General Manager: Africa

Key purpose:

The company is a group of companies that represent the world's leading personal technology products and services in SubSaharan Africa. We believe in bringing products and services to people that'll empower, enable, inspire and grow achieved through supply chain management, marketing management, channel management, enterprise sales and media relations.

Duties and responsibilities:

• Provide input into budget formulation and manage performance in line with budget.
• Develop & agree a business plan for each store.
• Manage the debtors by close liaison with the debtor's team.
• Strategic planning in the education vertical.
• Provide in country support and assistance to existing reseller base.
• Grow the B2B base
• Work closely with the marketing team to manage the BDF process to ensure the ecosystem is communicated to the consumer, corporate customer and educational institutions
• Manage & execute in store events.
• Build, organize, motivate and lead a dynamic, high performance team.
• Inspire, motivate and support teams and continuously follow up with Stores to maximize sales. Provide leadership and ensure team members are effectively managed, coached and developed.
• Grow managers skills and EQ to facilitate growth of the leadership team.
• Build succession capacity of Store Managers
• Proactive recruitment & retention of high potential candidates who are able to engage and serve customers in line with Brand promise, including development of innovative solutions to achieve this.
• Support the growth of an embedded culture focusing on demystifying the Brand, customer service, increasing traffic into stores, increasing conversion rates, technical expertise, support.
• Ensures adherence to all Labour legislation and relevant acts.
• Performance management appraisals & scorecards conducted in line with company policy.
• Ensure the highest standards of customer engagement and service are set, measured and met.
• Handling customer conflict effectively.
• Demonstrate a hands-on and interactive approach to customers and ensure that the entire team buys into this approach and demonstrate this, and ensure this ethos permeates.
• Focus on developing long term customer relationships and ensure that this is a regional approach.
• Daily, on the sales floor coaching of sales staff to equip the team to increase sales conversion rates. This is a strategic and critical role of the GM. Build Store Managers capacity to fulfil this role effectively.
• Ensure that each store has high level of product, technical and sales skills through intensive and ongoing training of team members, including ensuring that all Group training and certification standards are met.
• Monitor adherence and remedy any non-compliance issues.
• Ensure that all Company policies and procedures are in place and adhered to, to minimise risk and maximise efficiencies
• Identify any gap areas which detract from consistent delivery to meet above & develop necessary Processes that are not in place to provide store staff with daily, weekly and monthly roadmaps that facilitate consistency of delivery within the Stores.
• Control all controllable expenses.
• Be accountable for the safeguarding of stock, cash/debtors and fixed assets in the region
• Identifies potential risk and eliminates gaps by recommending areas of improvement.
• Ensure that all technical infrastructure is operational.
• Attention to detail and uncompromising with company process and procedures
• In conjunction with the planning team work to ensure that the store has the correct mix and volume of stock per stock item.
• Assist in the merchandising layout in each store and ensure the planning team supply the right stock in the right quantities to create an impactful display.
• Ensure stock rotation to minimise unnecessary stock ageing
• Stock planning and optimization.
• Oversee control of stock items and assets within the Store in area of responsibility, with focus on minimizing shrinkage and/or all pilferage.
• Ensure business assets are secured.
• Conduct customer/store/retail visits where applicable (displays/compliance/ stock levels/competitors products)
• Ensure that 3rd Party product is merchandised in line with 3rd party guidelines.

Qualifications and experience:

• Matric
• Relevant Qualification
• Sound commercial skills and business acumen
• Sound (4 -7) years management experience managing teams
• 7 years practical managerial experience with a proven track record of operating effectively within a sales & marketing and customer service focused environment, which is strongly target driven.
• Experience within the retail sector