Strategic Account Manager

takealot.com, a leading South African online retailer, is looking for a highly talented Strategic Account Manager to join our team in Johannesburg.

Takealot’s third-party marketplace business is outpacing the growth of the Retail business and now represents over 20% of all units sold. We are looking for a Strategic Account Manager: Marketplace to help shape the future of the Takealot Marketplace. The role is focused on driving success for some of the most influential sellers on the platform and leveraging key learning/feedback to improve the Takealot platform that will benefit all sellers. The Strategic Account Manager is responsible for accelerating sales growth, expanding selection on the platform and improving retention among the established key accounts as well as nurturing high potential sellers to grow into future strategic accounts. Key to this role is creating innovative ways to identify growth opportunities, and operational improvement opportunities through partnership with both internal and external stakeholder such as Retail Merchandising, Marketplace Product, Takealot Supply Chain and Takealot Catalogue and Seller executive teams, etc. and improving our overall knowledge of how to succeed as a seller on Takealot Marketplace.

• →Roles & Responsibilities Business Growth Owns all facets of the account management process for high-potential medium to large accounts, develops and maintain strategic relationships with executive members within seller’s management teams. 
• →Understands business growth drivers for sellers and how to create an optimal growth path for individual sellers. 
• →Utilizes internal resources to help sellers grow and succeed by maximising the benefits sellers gain from all available growth levers, promotions, daily deals, ad campaigns, ATL etc. 
• →Own and drive promotional planning for strategic sellers, build seasonal campaigns and working capital cycles. 
• →Analyse key seller metrics to enable the execution of data driven solutions and act on opportunities. 
• →Uses data and analytics to make day-to-day business decisions, to identify underperformance and to nurture upcoming high potential sellers. 
• →Thinks beyond individual campaigns and applies knowledge to future plans.
• →Do deep dives on seller-level issues that hampers growth and deliver recommendations to solve seller problems. 
• →Builds seller-level account targets and collaborate with Divisional Heads to construct the business plans to deliver desired results. 
• →Document a seller-specific view of the competitive landscape to inform the growth strategy of key sellers. 
• →Business Operations Utilizes tools and helps ensure Marketplace tools evolve with seller’s business needs. 
• →Contributes to product and operational enhancements to ensure scalability which delivers ongoing growth for sellers.
• →Understands agreements with sellers and uses that information to influence business decisions. 
• →Communicates effectively with all levels of management, demonstrate the ability to be persuasive and be proactive in ideation of new ideas to exploit opportunities. 
• →Drives small to medium size projects or contribute to larger Marketplace initiatives. 
• →Understands the ecosystem of related Takealot products available to the seller base and provide recommendations to sellers on how they might leverage these products. 
• →Leadership Establishes network within organization; begins to build internal and external networks. 
• →Provides coaching and feedback to sales team to help grow individual functional skills and leadership capability, with support from senior managers.

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent
• MBA desired
• 5 years professional experience
• Experience using analysis, reporting, modelling, and forecasting to gather data for making business decisions 
• Account management experience
• Success managing dynamic accounts / portfolios 
• Experience using analytical, sales tools including Qlikview Business Intelligence, SalesForce, Microsoft Office Suites, SQL skills

• Relationship management
• Negotiation skills
• Problem-solving
• Passion and service orientation 
• Effective C-level communication skills