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.

Purpose of the role:

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.

This position reports to the Head of Marketplace

Your responsibilities will include:

• 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.

Minimum Required Qualification & Experience:

• 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

Skills Required:

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

The Environment: 

• takealot.com employees are entrepreneurial and dynamic, smart, customer- centric, fun and have the shared ambition of takealot.com being the leading e- commerce company in Africa. 
• We have fun, work hard, take ownership, work in teams to create solutions, and are always open to direct feedback/new ideas on where we can improve. 
• We are short on ego and high on output. 
• We are doers and not only thinkers, its all in the execution after all. 
• We love what we do and what we are creating. 

We seek to Employ an Extra Ordinary Mind who: 

• is forthright but respectful 
• is an expert at doing, who can not only design but also execute 
• is analytical, able to use data to make decisions 
• is competitive, self-directed and strive to be the BEST (GREAT requires a lot of work and does not only happen during business hours 
• is passionate about the potential of e-commerce and delivering a world-class customer experience 
• is entrepreneurial, thrives under change and accepts it is a constant and always looks for solutions to do something better and faster 
• is able to think about problems from a business perspective using technical and product input 
• is curious and challenge the status quo 
• is innovative and enjoys iteration 
• is collaborative 
• will be at the cutting edge of developing new concepts for takealot.com. 
• thinks like an owner of the business. 
• is SMART, has INTEGRITY and is HARDWORKING 

If you meet the above you are an Extraordinary Mind so come and join us!

Takealot is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We encourage applicants from the previously disadvantaged groups and people with disabilities, to apply.