Business Development Manager
H.B. Fuller
- Nairobi
- Permanent
- Full-time
- Profitably grows market share through acquiring new business at new customers and new applications at existing accounts
- Meets annual budget growth objectives by closing qualified new business opportunities
- Maintains a healthy new business pipeline of new opportunities in line with the annual growth plans
- Skillfully utilizes the H.B. Fuller sales process to find, qualify and close new business.
- Sells at optimum value and margin to meet agreed profit targets.
- Maintain business in existing accounts
- Develop trusting and productive relationship with the key decision makers in the account. Is able to develop relationship maps and maintain in SFDC under contact records.
- Understands market trends and offers solutions to customer’s ensuring expectations are met.
- Collaborating with the customers to review the business performance during formal business review meetings.
- Gathers business intelligence to understand possible threats and mitigates the same.
- Collaborating with global teams to grow and maintain the business segment (s).
- Manages activities related to identifying new business opportunities:
- Is technically independent and competent enough to manage running own technical demonstrations- and able to produce technical reports.
- Manages own time by focusing efforts on the blue chip opportunities.
- “Opens the door” at potential customers, develops and explains the H.B. Fuller value proposition.
- Helps customers to select appropriate products for various applications. Ensures customers are fully aware of value delivered.
- Evaluates and establishes relationships with potential partners, such as application equipment providers, OEMs, Industry associations to achieve a deeper market penetration.
- Evaluates customer requirements within the overall context of the market, i.e. applicability of similar products and projects for other customers. .
- Support opportunities related to regular business and support successful closure
- Develop and improve value offering
- Capture customer requirements (VOC) and help translate them into value propositions
- Collect data supporting value propositions at customers Monitor and document the offered values in continued business
- Ensures customer projects are on time and on budget.
- Work on Product Portfolio :
- Manage product program in the segment and define the GOTO product portfolio
- Completes detailed customer requirements with appropriate business to ensure understanding of requirements and CTQ’s as necessary for R&D / Technical Service
- Capture trends from industry and translate them into new product or service developments and innovative offerings.
- Propose and lead suggested price positioning in the segment in cooperation with business manager. Support product complexity reduction exercise lead by Marketing.
- Interaction and communication with internal stakeholders
- Seeks input from SAM’s , Business colleagues and sales to develop segment strategy
- Partners with all stakeholders to establish priorities, service levels and expected deliverables.
- Provides, summarizes, analyses and processes relevant customer and market information using SFDC and other information sources.
- Coaches and influences senior sales colleagues
- Partners with Marketing, Technical Department and R&D to ensure voice of the customer is received and acknowledged in the HBF R&D pipeline and all related internal support.
- Provides supporting resources & intelligence to sales teams to respond to customer’s requests
- Expertly communicates across the business on all internal and external activities, in line with the strategic plan. Provides regular updates to all stakeholders
- Is aware of the forecasting
- Partners with an expert colleague from the Technical Department on specific issues
- Sales Budget.
- Profitability measured as percent (%) contribution margin.
- Guarding existing accounts and growing new accounts.
- Creating solid pipeline for business continuity and growth
- Master’s degree in Business, Marketing or Technical with postgrad marketing (or equivalent through experience)
- Proven track record of successful market development with a minimum of 5 years technical sales experience.
- Strong driver for results and success. Shows passion for the role.
- Expert in the value selling process with good understanding of B-2-B selling process.
- Ability to harness and manage important business relationship.
- Outstanding commercial and communication skills at all levels of contacts: Executive, Middle Management, Production floor
- Understanding of basic financial metrics such as Operating Profit, Margins and Working Capital
- Strong oral, presentation and written communication skills
- Good analytical capabilities linked to good strategical thinking skills.
- Significant industry standing. Considered an expert in technical Adhesives
- Excellent listening skills
- Excellent computer literacy
- Fluent in English language, with other additional European languages a plus
- Ability to work in a team with different cultures and nationalities
- Ability to lead, influence and motivate the internal cross functional team to achieve business goals
- Intimate knowledge of the support functions
- Ability to work in a fast and changing environment
- Disciplined work approach with good reporting skills
- Ability to travel with region - between 50-60% time
- Ability to acquire knowledge of adhesives performance and applications of product range within 6 month period
- Ability to work from a home office
- High ethical standards – must meet HBF Minimum
- Selling/marketing or technical experience with industrial multi nationals
- Ability to lead and influence internal stakeholders in any function
- Willingness to move to different countries to work
- Experience in more than one market/application/geography
- Experience in selling adhesives into multinational companies
- Fluency in English and Swahili – French would be an added advantage.