Business Development Manager

Skills and Qualifications

• Minimum Education Level: Degree (Business, Agribusiness, Engineering, Economics, or similar). MBA or relevant postgraduate qualification preferred but not required.
  
• Years of Relevant Experience: 5+ years, with progressive enterprise or commercial leadership experience.
  
• Sector Experience: Exposure to agritech, energy infrastructure, hardware-plus-software sales, or other long-cycle enterprise product sales preferred. Experience in East Africa is highly desirable.
  
• Proven track record of closing complex, high-value B2B and B2B2C deals.
  
• Strong negotiation and commercial structuring skills, including pricing, financing, and contracts.
  
• Ability to operate with high decisiveness under ambiguity and make trade-offs quickly.
  
• Experience working closely with technical and operations teams to ensure delivery readiness.
  
• Strong systems and metrics orientation, with experience building sales processes and dashboards.
  
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills.
  
• High integrity; does not overpromise and enforces delivery gates.
  

• Own enterprise revenue end-to-end: be accountable for pipeline, proposal, contract, and collections for enterprise, cooperative, and institutional deals.
  
• Structure and close high-value deals: lead commercial negotiations (pricing, financing, payment schedules, margin guarantees) and sign delivery-ready contracts with gating on operational readiness.
  
• Design and run the enterprise GTM: prioritise segments, map buyer journeys, and build repeatable playbooks and sales processes for consultative, long-cycle deals.
  
• Coordinate cross-functional handoffs: ensure Tech, Hardware Production, Field Ops, and Finance sign off on feasibility, BOQ/costing, and collection readiness before the deal is signed.
  
• Build commercial systems and metrics: establish pipeline hygiene, conversion KPIs, sales cycle stages, and dashboards; drive weekly and monthly commercial cadence.
  
• Anchor financing and partner commercialisation: negotiate with banks, MFIs, and financiers for end-user financing and manage strategic commercial relationships that enable scale.
  
• Be the primary commercial voice of the customer: provide structured market feedback into product, pricing, and delivery decisions, and protect margin and go-to-market fit.