Job Opportunity in Pearson South Africa
Sales Director: Technical Vocational Education and
Training(TVET)
Permanent
Based in Johannesburg
Generalist
Pearson is a dynamic and growing education company, working in the areas of learning resources,
assessment and training. We have one goal: to help people make progress in their lives through
learning. We believe in excellence and high performance within a supportive, co-operative
environment. We aim to be brave, imaginative and decent in everything we do.
In order to increase our effectiveness in helping people improve their lives through learning, we are
looking for a SALES DRIETCOR:TVET to lead and manage the activities of the TVET sales team, to
ensure sales growth and profitability and to set and drive the achievement of sales targets and
budgets.
Key Responsibilities
Collaborate with the Post Schools Learning Innovation Director to:
 Identify the priority product and service opportunities and develop new opportunities for
innovative growth in the market, based on the value-oriented customer segmentation and goto-market model
 Sell the products and services with the Post Schools Learning Innovation teams to high value
customers
Collaborate with the Post Schools Learning Resources Director to:
 Understand key account content development priorities
 Provide customer feedback and insight to help inform the products and services together with
the Post Schools Learning Resources teams for high value customers and opportunities
Collaborate with the Post Schools Marketing Director to:
 Conduct needs analysis on priority markets, customers and customer segments ensuring a
robust understanding of competitor propositions
 Conduct ongoing market analysis and research to understand competitive landscape, trends
and opportunities
 Sell and market products and services
Deliver significant value from sales to large and high potential post schools institutions
through robust key account management, including:
 Reviewing and driving rigor into account strategy and planning, and into account economics
 Managing major and critical developing client accounts, and coordinate the management of
other strategic accounts
 Developing account plans and strategy, ensuring a clear customer strategy and understanding
of what will drive value for customers and agreed account vision and long term strategic plan
(3-5 years)
 Negotiations and relationship management
 Driving ongoing performance in key accounts, ensuring
 Strong performance selling core platforms and products into account
 Achieving targets on new products and platforms
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Monitoring and issue resolution, taking corrective action as required
Taking personal accountability for developing senior stakeholder relationships in national and
provincial government
Driving field sales to priority institutions, ensuring execution discipline and adherence in
frontline sales force and field force deployment
Supporting the development of bid proposals for large scale propositions (e.g. ministry work),
ensuring the full leverage of the IBU infrastructure is brought to bear and rigor and discipline
applied to pricing and economics of contracts
Work towards achieving measurable proof of efficacy of all products and services and foster a
culture of evidence-based decision making through embedding efficacy and research in broad
strategy and planning, and in how products and services are conceptualised, developed,
marketed, sold and delivered
Driving the implementation of (and improvement of) CRM in the market to ensure customer
data is robust and can be leveraged in designing and improving sales performance in line with
global guidelines for CRM
Manage and lead a team of Key Account Managers toward achievement of assigned targets
working directly with customers and prospects to position the value of Pearson’s solutions and
services
Work collaboratively, innovatively and supportively of peers in the Sales Senior Management
team and colleagues across the service lines to drive excellence and profitable revenue growth
Set sales targets and sales budgets for all categories together with Business Specialist and
Sales Director
Identify, plan and implement a strategy for new business development in line with the overall
strategy of the business unit
To train and mentor sales team with a strong emphasis on analysis of sales and market data
Set pricing for key accounts
Train sales team to guarantee appropriate levels of product knowledge to ensure best possible
customer experience
Develop an in depth knowledge of the market and the competitive landscape to inform the
business of new possibilities or possible risks
Ensure an in depth knowledge of Pearson’s major points of difference and competitive
advantage in the marketplace
Core competencies
 Inspirational field sales leader – able to inspire and motivate the frontline to delivering
superior performance
 Key account lead – able to lead key account relationships and drive value for customers and
Pearson
 Distributor management – able to negotiate complex deals with third parties and manage
these for profitable growth for both sides, able to support the leadership of sales teams in
competitive sales environments
 Experience of successful bids/tenders
 Experience in managing a sizeable business that is also growing
 Advanced knowledge of general business practices with a strong general management,
financial and strategic acumen
 Long term organizational development and leadership capability
 Advanced business understanding of pricing tools, sales capability development, margin and
mix management, market and consumer insight
 Robust strategic thinking – able to quickly understand the key drivers of revenue and profit in
a market, assess the industry and competitor landscape, and identify and size opportunities.
Able to make and communicate tough choices on investment based on strategic priorities
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Collaborative and engaging approach to working with fellow Directors, and teams across the
business, and externally where partnerships exist
Leadership competencies:
Leading self
 Always learning, courageous, ethical and determined
Leading the business
 Customer focused, transformational, strategic and visionary and innovative
Leading others
 Developer, inspirational, relationship-builder and makes it happen
Experience:
 Operational sales leadership position successfully driving sustainable ongoing profitable sales
growth
 Demonstrates key account experience, profitably selling a full portfolio of products to large
institutions
 Proven inspirational frontline field leadership driving ongoing sales growth
 Strong people management experience and experience of working with and implementing
good structured best practice in people development.
 Understanding of the Higher Education / TVET environment would be an advantage
Qualifications:
 Relevant sales qualification and/or formal sales skills programme essential
 Bachelors Degree or equivalent preferable
Other
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Requirements:
Driver’s license code 8, computer proficiency (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook)
Able to travel regularly, locally and abroad
Able to travel regularly, locally
Closing date
22 May 2015
Applicants should forward their CVs plus a short letter of motivation to [email protected]
If you have not heard from us within 2 weeks of the closing date, please consider your application
unsuccessful.