Commercial Strategy & Planning Manager at UAC

Job Summary

Responsible for identifying, prioritizing, designing, and implementing strategic commercial projects across the business as well as supporting UFL markets with tactical sales initiatives, strategic growth strategies and annual sales plan support.

Duties & Responsibilities

Strategic Commercial Projects

• Developing our commercial strategy across markets 
• Exploring alternative distribution channels to attract new customer segments.
• Optimising our end-to-end sales team performance management approach, including sales target setting and forecasting, commissions and incentives, tools, reporting, governance, and accountability 
• Working cross-functionally with Operations (New Product Development) and Marketing to support our product growth strategy and further meet the needs of our existing and new customers  
• Designing strategies to mitigate key strategic commercial risks, e.g. market saturation, competitive landscape shifts and market entry 

Sales Support: Tactical commercial turn around

• Work closely with the Sales Operations Manager (SOM) and to monitor sales performance at the regional levels
• Where there are key challenges and areas of underperformance, provide “hands-on” tactical support for regions to undertake sales turnaround strategies to deliver results 
• Where required, support the regions to undertake analysis and identify key issues impacting performance, as well as the key levers at their disposal to achieve results 
• Support the development of tactical turnaround strategies, review their robustness and provide hands-on support throughout their implementation, as required 

General advisory and growth strategy

• Serve as a strategic thought partner to MD, GM Commercial and SOM on key areas of sales strategy, guide strategic thinking, build structure around key decision-making and sharing best practices on sales strategies. 
• Provide “hands-on” support for new markets with launches, particularly with their go-to-market strategies 
• Provide general advisory and strategic support for overarching sales growth strategies, especially in key areas such as customer segmentation, unit economics and pricing, sales forecasting.

Training & capacity development

• Coach sales team members in each market to develop their commercial strategy skills and build robust and localised sales strategies

Requirements

The ideal candidate will possess

• A Bachelor’s degree or HND in relevant disciplines with NYSC certificate. An MBA degree will be an added advantage
• Minimum of 7 years’ FMCG experience in either Marketing or Sales role with involvement in broad Commercial issues
• General strategic, analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to breakdown a problem, conduct research and analysis, develop an evidenced-based strategic response, then communicate and align stakeholders around the direction
• Project leadership, with the ability to lead high-impact cross-functional strategic commercial projects end to end (including planning, analysis, conclusions and implementation) to achieve results
• Critical thinking and analytical skills, with the ability to work with large amounts of data (including Excel modelling) to develop strategies and make rigorous decisions
• Commercial capability across sales and marketing (particularly in B2C), with a demonstrated history of delivering strong commercial results
• Stakeholder engagement and communication skills, with the ability to develop relationships across Cross Functional teams
• Possession of CIM Certification is an added advantage