing partners, independently managing the negotiation process from exploration, discussion, term sheet, contract, execution, and launch.
• Manage executive-level contacts with key partners, including CEO/COO level meetings
• Develop strategies and business plans with partners and execute against metrics and milestones to drive user growth and revenue
• Develop outbound strategies to create and nurture opportunities
• Work with company leaders from multiple functions (e.g., Engineering, Product, and Finance) to lead complex product workshops and financial analyses
• Lead and contribute to team projects to develop and refine our sales process

Job requirements

We’re looking for someone with:

Working Experiences:

• 3 to 5 years of working experiences in Africa is preferred
• Prior experiences in banking, payments, management consulting in Africa or prior experiences in scaling financial service (or FinTech) operations in Africa by acquiring and managing partnerships with banks, aggregators and telcos.
• Existing senior executive relationships with global / regional banks / telcos / payment processors required (prefer candidates who has relationships in Africa)
• Ability to review and analyze complex contracts and familiarity with standard deal structures.
• Exceptional presentation and communication skills and ability to distill complex issues into structured frameworks and concrete plans
• Strong organizational, time management, and prioritization skills with great attention to detail
• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment, comfort with ambiguity, and excellent interpersonal skills with an entrepreneurial spirit and sense of humor
• Highly analytical with the ability to consume, process and transform large amounts of information into actionable insights

Skills

• Strategic planning: understand bigger picture of the industry, competition and company, able to shape team strategy and mobilize resources to achieve ambitious targets
• Business development: able to acquire and maintain C-level relationships, great oral & written presentation, commercial negotiation
• Project management: able to create effective monitoring system on project performance, task (re) prioritisation and mitigate risk effectively
• Critical problem solving: able to find root-cause and find the optimal solutions with balance of speed & feasibility
• Advanced Microsoft Office and Google Suite Tools skills along with the willingness and ability to become familiar with company-specific sales / project management tools/software (such as Pipedrive or Trello)
• Advanced Powerpoint / Keynote skills to make executive-friendly presentation materials
• Language: English is a must, other languages preferred (French, Twi,Ga, Youroba, Igbo, Zulu,Swahili etc.)

Mindset & Approach to Work

• Get Things Done: Be willing to dive into trenches and do whatever necessary to get the ball across the finish line
• Systematic Thinking & Data-driven: Logical, structured & always use data to guide decision making
• Agility & Creativity: Love finding creative and quick solutions to solving ad-hoc issues
• Priority: Prioritise immediate, short-term goals and simultaneously focus on strategic, long-term goal

Benefits

• Be part of an international, ambitious and successful team
• Be part of a pioneering innovation
• Global / regional network / exposure in FinTech and RegTech
• Diverse career growth opportunities
• Kind and caring team mates
• Competitive salary