Sales Director

The Sales Director is a leadership role, spearheading our distribution business into sub-Saharan Africa. You will be expected to perform in a matrix organisation, working with our exclusive Strategic Partner (SP) for the region, to scale the business for sales and delivery, driving the Go To Market, business and sales cadence and establishing the business processes around ourSP to deliver success and growth.

Key responsibilities of the Sales Director include but not limited to:

• Drive revenue through the Strategic Partner, steering the sales process to build capability and establish rapid market traction;
• Direct the development of a comprehensive business plan including but not limited to; demand generation and marketing plans, develop a pipeline of 4x revenue cover within the coming 6 months on a 4 rolling quarter basis, across the defined market;
• Utilising the full matrix structure of IFS to help the SP identify, recruit and enable their core team, including building sales and technical skills, support capabilities, drive a certification programme and establish a channel programme into the Africa market;
• Be hands on and a part of sales process through to contract execution, negotiating key business terms in collaboration with the SP;
• Share your expertise and demonstrate strong sales execution in accurate pipeline and forecast management, and accurate deal sizing and closure on time;
• Co-develop strategic future 36 month business plans in the region, including sales objectives, skills acquisition, target market definition, building of delivery capabilities and demand generation objectives.
• Drive key SP deliverables and responsibilities via an agreed business plan that details territory planning, revenue commitments, skills and marketing plans. These will be reviewed in quarterly Business Reviews, attended by all executive stakeholders.
• Broker and facilitate relationships between key IFS stakeholders, the SP and our existing customers and partners in the market;
• Ensure accurate information is maintained in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM)and other IFS tools, including ensuring compliance with IFS sales methodology and deal approval processes;
• Actively manage existing customers contracted directly with IFS Africa and ensure strong ongoing relationships in support of our customer commitments;

Qualifications

To be successful you will have:

• Good understanding of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and Service Management (FSM and ESM) technology, transformation journeys and alignment to business initiatives to inspire partners to uncover opportunities in their customer base;
• Demonstrable understanding of successfully directing and driving sales processes and diligent sales execution to deliver deals according to forecast to meet and exceed revenue targets, selling across Africa both directly and indirectly in complex, enterprise software sales;
• Deep understanding and expertise in building and running partner and channel programmes in the region;
• Financial acumen and analytical thinking with attention to detail, to model and achieve compelling commercial proposals;
• Excellent communication skills, including writing and presenting in English;
• Proven ability to work in highly matrixed business environment;
• High level of personal resilience and drive to work independently and own the execution of the Africa distribution strategy;
• Enterprising and daring attitude to your work to drive transformation and growth;
• Highly organized and able to remain focused to map out activities and timeline for a complex customer engagement with ability to prioritise and delegate to drive results with internal & external stake holders;
• Executive presence and strong ability to distil critical facts and complexity into clear business cases and value propositions;
• Ability to perform as a business leader and peer to the SP leadership team, and be seen as an extension to their leadership to coach and guide them build the IFS practice to its full potential;
• Strong understanding of software licensing principles, commercial constructs to multi-year enterprise software license agreements, and intellectual property rights management and effective at conveying complex licensing and contractual elements for mutual understanding in a customer/partner friendly manner.
• The ability to work with existing IFS customers that are not part of the SP arrangement, and to use the matrix structure to ensure they are also well managed and informed of our solutions and roadmaps moving forward, and encouraged to work with the SP in the future.

Key skills:

• Tertiary education in Commerce, IT, Business Administration or equivalent industry expertise
• Executive presence having proven sales quote attainment historically as well as most recently in a leadership role within Enterprise solutions - working with sales teams and with a partner eco-system (SIs, GSIs and Channel resell partners)
• Have led complex negotiations with C-level participants to successful closure;
• Knowledge of key IFS industries in the region (EUR; ECI; Manufacturing & Service industries).
• Ability to work under pressure and resourcefulness to find solutions to problems and challenges;
• Practical hands-on approach, leading from the front;
• Well suited to high growth, dynamic, and entrepreneurial environments;
• Strong influencing/negotiating skills;
• Excellent relationship building skills;
• Tenacity, grit and determination to succeed and to be creative to find new ways to overcome obstacles;