Head of Account Management – Southern Africa at Travelport

The Head, Account Management will lead a team of experienced Account Manager utilising resources dedicated to the retention and growth of top & mid-tier customers. The role will encompass establishing best practice for top & mid-tier account development, and sharing this back into the wider Travelport MEA UK&IE organisation. Both tier of customers are critical for Travelport, and apart from the responsibility for a very key account set, the wider objective of this role is to create the model for how strategic customers should be commercially managed and developed.

Main Accountabilities:

• Commercial accountability for a top & mid-tier customer portfolio, managed via a commercial account management team.
• Develop retention and growth strategies for accounts within the portfolio within Southern Africa region
• Management of a dedicated commercial team. Strong collaboration and matrix/dotted line team with other critical Travelport resources including but not limited to, Search Optimisation, Project Management, Solution Consultants, Solution Developers and API support resource.
• Develop the correct account management ‘playbook’- ensuring rigorous account management practices.
• Critically the DSA should be able to ‘talk the customer’s language’- translating Travelport’s currency of segments, PNRs, etc. into the customer’s language and business metrics i.e. conversion levels, return-on-trip, margin, etc and develop an account process that supports and reflects this
• Ensure Travelport support resources are optimized to deliver the best customer experience
• Build senior relationships throughout the customers organization and play a strategic role in growing their businesses
• Form part of the MEA Agency Sales Management Team, attending regular calls and meetings
• Build key stakeholder relationships internally at Travelport to ensure wider delivery of customer requirements
• Provides input to Head - National, Agency Sales MEA UK&IE for preparation of the annual budget and quarterly sales forecasts for inclusion into the Company Business Plan ensuring targets are met within budget.
• Ensures market intelligence received is communicated to relevant departments

Knowledge, Skills, Experience, Training, Education:

• Educated to degree or equivalent. Relevant experience in a business to business environment with a proven sales track record
• Strong Commercial skills, including ability to translate customer business requirements into definable actions
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills- persuasive and capable of influencing senior stakeholders both internally and externally. Possessing high degree of self-motivation, confidence, assertiveness and an ability to respond to rapidly changing environments.
• Strong commercial understanding of the Travelport business model, core drivers & technology requirements
• Strong knowledge of the travel technology landscape
• Strong functional/technical knowledge of Travelport platform
• Excellent Management skills – capable of being both a sales leader but also a strong people manager
• Ability to instill the rhythm and cadence in a highly disciplined sales team
• Will have a high degree of numeracy.
• Must possess an overriding desire to understand, agree and meet customer needs and exceed their expectations, constantly striving to achieve customer satisfaction.
• Ability to assess/analyze situations, grasping complexities and identifying issues, applying sound judgement.
• Experienced of building and managing multi, cross-departmental relationships, therefore exceptional influencing skills are vital to this role

Personal

• Self-confident and self-aware with presence and credibility
• Approaches tasks with dynamism, drive and focus
• Holds self-accountable
• Excellent verbal and written communication
• Self-confident and self-aware with gravitas, presence and credibility
• Excellent time management
• Must be able to work closely across the Travelport organization, creating a strong template for the APAC region in particular. The HAM should also work closely with colleagues in the Enterprise Customer Group.

Key Measures :

• Financial Scope. Responsible for the commercial performance of the defined account base- segment production, revenue, additional revenue/services. Responsible for the cost items relating to this.

Staff Management

• This role would operate in a matrix environment where effective relationships across a range of stakeholder groups would be vital. An ability to be credible with senior technical stakeholders would be an important aspect of the ability to influence and drive progress.