General Manager, Telecoms Business at Proten

Level: Executive Leadership
Reports To: Board of Directors
Function: Commercial & Growth

Job Summary

• The General Manager, Telecoms Business will provide strategic commercial leadership across the organization’s telecoms portfolio, with responsibility for protecting existing revenue, driving business growth, diversifying revenue streams, commercializing new products, and building strategic customer and partner relationships.
• The role will lead commercial strategy, business development, product commercialization, strategic partnerships, and executive-level customer engagement across Interconnect, International Direct Access (IDA), Value-Added Services (VAS), and other existing or emerging telecoms businesses.
• The successful candidate will combine strong commercial and business-development capabilities with sufficient technical understanding to engage credibly with MNOs, carriers, service providers, enterprise customers, regulators, and other key telecoms stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities
Commercial Strategy & Business Growth:

• Develop and execute the approved commercial growth strategy for the telecoms portfolio.
• Develop three-year growth strategies and annual commercial plans with clear revenue, margin, customer, and product targets.
• Protect and grow existing Interconnect, IDA, and VAS revenue, margins, and strategic customer relationships.
• Identify new markets, customer segments, products, routes, partnerships, and revenue opportunities.
• Assess market trends, competitive activity, technology developments, regulatory changes, and customer needs to identify growth opportunities and risks.
• Develop strategies to diversify revenue across customers, products, routes, and market segments.
• Provide commercially and financially supported recommendations on investment, partnerships, capability development, and new ventures.

Business Development & Revenue Delivery:

• Personally originate, develop, negotiate, and close high-value B2B telecoms opportunities.
• Build and maintain a robust sales pipeline with defined opportunity values, probabilities, decision-makers, next actions, and closing timelines.
• Lead major bids, proposals, presentations, commercial negotiations, and contract discussions.
• Develop strategic account plans covering retention, cross-selling, wallet share, customer growth, and executive engagement.
• Reactivate dormant and underdeveloped accounts and convert relationships into measurable commercial outcomes.
• Ensure signed contracts translate into active services, billable usage, revenue, collections, and acceptable margins.
• Establish a structured executive engagement programme for key customers, partners, and industry stakeholders.

Strategic Customer & Industry Relationships:

• Build and maintain senior-level relationships with MNOs, international and domestic carriers, ISPs, aggregators, enterprise customers, digital platforms, financial institutions, and relevant public-sector organizations.
• Serve as the senior commercial escalation point for strategic accounts while coordinating technical matters with the relevant technical leadership.
• Represent the organization at industry forums, strategic negotiations, partner meetings, and other high-level engagements.
• Maintain relationship maps for strategic accounts, including key decision-makers, influencers, commercial priorities, risks, and engagement plans.

Product Development & Commercialization:

• Develop a commercially viable product roadmap based on customer needs, technical capabilities, market opportunities, margins, and speed to revenue.
• Identify and commercialize opportunities across VAS and digital services, including:
  • Enterprise messaging and A2P SMS
  • USSD
  • CPaaS
  • APIs
  • Content and subscription services
  • Voice and data services
  • Other approved digital and value-added solutions.
• Lead customer discovery and develop business cases covering value proposition, target market, pricing, investment requirements, risks, route-to-market, and expected returns.
• Collaborate with technical teams to translate approved concepts into service specifications, technical requirements, SLAs, implementation plans, and launch criteria.
• Lead go-to-market activities, commercial launches, customer adoption, and post-launch performance reviews.
• Review product performance and recommend improvement, repositioning, or discontinuation where agreed revenue, adoption, or margin thresholds are not achieved.

Commercial Governance & Financial Discipline:

• Establish appropriate pricing frameworks, deal-approval thresholds, and minimum margin requirements within approved authority limits.
• Ensure commercial proposals and contracts appropriately address pricing, volumes, settlement, credit exposure, service levels, liabilities, renewals, and termination provisions.
• Partner with Finance to monitor revenue assurance, billing accuracy, receivables, credit exposure, settlement risks, and customer profitability.
• Produce accurate monthly revenue and pipeline forecasts and explain significant variances.
• Maintain disciplined CRM usage and ensure critical customer and commercial information is properly documented and accessible to the organization.
• Monitor pricing, margin, contractual, credit, regulatory, and delivery risks and escalate material issues promptly.

Leadership & Team Management:

• Build and lead a high-performing commercial team covering business development, key account management, product commercialisation, and sales support.
• Set clear performance targets and KPIs and ensure effective performance management.
• Coach and develop team members while building a culture of accountability, collaboration, integrity, and commercial ownership.
• Coordinate commercial priorities across the various telecoms business lines.
• Develop appropriate commercial structures, capabilities, incentives, and succession plans as the business grows.

Cross-Business Collaboration:

• Collaborate with related business units and leadership teams on agreed growth initiatives, strategic partnerships, enterprise opportunities, distribution channels, bundled services, and VAS opportunities.
• Identify opportunities for cross-selling and shared propositions across the wider telecoms portfolio.
• Coordinate shared customer and partner engagements to avoid duplicated approaches, conflicting pricing, unclear ownership, or unauthorized commitments.

Board Reporting:

• Provide concise monthly commercial performance reports and quarterly strategic reviews to the Board.
• Report on revenue, gross margin, pipeline, customer performance, product performance, collections, risks, and strategic initiatives.
• Present recommendations and corrective actions where commercial or operational performance is below agreed expectations.
• Undertake other Board-approved assignments relating to the growth and protection of the telecoms portfolio.

Requirements & Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Telecommunications, Computer Science, Business, Economics, Finance, or a related discipline.
• MBA, relevant postgraduate qualification, or recognized commercial/telecoms certification is an advantage.
• Strong understanding of telecoms economics, commercial contracting, and the Nigerian telecoms operating environment.
• Minimum of 12 years of relevant experience in telecommunications, digital infrastructure, or related technology-driven businesses.
• At least 5 years in a senior commercial, business development, product, strategic account, or similar leadership role.
• Proven record of originating, negotiating, and closing complex, high-value B2B telecoms transactions.
• Strong experience in revenue generation, pipeline management, customer profitability, contracts, and receivables.
• Demonstrated experience developing and commercializing telecoms products or digital services with measurable revenue or margin outcomes.
• Strong relationships across MNOs, carriers, interconnect providers, VAS providers, ISPs, aggregators, enterprise customers, or related telecoms ecosystem players.
• Experience working across commercial, technical, finance, legal, regulatory, and operations functions.
• Experience with an MVNO, MNO, consumer mobile business, or digital services platform is an advantage.

Technical & Commercial Knowledge:

• Strong understanding of Interconnect, IDA, carrier services, traffic, routing, capacity, quality, SLAs, settlement, and network integration.
• Good understanding of the VAS ecosystem, including A2P SMS, USSD, CPaaS, APIs, content, subscription services, and partner models.
• Strong financial and analytical skills, including pricing, margin analysis, business-case development, and scenario modelling.
• Proficiency in CRM systems, commercial dashboards, forecasting, proposal development, and executive presentations.