Minimum requirements for the role:
The successful candidate will be responsible for:
- Must have a tertiary qualification in Agriculture
- Minimum 8 years commercial experience in agriculture, preferably in the Southern Africa market will be required
- Solid experience in Agronomy and the area of agriculture, preferably in the Southern Africa market is essential
- Knowledge of the seed industry will be an added advantage
- An understanding of dealing with C-suite executives with excellent communication and presentation skills, integrity, and impeccable professionalism is important
- Must have experience working with Government officials at all levels and navigating government structures
- Above-average communication skills, with the ability to interface with internal and external stakeholders of all levels, including farmers, will be required
- Must have a valid drivers license and be fit to travel
The successful candidate will be responsible for:
- Researching, preparing and executing a sales plan focused on delivering new recurring revenue for Field Crops through partnerships with agro-input companies and the public and private sector in the geographies of the SADC Countries.
- Developing and managing the distribution channels for company products in the geographies leveraging strengths of the group in the region.
- Identifying, recruiting and onboarding a high performing Sales & Marketing team in the region.
- Producing creative solutions to get customers to engage.
- Preparing and negotiating commercial proposals.
- Generating new business by leveraging existing relationships and building new relationships across private and public sectors, NGOs, Government, Commercial and SHF.
- Providing market feedback and analysing data to aid in decision making.
- Coordinating products testing and registration in line with in-country seed policies and regulations.
- Preparing and implementing trial plans and design by the existing Technology and Development system, including the collation of trials data/information and general data management to understand the outcomes and the impact on the strategy.
- Managing trials for field crops and, by employing best agronomic practices, know the agronomical aspects (pest/diseases resistance, characteristics, performance, etc.), yield potential, and potential segments in different markets.
- Providing product/crop training to the Sales & Marketing team.
- Developing product-specific technical information and technical support in product complaint handling.
- Preparing and reporting trial reports regularly to the Regional Business Manager and Technical and Development Manager.
- Lead and conduct market research and analysis both for Domestic and International markets.
- Work closely with the Technical and Development team in the registration of products in line with the regulatory requirements of the different geographies.
- Providing market feedback as well as analysing data to aid in decision making.
- Traveling to trial sites and conducting market visits up to 50% of the time.
- Traveling to Stakeholders and conduct external and internal training.
