Manager Sales

Purpose of Job

1.    Implement the Textile strategy and deliver yearly sales margin and volume target.
2.    Manage distributors, ensure strategic alignment, and meeting the agreed sales target. 
3.    Be tuned to the market and maximize margin using flexible pricing per customer order.
4.    Build long term relationship with key customers, key industry players and stakeholders both internal and external. 
5.    Understand the competitor activity and implement counter measures. 
6.    Continuously seeking out new initiatives, drive new projects and identify new products to meeting the emerging market trend.
 

Key Accountabilities

With regard to sales activities: 

1.    Has primarily responsibility for the execution of the Textile strategy and deliver margin and volume targets.
2.    Develop strategic relationships with key customers or other key players in the target markets and identify /initiate new initiatives with major customers to support on delivering the earning targets.
3.    Direct, guides and coordinates the commercial activities for assigned customers within a market and/or geographic territory by closely work with R&D, product safety, legal team, customer service, finance/credit, Planning &Optimization and supply chain. 
4.    Continuously search for new applications/markets by linking market knowledge with product development opportunities in order to feed the new product development pipeline. 
5.    Provide input to bimonthly pricing approach for the product group to the product manager
6.    Regular sales control (volume/margin per target market) and report deviations to the plan 
7.    Maintain/manage general sales activities associated with assigned customers (new customer set-up, visit reports, price up-dates, sales forecasting, etc.) uncover new technical contacts for development opportunities.
8.    Cooperate and interact with other sales managers collectively focused on delivering market specific strategies and earnings targets.
9.    Implement changes / improvements to Sasol business systems / processes.
10.    Ensure governance and adherence to policies and laws in all actions.

With regard to marketing activities: 

11.    Continuously gather customer information, maintain and keep updated the marketing related database such as key customer profile, customer mapping (main applications, competing suppliers, products, potential volume). 
12.    Continuously gather market intelligence, identify emerging market trends and unmet needs.
13.    Proactively sharing market intelligence within the sales team. 
14.    Assess distribution channel efficiency and market coverage, provide improvement recommendations

With regard to managing distributors:  

15.    Monitor the distributor performance and provide guidance. 
16.    Arrange monthly/quarterly meeting to exchange market intelligence, identify risks, and address burning concerns. 
17.    Support the negotiation and execution of contracts with Distributors, Agents, Consultants, and other Partners that were identified to serve as a channel to market in the assigned territories.

Formal Education

University or college degree 

Commercial qualification (MBA/MBL) (wish)

Working Experience

At least 5¬10 years of sales experience in the chemical or relevant industry with good selling skills (e.g. interacting with customers, condense selling message, negotiating winning solutions, building trust and partnerships, decision making)

Required personal and professional skills

• Able to communicate clearly in verbal and written English.
• Growth mindset, ability to scale the learning curve fast, intellectually inquisitive, not afraid to take a deep dive into the technical fields.    
• High level of integrity and trustworthy.  
• Emotionally mature, can execute task independently, able to fulfill demanding responsibility
• Self driven, ability to work under pressure to prioritize multiple tasks.   
• Willing to travel extensively in China, 3 weeks per month
• Good communication skill, able to summarize and express concepts clearly verbally.  
• A people’s person, skilled in relationship building with key stakeholders, e.g. external customers, team members, internal functions.     
• Customer-, service- and solution-oriented personality, sympathetic (e.g  delivering high quality solutions and services, demonstrating flexibility)
• User skills for IT modules corresponding to Sales tasks (Market Research, CRM, Pricing, Sales Forecasting, Sample management, Help & Information, MS Office)