Sun King

Zonal Business Manager, Coastal Zone

Posted Yesterday

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Hiring Remotely in Kenya

Remote

Senior level

Greentech • Energy • Solar • Renewable Energy

The Role

Leads sales, collections, customer service, field operations, and team performance across the Coastal Zone. The role manages regional and area business managers, store executives, and field sales agents; sets targets, drives recruitment and training, conducts fieldwork, resolves customer issues, oversees collections and repossessions, and controls marketing, supply chain, and operational spending. The manager is accountable for sustainable distribution growth and customer experience among rural and off-grid consumers.

Summary Generated by Built In

Location: Coastal Zone, Kenya
About the role:

The Zonal Business Manager will drive sales, collections, and entire business operations in the entire zone they are assigned to, for the direct distribution of Sun King Solar products sold on Pay-As-You-Basis (also called and recognized as “EasyBuy” Business unit). This is done through a large network of agents called Field Agents who visit door-to-door and sell. EasyBuy technology and services allows customers to purchase units by paying for their Solar products in small installments, thus ensuring they are extremely affordable for off-grid or rural customers. The Zonal 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 their team that typically consists of Regional Business Managers, Area Business Managers, Sun King Store Executives, Customer Loyalty Executive and all field agents in the region.

What you would be expected to do:

Hire, retain and motivate the entire zonal team for the best performance:

The Zonal Business Manager’s team typically consists of Regional Business Manager, Area Business Managers, Sun King Executives, and Field Sales Executives (there may be some variations based on the region).
The Zonal Business Manager is expected to ensure they create a world-class winning team in their zone that is disciplined, process-oriented, and devoted to delivering the best customer experience.

Training:

Provide training on several aspects of the business such as sales, collections, product, technical, inventory and logistics related.
Ensure the team is fully aligned and managed professionally, demonstrating the highest level of integrity, ethics, and professionalism while dealing with Sun King customers.

Provide role clarity to Regional Business managers, Area Business Managers and Sun King Store Executives:

Provide complete clarity to the team related to their day-to-day tasks, sales & collections plans, routes, and targets. This includes ensuring that your sales team has a pre-settled sales route/area to sell in, they acknowledge 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 Regional Business Manager at all times in case of questions and concerns.

Conduct Joint Fieldwork with Regional Business Managers:

Conduct joint fieldwork with Field Sales Executives to provide sales and collection training on a weekly basis 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 centers and markets to make group sales.

Exceed your sales & collections targets:

Meet or exceed sales and collection targets established and consented upon on the second of every month with your sales supervisors.
Provide daily and weekly updates on sales, Field Sales Executive recruitments, customer issues and resolutions, and New Area Launch preparations as expected and aligned with the Country Business Leader.

Drive robust field sales processes:

Review sales and collection progress daily and provide adequate training to the team on 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 repossessing the systems as a last recourse if the customer defaults.

Resolve Customer Issues:

Provide world-class assistance to your customer as it relates to product delivery, training on how to use and make payments, installation, after sales warranty issues.
Ensure that you work with Field Sales Executives to establish clear expectations and processes to resolve all customer issues within 24 hours.

Control Marketing and other assistance spend:

Provide adequate marketing assistance and equipment (such as smartphones) necessary to all your areas.
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 Areas:

Ensure that Regional Business Managers and Area Business Managers are conducting periodic table meetings and reviews with all Field Sales Executives 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.
Recognize outstanding performers from time to time and ensure the motivation of the entire zonal team is maintained at an all-time high.

You might be a strong candidate if you:

Have a degree in a Business-related field, with an MBA as an added advantage.
Have at least 6 years’ experience in sales, of which 3 years in a senior managerial position, preferably having worked in Distribution, microfinance, Banking, or BOP Business
Have proven strategic business capability with the ability to engineer solutions, transform teams and drive business processes.
Passionate about working with rural, off-grid consumers and resolving their issues.
Motivated by the social mission to provide energy to consumers and employment to rural communities. Should be value-oriented.
Good communication skills and ability to build and manage large field sales executive teams.

What we offer (in addition to compensation and statutory benefits):

A platform for professional growth in a rapidly expanding, high-impact sector.
Immerse in a collaborative culture, energized by employees of Sun King who are collectively motivated by fostering a transformative, sustainable venture.
A genuinely global environment: Engage and learn alongside a diverse group from varied geographies and backgrounds.
Tailored learning pathways through the Sun King Center for Leadership to elevate your leadership and managerial capabilities.

We place great importance on sustaining a diverse, inclusive work environment.

We believe that innovation and understanding comes from diversity on every spectrum. We work to make sure every Sun King team member knows that they belong, knowing that sustaining an inclusive workplace requires conscious effort and is a continuous journey, not an end-state.

Sun King recruits, employs, trains, compensates and promotes people based on their experience, skills, effort, and results. We explicitly prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, religion, caste, national origin, color, gender, marital status, family structure, sexual orientation, HIV/AIDS status, or disability.

About
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 built a new kind of energy utility: distributed, green, customer-centric, and affordable. We bring clean, reliable, decentralized energy directly into people’s lives — from solar kits that provide first-time energy access to multi-kilowatt systems that serve both off-grid users and grid-connected customers powering larger homes, schools, hospitals, farms, offices, and light manufacturing.Already, 25 million homes and businesses rely on Sun King for electricity supply and the appliances and services it enables: lighting, televisions, fans, refrigeration, and smartphones. Sun King combines energy generation, energy-efficient appliances, installation, and financing into one seamless offering. Think of it as a distributed utility, designed for wherever energy is needed and designed to scale with its users as incomes and energy needs grow.Sun King makes solar products affordable to low-income households and businesses via ‘pay-as-you-go’ (PAYG) purchase financing. Sun King installs solar after customers pay a small deposit. Customers then make small, manageable payments of as little as US $0.14 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.Sun King collects payments digitally through mobile money systems and its 35,000 field agents — over 1 million payments each day. To date, Sun King has extended more than $1.4 billion in PAYG loans to customers.Sun King began by powering homes and businesses with solar systems delivered through PAYG financing. Now, we’re using the same model to make smartphones and clean cooking equipment affordable: helping households connect to the digital economy and transition from wood-based fuels to modern, sustainable alternatives.Sun King employs 3,500 full-time staff in 14 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 42% of Sun King’s workforce.

Skills Required

Degree in a business-related field
MBA
At least 6 years of sales experience
At least 3 years in a senior managerial position
Strategic business capability and ability to engineer solutions, transform teams, and drive business processes
Experience in distribution, microfinance, banking, or bottom-of-the-pyramid business
Passion for working with rural, off-grid consumers and resolving customer issues
Motivation by the social mission of expanding energy access and rural employment
Strong communication skills
Ability to build and manage large field sales teams