End-User Sales Manager – Africa at Hewlett Packard (HP)

Hewlett Packard (HP) is the largest technology solutions provider in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and worldwide. The company’s offerings span from IT infrastructure, personal computing and access devices to global services, imaging and printing. Our customers are virtually everybody: consumers, small and medium-sized companies, large corporations as well as Government institutions.

Applications are invited for:

Title: End-User Sales Manager – Africa

Job ID: 3087801
Location: Lagos, Nigeria

Responsibilities
Managing the Business:

• Sales coverage- Builds well targeted business plans and strategies for allocating resources and driving sales activities to achieve margin; collaborates within HP and with the field to prioritize, facilitate and direct the use of resources.
• Account Planning- Assists in planning sales strategy; manages the internal processes in support of sales reps and selling activities; aligns tactical account plans with overall corporate strategy; actively develops and manages geography business plans to meet revenue goals/quotas; develops plans that articulate the strategies/requirements essential for focusing sales activities, forecasts accurately and communicates sales progress; actively manages and signs off on account business plans through scheduled reviews and updates.
• Pipeline management- Builds, monitors and orchestrates sales pipelines to ensure continuous population of near and long term opportunities; manages the size, shape and quality of pipeline; analyzes overall win rates and win/loss ratios.
• Deal management- Reviews deals to ensure soundness and problem-free processing by HP back-end operations; Monitors the number of deals with TAS plan reviewed by managers.
• Business acumen- Exhibits base level of business, financial and legal acumen to develop meaningful business recommendations; continuously monitors and improves area-of-control operations to ensure alignment with HPs business direction, the quality of business practices and optimum organization performance.
• Strategic sales planning & implementation- Orchestrates the development of strategic sales plans that reflect HP’s business strategy, to advance market share/penetration, and achieve profitable growth.
• Competitive Positioning/Strategy- Uses competitive intelligence in account planning and sales activities to develop counter strategies that will neutralize competitive influence on the customer’s buying decisions.
• Contributes to and influences the POM (Process of Management) to ensure a comprehensive overview of the business on a weekly basis – this should include all Lines of Business.
• Contributes to the Africa Leadership Team through sharing insights as well as aligning to the required transformation

Leading & Managing Sales People:

• Coaching & Performance Management- Assesses and manages employee performance to ensure individual and group excellence; counsels and supports individuals through selling challenges; manages performance and results of individuals through selling challenges; manages performance and results of high and low performers.
• Leadership- Models effective selling skills; motivates and supports sales teams in selling; demonstrates a high level of support in the pursuit and closing of deals.
• People development- Nurtures and advances the talent required to maintain HP sales force excellence within area of control; sponsors and directs skill building activities to increase the productivity and accomplishments of the sales force.
• Change management- Ability to work through an environment of change and effectively lead a sales team through transitions beyond their control.

Selling as a Sales Manager:

• Focus on strategic direction- Understands the overall HP/TSG strategic direction and portfolio, and can assist sales teams in customizing solutions based on client needs.
• C-level partnering- Contributes to enduring executive relationships at the highest levels of the client’s organization; personally interacts with executives; establishes professional relationships and credibility with key IT and business executives in support of other established relationships with the client.
• Consultative selling- Strategizes and coaches team on how to apply consultative-selling techniques to identify and advance opportunities that result in ongoing profitable revenue growth for HP; prepares for client calls in partnership with sales teams and supports the efforts of the team during client meetings; ensures sales teams have access to other HP resources and encourages them to nurture relationships with client influencers and decision makers.
• Industry and client knowledge- Stays current with industry and competitive research and information to enable rich client dialogue; maintains an understanding of client business challenges, industry trends and markets; demonstrates breadth and depth of knowledge to position and map HP capabilities that align to client business objectives and initiatives.

Sales Development:

• Resource Brokering / Allocation- Collaborates across HP within the field to access, facilitate and direct the use of resources needed for effective selling.
• Sales Facilitation- Applies influence and organizational savvy to advances.

Strategic Business Planning:

• Manages the top- and bottom-line – monitors discounts and margins involved in individual deals to align them with group performance.
• Works with others to create mechanisms that shift the focus from “low- hanging,” immediate wins to recognizing and providing incentives for large deals/wins.
• Understands industry drivers and the customer base better to bridge HP solutions with account-relevant problems and opportunities.
• Builds stronger internal relationships with other groups to ensure seamless selling of total HP solutions and to establish clear expectations for resource alignment and support.
• Develop effective counter-measures and messages.
• Builds clear strategies for working with key accounts to pursue and close major opportunities, including clear identification of tactics for accelerating progress through the pipeline.

Sales Team / Individual Coaching:

• Provides better coaching and mentoring opportunities – less improvization, more planful, more call-related modeling.
• Reviews and provides counseling on account-team deals.
• Leverages personal sales experience to participate in pursuit planning for key accounts.
• Strengthens the alignment of account-team activities and priorities with management’s business mission and goals.
• Assesses account teams for strengths/challenges and ensures that the team capitalizes on individual strengths, while compensating for individual challenges.
• Ensures that sales reps are trained on corporate tools and systems to ensure efficient use of time, better data collation, and elimination of the “management by spreadsheet” cycle.
• Vertical Industry Acumen- Develops and exercises a deep understanding of business dynamics within area of control, as a basis for informed business decision making.
• Solution Selling- Approaches selling from a business solution perspective to ensure that HP products and services accurately address the customer/client’s true business need in terms of type, scope, level.
• Change Management- Develops methods for supporting innovation and change across the organization.
• Leadership- Able to lead effectively in a complex and political environment, and deliver results; Able to influence without direct authority; Able to balance between competing priorities and be flexible and creative; Drives team performance to best in class.

Education and Experience Required

• University or Bachelor’s Degree.
• Typically 7+ years experience in sales.
• Directly related management experience and work results including success in achieving progressively higher quota or other sales related goals.
• Demonstrated level of project management skills.

Knowledge and Skills:
In addition to core selling skills:
Business Management:

• Strategic Planning- Translates business goals into actionable plans and strategies that reflect the requirements and opportunities within area-of-control Aligns area-of-control account and market opportunities with upstream strategic plans and metrics. Sets sales priorities and establishing these as the focus of individual or sales team activities.
• Execution- Actively manages business plans to meet revenue goals/quotes and advance the business interests of HP. Determines if an opportunity is profitable for the company.
• Forecast/Budget Control- Tracks and manages rolling forecasts and budgets to ensure timely and accurate roll-ups.
• Pipeline Management- Builds, monitors and orchestrates sales pipelines to ensure continuous population of near- and long-term opportunities Balances quick wins against longer sales-cycle opportunities to ensure both immediate wins and long-term profitability for HP.
• Operations Building/Improvement- Continuously monitors, troubleshoots and improves area-of-control operations to ensure alignment with HP’s business direction, the quality of business practices, optimum organizational performance and a highly motivated sales force.

Application Closing Date
Not Specified.