Overview
The HOS’s main responsibility is to provide leadership, direction, and resource stewardship to manage the growth of sales of menstrual products across all traditional and novel channels. As the company’s senior most sales team member in a current team of 8 in sales and 3 in operations, the HOS is accountable to the CEO for overall sales performance, the profitable achievement of sales goals including growth of the team, and expansion across locations. The HOS will expand sales across Kenya and East Africa, and work in partnership with the Head of Marketing who also leads our health products. Metrics for success include scale of sales against targets, ROI, and social impact.
Key responsibilities
Business strategy: Participate and contribute to the strategic planning process for the company, providing direction with regard to sales, distribution, business development, brand visibility, product development, and customer experience to drive growth and profitability; singularly accountable to achieve sales targets and reporting monthly and quarterly on sales to the senior management and board of directors
Lead sales growth: Establish activity and revenue targets across accounts and locations for the menstrual products sales teams, in respect to both traditional and NGO channels; ensure cost-effective distribution, brand recognition, and sales team trainings for strong return on investment of activities
Market insights: Carry out periodic reviews of market performance with the sales team and distributors to identify new competitor or market concerns, and new product or market opportunities, providing feedback and recommendations to company leadership team
Change management: Lead the company’s sales change initiatives by continuously assessing the need for organizational or strategy change, championing change initiatives, and removing obstacles impeding constructive organizational change.
Back End Operations: Provide managerial leadership to Sales Operations team, proactively assessing back-end operations, inventory management, and instating sales performance management systems to ensure a healthy P&L
A week in the life
If you are a purpose-driven sales leader, you will wake up every day excited to enact different parts of your strategy to ensure hundreds and thousands of girls and women have a new level of confidence, dignity, and self-determination.
Some things you might be doing include to:
Improve sales routes for sales reps in Nairobi
Conduct strategic meetings with T1 and T2 supermarkets to list our product in their outlets
Meet with finance to ensure smooth back-end operations and seamless stocking, and to ensure invoices and receipts match sales made with money in hand
Source a UN or government agency tender contract and submit the application
Present a year-to-date evaluation of our sales against targets, with learnings, for the Board
Develop a back-to-school campaign with the marketing team
Does this sound like you? Qualities and qualifications include:
You are all about rolling up your sleeves and get work done; you build out your team based on work you have done yourself
You have at least 7- 10 years experience in a senior level position in sales, preferably in a FMCG environment; start-up or intrapreneur experience valued
You bring a deep understanding of commercial markets (particularly for FMCGs) and fresh approaches to drive revenue growth
You cultivate long-term relationships and leverage your networks to secure new accounts You understand and can create the instruments on the back-end to ensure sales has the infrastructure behind it to succeed
You forge a diverse team, eliciting insights from them that might be contrary to your own for the betterment of the overall mission
Creative and naturally curious; you are comfortable with complexity, and find unconventional solutions by thinking out of the box
Making positive social change is a key driver for you
You are not afraid to learn quickly, fail fast, and pivot to attain the bigger picture
