Utility Technical Account Manager at SparkMeter

Description

• Come join SparkMeter’s Customer Success team and help increase electricity access in developing countries. As Distribution Utility Technical Account Manager, you will demonstrate the value brought by SparkMeter to targeted distribution utilities and develop our approach to supporting this new market for SparkMeter.
• We pride ourselves on a problem-led, solution-based sales philosophy. We understand the challenges facing utilities who are working to increase energy access, and we look to learn from our customers’ challenges. Rather than trying to hard-sell a one-size-fits-all product, we’re talking with interested commercial and technical experts to discuss how our product can help with their specific problems, and what they will need to make the most of it in the context of their business and their objectives.
  

Responsibilities
You'll focus on:

• Assessment of customer needs and product fit: Identify customer needs and product fit via in-person and remote demonstrations, assessment of pilot sites, assessment of utility practices and resources.
• Management of pilots and early deployments: Define scope and manages planning and execution of pilots and early implementations. Scope includes collaborating with customer to establish best location of pilot, piloting integrations, defining change of processes needed at the utility, training etc.
• Being the customer’s champion: Be the customer's champion with the rest of the SparkMeter team. Identify and advocate for evolutions that would help our product meet the customer’s needs, coordinate between customer and team. Includes software and hardware features, compliance, processes. You will work with our Logistics Teams, Customer Operations team and Systems Engineering team to ensure we are delivering on our customers’ needs, whether for new hardware, new features, or additional training. You will help measure customer satisfaction and be a voice for our customers, ensuring their feedback informs our product development.
• Replication and growth: You will establish processes to replicate efficiently to other Distribution Utilities. You will define the Customer Journey leading from pilot deployments to sales at scale.

In your first few months you'll:

• Learn our product and how to apply it to the industry:  We have a robust onboarding program so that you understand our product, its functionality, our market, and how to help prospects and customers understand it. And you’ll bring your own knowledge and experience in the process.
• Take part in Account Management of existing customers: You will work with our Customer Support team to understand the needs of our existing customers and to join in (and improve!) our account management touchpoints with new and existing customers, from software demos, to onboarding, to post installation check-in calls, to customer satisfaction surveys and more. This exposure to our current processes will help you understand how our team works and what process they use so that you can adapt these processes to the distribution utility segment.
• Participate in calls with distribution utility prospects: You’ll jump right into our work by joining calls with identified prospects to get to know key contact persons and their product needs.
• Start establishing pilot plans with identified distribution utility prospects: After you become more familiar with how our products work and as pilots are agreed on, you’ll start leading in-depth calls and organize in-person meetings to structure pilot plans, with the objective of demonstrating the value of SparkMeter’s solution in a real environment. You will collect customer needs and collaborate with the rest of the team to validate product fit and path to validate SparkMeter’s value add.
• Represent SparkMeter at industry events & conferences: We travel internationally to events regularly to give talks, meet with our current customers, and expand our networks in the industry. You’ll join other members of our team at a few events each year. (Some recent events have been a few blocks away from SparkMeter’s Washington, D.C. and Nairobi offices, while others were in Abuja and Lisbon!)

Where You'll Work:

• SparkMeter's executive team is based in our Washington, D.C. office, but our people are all over the world. You'll be expected to join us in Lagos, Nigeria, and travel about 20% of the year, in Nigeria and to other of our markets.

Requirements
You'll be a great fit for this role if you have:

• Significant experience working in Nigeria:  Your background should include extensive commercial or technical work in Subsaharan Africa, particularly in Nigeria.
• Industry expertise: You have a background in the energy/cleantech/utility sector.
• Complex, outcome-driven project management: You connect the dots, keep the balls in the air, and eat deadlines for breakfast, while making coffee.
• Uncommonly organized problem-solver: You’re not intimidated by a challenge! You’ll use your knack for gathering information and collaborating with colleagues, partners, customers to create solutions to our customers’ unique challenges.
• Disciplined self-starter: You love devising new systems and getting all things in their right place. We’re a startup, which means we are building systems as we grow and require leadership from everyone in our company for this.
• Empathy: Our customers and partners are based in 25 countries all over the world and come from many different backgrounds. You should be comfortable and enjoy talking with people who come from cultures different from your own.
• Strong communication skills: In order to connect to customers, understand their needs, and create great documentation, you should have excellent written and verbal communication skills.
• Comfort with technology: You should be comfortable with computers, science and engineering concepts. You are excited to learn more about the technical concepts behind SparkMeter’s product. A background in energy or software are examples of experience that will help you grasp our product’s changing capabilities and limitations and ensure our clients can meet their objectives.

We’d also like to see (but don’t require):

• Engineering degree: In your position, you will have to weigh in and make decisions on various technical topics, from distribution system rehabilitation to meter enclosures to radio-frequency communications.
• B2B and technical sales: You have experience with selling hardware and software to businesses.
• Significant experience working with customers in account management, technical sales, or customer support: You are comfortable engaging with customers via email, over the phone and in-person, and owning outcomes to solve their problems. You are passionate about building, testing, and validating systems to improve customer satisfaction.