Account Manager at Nokia

Job Description
 
Country: Southern African Countries (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe) 
Experience Required: 5- 7 years (Relevant)
Education Required: Bachelor’s Degree or equivalent
 
General Purpose
 
Sales Professional with technical and business understanding of telecoms solutions, responsible for generating orders and revenues by selling Nokia’s solutions to customers.
 
Main Responsibility Area

• Acts as a main contact point for relevant / identified clients within the assigned geographic area.
• Understands customers’ strategic direction and associated business plans
• Implements Nokia’s account strategy.
• Identifies, develops & wins new sales opportunities for Nokia
• Sales and marketing support with wide technical system level expertise and deep business understanding.
• Expert in selling/marketing and system solutions knowledge. Contributing to relationship management.
• Creating long-term business development plans and positioning of technology strategy, solutions and products to match with customer needs.
• Develops understanding of customers’ key business drivers and uses this knowledge for creating profitable business opportunities and growth in market share for Nokia
• Fulfills Nokia’s process for presales offer lifecycle management and quarterly forecast 
• Proactively identifies, develops & wins Nokia business in line with Nokia growth and profitability targets; and grow market share. 

 Managing Deals

• Understands the customer’s commercial, operational & technology challenges & opportunities.
• Translates market knowledge into business opportunities
• Negotiates and closes deals to achieve orders’ targets.
• Owns the accounts pipeline/funnel and opportunity data in pipeline management tool.
• Develops account plans and ensures Nokia’s multi business groups’ resources are aligned to execute the plans.
• Identifies efforts that will have the greatest strategic impact

Account Management

• Builds & manages trust-based, long-term relationships with customers’ Technical, Logistics departments and management teams.
• Positions Nokia as a preferred solution and services partner.
• Articulates in clear and effective manner value proposition of services to customer
• Negotiates Customer contracts in alignment with commercial and legal organizations (Acceptance, SoR, payment terms, etc.)
• Communicates clearly the progress of monthly/quarterly initiatives (account plan, LE etc.) to internal and external stakeholders

Key Interfaces:

• CBT/CT Head
• CO Head of Sales
• Business Groups Pre-sales and Delivery
• Head of Technologies
• Strategy & Sales Ops
• Pricing Manager
• Legal
• F&C
• Customer CxO
• Customer procurement 

Key Technology Competencies and interaction across all business groups (ION / A&A / MN / FN / Services Portfolio Sales  [SPS])

• Co-develops Sales Strategy plan, review opportunities and funnel and problem solve on new opportunities within and outside existing portfolio
• Proactively requests BG support and receives coaching as appropriate from BG HoSs
• Shares best practices with BG’s and CO community
• Deep understanding, and ability to convey, the unique selling points related to the relevant BG solutions:
• Appropriate level of knowledge regarding the BG Products and Services catalogue.
• Good understanding of the typical business cases involving the BG product and solutions.
• Knowledge key-selling points of the main competitors in the relevant market areas.

Qualifications

Position Requirements and Competencies
 
Requirements

• Bachelors or Master's degree in engineering, telecommunications, business or a related field.
• Fluency in Business English language.
• Minimum of 5 years account management, products, solutions and services sales experience in the telecommunication industry. (Tier 1 and 2 operators)
• Experience and knowledge of the Telecoms industry within the assigned geographic area.
• Proven track record in meeting and exceeding sales targets within assigned territories.
• Efficient with CRM tools (CRM / Salesforces.com for pipeline / funnel management) and MS tools (Excel, PowerPoint and Word).

Key Competencies

• Consultative Selling & Customer Business Understanding
• Nokia end to end portfolio knowledge & natural interest to keep up to date on technological and market evolution as well as competitors’ activities
• Relationship Management and ability to identify all stakeholders and understand their communications needs and feedback
• Ability to lead cross-functional teams under time constraint / stress scenarios.
• Winning mindset, embrace challenges.
• Smart tendering, negotiation and Sales techniques, Sales Process Understanding.
• Understanding of the major key-points of Nokia’s standard contracts.
• Strategic mindset.
• Competitor Intelligence and Market Insight.
• Customer Business Case and Solution Creation, Sales Presentation.
• Bid Management, Customer Pricing, Sales Negotiation.