Job Overview
Regional Business Manager – Lakezone
Sun King Solar Lights – Greenlight Planet Inc
Mwanza
The team you would join:
Our PAYG-enabled products allow consumers to pay for their Sun King products over a period of 4-18 months. The inbuilt PAYG technology enables customers to pay for a few days’ or weeks’ worth of energy at a time, and it monitors how far they have progressed towards the completion of their payment plan.
The Regional Business Manager will manage sales, collections and entire business operations in the region they are assigned to for the direct distribution of Sun King Solar products sold on a Pay-As-You-Go basis (also called and recognised as the “EasyBuy” Business unit). This is done through an extensive network of agents called “Energy Officers” who visit door-to-door and sell. EasyBuy technology and services allow customers to purchase units by paying for their Solar products in small instalments, thus ensuring they are highly affordable for off-grid or rural customers. The Regional Business Manager is ultimately accountable for generating sales, ensuring collections are timely and accurate and keeping the entire direct distribution network growing rapidly in a sustainable manner, with the help of the team that typically consists of Area Business Managers, Sun King Store Executives, and Energy Officers of the region.
What you would be expected to do:
- Hire, retain and motivate the entire regional team for the best performance: Regional Business Manager’s team typically consists of Area Business Managers, Sun King Executives, Regional Mentor, Customer Loyalty Executives and Energy Officers (there may be some variations based on the region). Regional Business Managers are expected to ensure they create a world-class winning team in their regions who are disciplined, process-oriented and devoted to delivering the best customer experience.
- Training: Provide training to the Area Business Managers on several aspects of the business such as sales, collections, product, technical, inventory and logistics. Ensure they are fully aligned and managed professionally, demonstrating integrity, ethics, and professionalism while dealing with Sun King customers.
- Field visits: Have a weekly touchpoint with every Area Business manager and Top 10 Energy Officers in each area – either through in-person meetings, making a joint sale or having a call. Every week, resolve all possible issues faced by the Energy Officers and report them to your Regional Business Manager. Ensure that the first ten sales of each Area Business Manager are done along with the Regional Business Manager in the area and some Energy Officers to ensure that each Area Business Manager fully knows the core sales and collection process.
- Conduct Joint Fieldwork with Area Business Managers: Conduct joint fieldwork with a group of Energy Officers to provide sales and collection training weekly and drive Field Service Executives’ engagement. This includes doing night activations, market activations, visiting local communities and gatherings such as SACCOs, Self Help groups, retail centres and markets to make group sales.
- Exceed your sales & collections targets: Meet or exceed sales and collection targets established and consented upon on the 2nd of every month with your sales supervisors. Provide daily updates on sales, Energy Officer recruitments, Customer issues and resolutions, and New Area Launch preparations as expected and aligned with your Manager.
- Drive robust field sales processes: Review sales and collection progress with your Area Business Managers daily and provide adequate training to drive better collections in your areas. This includes customer and area profiling, ensuring regular and timely collection follow-ups, resolving customer issues to ensure they make payments and ultimately repossessing the systems as a last recourse if the customer defaults.
- Resolve customer issues: Provide world-class assistance to your customers regarding product delivery, training on how to use and make payments, installation, and after-sales warranty issues. Ensure that you work with your Energy Officers to establish clear expectations and processes to resolve all customer issues within 24 hours.
- Control Marketing & Other spending: Provide adequate marketing assistance & equipment (such as smartphones) necessary to all your Areas. Ensure we get maximum return on investment for all the costs we incur in marketing, supply chain, store maintenance and smartphone issuance.
- Review meetings with Areas: Ensure that Area Business Managers conduct periodic table meetings and reviews with all Energy Officers under their purview. Conduct surprise visits to field meetings and areas to ensure that the sales processes and standards observed are of the highest quality. Recognise outstanding performers from time to time and ensure the motivation of the entire regional team is maintained at an all-time high.
- Grow Retail presence: Ensure the retail network in your Area grows with the help of an Area Retail Coordinator hired under each Area Business Manager. Ensure all retail-related activities are followed per process and the base of high-selling retailers grows exponentially within your area of operation.
You might be a strong candidate if you:
- Hold a Degree or Diploma in any educational background.
- Have at least four years of field sales experience in the same region. Preferably having worked in Micro-Finance, Banking or Telecom field sales role.
- Are passionate about working with rural, off-grid consumers and resolving their issues.
- Possess Entrepreneurial Spirit, can work with minimal supervision and figure things out with innovative thinking, problem-solving skills, and presence of mind.
- Are process-oriented and work style, can work without supervision and manage the area.
- Good communication skills, ability to build and manage large Field Sales Executives teams.
- Can clearly and straight to the point communicate fluently in both written and spoken English and Kiswahili
What we offer (in addition to compensation and statutory benefits):
- An opportunity to grow as a professional in a dynamic, fast-growing, high-impact industry;
- The chance to work in an open-minded, collaborative culture surrounded by enthusiastic Greenlighters who are driven by the challenge of continuously innovating and growing an innovative, sustainable business with a profound impact on the world;
- A truly multicultural experience: you will have the chance to work with and learn from people from different geographies, nationalities, and backgrounds.
- Structured, tailored learning and development programs help you become a better leader, manager, and professional through the Greenlight Academy.
About Sun King
Sun King is the world’s leading off-grid solar energy company, combining cutting-edge product design, fintech, and field operations to deliver energy access for the 1.8 billion people who live without an affordable and reliable electric-grid connection. Sun King has connected more than 20 million homes to solar power across Africa and Asia, adding over 200,000 homes each month.
Sun King makes solar products affordable to low-income households and businesses via ‘pay-as-you-go’ purchase financing. Sun King installs solar after customers pay a small deposit. Customers then make small, manageable payments of as little as US $0.11 a day via mobile money or cash.
Instead of paying for expensive, polluting, and health-damaging kerosene for lighting or diesel for power, customers unlock savings through accessing solar power and after one to two years of payments, customers own their solar equipment outright. To date, our Sun King solar products have saved customers more than $4 billion cumulatively.
Sun King collects payments digitally through mobile money systems and its 28,000 field agents — over 650,000 payments each day. Embedded electronics inside each Sun King device regulate usage based on payments, similar to the operation of a pre-paid mobile or electricity meter.
From cost-effective solar systems that provide home lighting and phone charging to robust solar inverters that can power high-energy appliances such as laptops, computers, refrigerators, and more, effectively acting as a full stand-in for grid power, Sun King’s products cater to a wide range of income segments and energy needs. Leveraging its proven distribution network and brand, Sun King is expanding its range of products and services to encompass clean cooking, electric mobility, entertainment, and more, aiming to address the needs of our underserved customers.
Sun King employs 2,800 full-time staff in 12 countries, with specialties spanning product design, data science, logistics, customer service, sales, software, operations, and more — all with a passion to serve off-grid families.
Sun King is committed to gender diversity in the workplace. Women represent 44% of Sun King’s workforce.