Seller Sales Manager [Cross Border] at takealot.com

This is a senior position reporting to the Head of Cross-Border Commerce.

Role Purpose

• The Seller Sales Manager leads and manages the Sales & Account Manager team responsible for acquiring new international sellers and growing the Takealot cross-border seller base.
• This role exists to provide strategic direction, structured pipeline oversight, and active coaching to ensure the team consistently meets seller acquisition and revenue targets.
• The Manager operates at the intersection of team leadership, sales operations, and commercial strategy — owning the end-to-end seller acquisition funnel while also contributing to the broader cross-border commercial strategy.

Key Responsibilities

• Team Leadership & People Management: Directly manage the Sales & Account Manager team and business development team; set individual targets, conduct regular 1:1s, provide structured coaching, and lead performance reviews; create a high-performance, seller-obsessed team culture.
• Seller Acquisition Strategy: Define and own the go-to-market strategy for international seller recruitment, including target seller profiles (by category, country of origin, scale), outreach channels, and value proposition messaging.
• Pipeline Management & Forecasting: Oversee the team's CRM pipeline; ensure pipeline health (coverage ratios, stage accuracy, deal velocity); produce weekly and monthly sales forecasts for senior leadership.
• Target Setting & Quota Allocation: Translate team-level seller acquisition and GMV targets into individual quotas for each Sales & Account Manager; track attainment and intervene early where individuals are at risk of missing targets.
• Sales Process & Playbook Development: Design and continuously refine the end-to-end seller sales process — from lead generation and qualification through to onboarding and first-sale activation; document processes in a scalable sales playbook.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner with the Aggregator Partnerships Manager to ensure seamless handoff of partner-referred sellers; collaborate with the Analyst on funnel reporting; work with Takealot's seller onboarding, legal, and compliance teams to remove friction in the seller sign-up process.
• Recruitment & Team Scaling: Partner with HR to recruit, onboard, and develop additional Sales & Account Managers as the team scales; define role profiles and competency frameworks.
• Market Intelligence & Feedback Loop: Gather structured feedback from prospective sellers on barriers to joining Takealot (fees, compliance complexity, logistics, etc.); synthesise insights and advocate for product/policy changes that improve seller conversion.
• Executive Reporting: Prepare and present monthly and quarterly commercial performance updates for the Head of Cross-Border Selling and senior Takealot leadership, covering acquisition trends, pipeline, revenue ramp, and market insights.

Required Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Commerce, Business Administration, Marketing, or a related field; MBA advantageous.
• Minimum 6–8 years of sales experience, with at least 3 years in a team leadership or sales management role.
• Proven track record of consistently meeting or exceeding sales quotas in a B2B or marketplace sales environment.
• Experience in e-commerce, marketplace platforms, or technology sales is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to build and scale sales teams in a high-growth or greenfield environment.
• Proficiency with CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce, HubSpot, or equivalent); experience designing sales processes and pipeline governance frameworks.
• Familiarity with cross-border e-commerce dynamics, international seller communities, or marketplace ecosystems is advantageous.

Desired Skills & Attributes

• Inspirational people leader — energises and develops team members, creates accountability without micromanagement.
• Strong commercial acumen with the ability to think strategically and execute tactically.
• Data-driven decision-maker who uses pipeline metrics and funnel analytics to coach and intervene.
• Excellent communicator — able to influence senior stakeholders internally and build credibility with prospective international sellers.
• Resilient and adaptable; comfortable with the ambiguity of building a new team and function from scratch.
• High level of personal drive and ownership — treats team targets as personal commitments.
• Understanding of South African marketplace dynamics and competitive landscape (Checkers Sixty60, Makro, Shein direct, etc.) is advantageous.
• Speak Mandarin is highly advantageous

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, it’s 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 respectful but forthright
• 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 business SMART. 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 HARD WORKING