First Line Sales Manager - Coastal at Bayer

Job Purpose:

• Lead and develop a high-performing team of Customer Engagement Specialists across Gauteng Inspire high performance, build future-ready capabilities and deliver sustainable,profitable growth while embodying Bayer leadership principles and maintaining uncompromising ethical and customer standards.
• Provide clear regional strategic direction by translating enterprise, portfolio and customer priorities into focused execution choices, resource allocation and measurable commercial outcomes.
• Navigate the evolving healthcare and pharmaceutical ecosystem, including wholesalers, corporate and independent pharmacy groups, public-sector stakeholders, healthcare professionals and other channel partners.
• Operate with an enterprise mindset, balancing regional delivery with end-to-end value creation across Sales, Marketing, Market Access, Supply Chain and Medical.

Key Responsibilities and Tasks:

Enterprise Leadership, Strategic Direction and Team Development

• Demonstrate VACC leadership by adapting leadership behaviours to team needs while cultivating a high-performance, psychologically safe environment grounded in trust, agility, accountability and results.
• Set a compelling regional direction and convert business strategy into clear priorities, trade-offs, customer plans and execution rhythms for the team.
• Contributing to enterprise-wide decisions, connecting cross-functional priorities and making choices that optimise total business value rather than local outcomes only.
• Coach the team to define aligned missions, goals and success metrics linked to individual sales plans and Customer Excellence KPIs.
• Build succession strength and future capabilities through differentiated coaching, field development, talent reviews, development plans and retention actions.
• Champion empowerment, collaboration, continuous learning and a creative growth mindset, enabling team members to own their business and contribute actively to Customer and Product teams.

Key Account and Ecosystem Leadership

• Provide leadership for priority regional key accounts and ensure account strategies are based on customer economics, channel dynamics, portfolio opportunities and mutual value creation.
• Build credible relationships with wholesalers, corporate pharmacy groups, buying groups and other strategic stakeholders.
• Guide the development of joint business plans, account growth plans and customer engagement strategies with clear objectives, value propositions, measures and review cadence.
• Ensure field execution strengthens product availability, appropriate stock levels, customer reach, portfolio penetration and quality of customer engagement.

Commercial Leadership and Profitable Growth

• Enable profitable sales delivery using commercial excellence tools, deep portfolio knowledge and customer-focused selling approaches.
• Translate portfolio, market and customer insights into commercially robust regional plans, including customer segmentation, targeting, resource deployment, risk mitigation and opportunity activation.
• Identify performance gaps early and drive cross-functional corrective action.
• Embed sales discipline and executional excellence by coaching the team to deliver defined KPIs, behaviours and customer outcomes.

Business, Data and Analytical Acumen

• Use data to make evidence-based decisions across territories, customers, channels, brands and SKUs.
• Turn demand, sales, inventory, market and competitor trends into action.
• Improve forecasts using customer and field insights, and escalate risks early.

Coaching and Performance Management

• Mentor and coach team members through regular field visits, formal In Call Quality assessments and structured business reviews.
• Set clear performance expectations, identify gaps for performance management 
• Cross-Functional Execution and Change Leadership
• Align cross-functional teams to resolve barriers and deliver shared outcomes.
• Lead regional change adoption and sustain implementation.
• Support digital transformation and a hybrid, future-ready customer interaction model that strengthens engagement with healthcare professionals and other customers.

Compliance and Operational Oversight

• Ensure all sales activities comply with the South African Marketing Code of Practice, applicable IFPMA guidance, Bayer policies and relevant legal and regulatory requirements.
• Manage sales administration and reporting, and continuously simplify and improve regional operating rhythms, systems and processes.

Experience, Skills and Qualifications:

• Relevant university degree, for example BCom Business Management, commerce, finance, marketing or a healthcare-related qualification.
• Minimum three years of successful sales-management experience in the pharmaceutical or healthcare industry, or substantial internal customer-engagement experience with demonstrated leadership readiness.
• Demonstrated ability to create accurate sales forecasts, explain variance and bias, and contribute credible demand intelligence.
• Proficiency in Microsoft 365, CRM platforms such as Veeva CRM, and business performance dashboards or analytics tools.