Sun King

Off-grid solar home systems provider

Area Business Manager

Field SalesUpdated on Nov 13

Full-timeKouande, BeninNo salary listedIn-person

About the Job

Requirements

Have a degree in a business-related field or equivalent, and at least 3 years of hands-on experience in sales.
Have good knowledge of the local environment.
Have excellent computer knowledge, including fair knowledge of Excel and PowerPoint.
Have extensive customer care experience.
Be skilled in planning, organizing, prioritizing, maximizing value, and seeing the big picture.
Be able to build relationships and work effectively with internal and external stakeholders.
Listen well, coach others, and maintain discipline in learning.
Demonstrate operational excellence by keeping promises, seeking information, and providing excellent customer satisfaction.

Responsibilities

Hire, train, and retain at least 40 Energy Officers in the assigned area, using multiple avenues to find talent and building goodwill for the mission.
Train Energy Officers in sales, collections, products, technical matters, inventory, and logistics, and supervise them professionally and ethically when dealing with customers.
Clarify Energy Officers' daily tasks, sales and collection plans, routes, and targets, ensuring they can demonstrate and sell products, resolve basic customer queries, and access support.
Maintain weekly touchpoints with every Energy Officer, resolve their issues, report issues weekly to the Regional Business Manager, and accompany each Energy Officer on their first five sales to ensure they understand sales and collection processes.
Conduct weekly joint field work with Energy Officers to train them in sales and collections and drive engagement, including night and market activations and visits to local communities, groups, retail centers, and markets.
Meet or exceed monthly sales and collection targets, and provide daily and weekly updates on sales, recruitment, customer issues, and resolutions to the Regional Business Manager.
Review collections progress daily, train Energy Officers to improve collections, profile customers and areas, ensure timely follow-ups, resolve payment issues, and repossess systems as a last resort when customers default.
Monitor competing products in the area, protect and grow the business, inform management, and help maintain the brand's standing in solar products.
Resolve customer issues involving delivery, product use and payments, installation, and warranty service, working with Energy Officers to resolve issues within 24 hours.
Provide Energy Officers with marketing materials and equipment such as smartphones, and maximize returns on marketing, supply chain, store maintenance, and equipment costs.
Conduct weekly table meetings with Energy Officers, ensure the Regional Business Manager is present to resolve outstanding customer or officer issues, organize meetings to maximize attendance and progress, and recognize strong performance.
Grow the area's retail network with the Area Retail Coordinator, ensuring retail activities follow processes and expanding the base of high-selling retailers.

Desired Qualifications

Be innovative and think outside the box.

Job Location: Kouande, Benin Republic

About the role:
The Area Business Manager will coordinate sales, collections and distribution operations in the area they are assigned for the direct distribution of Sun King Solar products sold on Pay-As-You-Basis (also called and recognized as “EasyBuy” Business unit) through a network of agents called as “Energy Officer”. The Area Business Manager is ultimately accountable for generating sales, ensuring collections are timely and accurate and keeping the entire Direct Distribution growing rapidly in a sustainable manager.

Hire & retain Energy Officers: Hire, train and maintain a team of at least 40 Sun King Energy Officers in the area. Use multiple avenues for finding the right talent to sell Sun King EasyBuy products with the help of village influencers such as the village heads, teachers, religious heads, doctors, farmers and others, as applicable. Create a reputation and goodwill for the mission of Sun King to provide clean, affordable and reliable source of energy in their areas.
Training of Energy Officers: Provide training to the Energy Officers on several aspects of the business such as sales, collections, product, technical, inventory and logistics related. Ensure that they are fully supervised in the best professional manner demonstrating highest levels of integrity, ethics and professionalism while dealing with customers.
Provide role clarity to Energy Officers: Provide complete clarity to Energy Officers related to their day to day tasks, sales & collections plans, routes and targets. This includes, ensuring Energy Officers have sales route/area to sell in, they know on how to demonstrate and sell Sun King products, they have the confidence to be able to present and resolve basic customer queries on the spot and they have access to Area Business Manager at all times in case of questions and concerns.
Daily field visits: Have a weekly touchpoint with every Energy Officer in your area – either through in-person meetings, making a sale to the customer in your area or having a call. Resolve all possible issues faced by the Energy Officers and report them to your Regional Business Manager, every week. Ensure that first 5 sales of each Energy Officer is done along with the Area Business Manager in the area, by each Energy Officer to ensure that the core sales and collection process is fully understood by each Energy Officer.
Work with Energy Officers: Conduct joint field work with a group of Energy Officers to provide sales and collection training on a weekly basis and drive EO engagement. This includes doing night activations, market activations, visiting local communities and gatherings such as SACCOs, Self Help groups, retail centers and markets to make group sales.
Exceed your sales & collections targets: Meet or exceed sales and collection targets established on 2nd of every month by your Regional Business Manager. Provide daily, weekly updates on sales, EO recruitments, Customer issues and resolutions, in alignment with your Regional Business Manager.
Drive robust field sales processes: Review collection progress with your Energy Officers daily and provide adequate training to them on driving 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 in case the customer defaults.
Remain externally focused: Keep an eye on companies selling similar products within your area and ensure you take adequate measures to protect and grow our business from pressures. Pre-inform your management team and take measures to ensure Sun King remains a paramount brand name in Solar products for your area.
Resolve customer issues: Provide world-class customer service to your customers as it relates to product delivery, training on how to use and make payments, installation, 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 spend: Provide adequate marketing materials & equipment (such as smartphones) necessary to all your Energy Officers. Ensure we get maximum return on investment for all the costs we incur in areas of marketing, supply chain, store maintenance and smartphone issuance.
Review meetings with Energy Officers: Conduct weekly table meetings with Energy Officers and ensure that you have RBM present in those meetings to resolve any outstanding customers or EO issues. Coordinate, plan and organize the meeting to have maximum attendance and progress. Recognize outstanding performers from time to time and ensure the motivation of Energy Officers 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 you. Ensure all retail related activities are followed per process and the base of high-selling retailer grows exponentially within your area of operation.

Have a degree in a Business-related field OR equivalent and at least 3 years hands on experience in Sales.
Good Knowledge of the environment
Have excellent Computer knowledge with fair knowledge of Excel and PowerPoint
Have extensive Customer Care experience
Are innovative, and you think out of the box
Are skilled in Planning, Organizing, Prioritizing, maximizing value and see the big picture
Are able to skillfully builds relations, works on internal & external relationships
Listens well, coaches’ others and is disciplined in their learning practice
Has Operation Excellence (Keeps promise, seeks to be informed and gives excellent Customer Satisfaction

About the Company

Sun King

Off-grid solar home systems provider

Sun King designs, manufactures, distributes, and finances solar home energy products for off-grid communities in Africa and Asia. Its range includes solar lanterns and solar home systems with inverters and storage that can power lights, radios, phones, and household appliances, all financed through a pay-as-you-go model with small mobile money installments after a low upfront payment. The company differentiates itself with an end-to-end approach—handling product design, manufacturing, distribution, and financing—supported by a large field-agent network and strategic acquisitions like PayGo Energy to expand into clean cooking. Its goal is to increase energy access by helping households leapfrog kerosene and unreliable grids, aiming to reach millions of homes and businesses, including over 2 million in Ethiopia by 2030.

Company size: 1,001-5,000
Company stage: Debt Financing
Total funding: $864.9M
Headquarters: Chicago, IL
Founded: 2008

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