Lafarge is a world leader in building materials, with top-ranking positions in its Cement, Aggregates & Concrete businesses. Located in 64 countries with 65,000 employees, the vision of Lafarge in Nigeria is to be the most trusted and preferred partner of Nigerian construction professionals and home builders by delivering cement and concrete solutions that are best in quality, environmentally sustainable and nationwide available at affordable cost.
Role holder is responsible for building loyalty among various customer segments, providing technical product solutions and enhancing Lafarge brand presence in the manufacturing sector.
Responsibilities include identifying prospects among large and medium companies, masons, developers, and home builders.
The role also involves tracking construction activity and collaborating with colleagues to maximize commercial opportunities for Lafarge Africa Plc's concrete operations.
What you'll be doing
Safety:
Apply and manage the safety policy, drive policy standards and adversaries already put in place for role holder, colleagues, subcontractors and all others who are in the site or plant.
Report all incidents/VPC/BOG and near misses
Ensure access to jobsites is in line with safety standard for pumps, electrical lines and space
Sales Functions:
Implement the area commercial strategy, and sales action plans to achieve sales target and profit margin
Organize and control commercial operations for respective region/Area to achieve given sales target and profit margins.
Evaluate the quality of Lafarge's relationship with customers, assess their evolving needs and proactively manage and handle complaints and feedbacks
Work closely with Marketing, Quality Control, Production and Legal departments when necessary to improve and promote quality and service.
Work with the Marketing Department to develop & implement communication materials and messages to customers
Develop action plan to drive the sales of value added products(VAPs) and new products launch in the territory.
Organise and coordinate the Area sales activities to ensure all customers are satisfied and ultimately meet target
Negotiate prices, volume with customers and other extras services and take proactive decision in critical situation (prices delay and claims).
Represents Lafarge Africa Plc at meetings including trade exhibitions, building expo and trade fair to promote Lafarge products especially (value added products - VAPs)
Keep to the sales policies and procedures put in place for him and ensure on time delivery of products (concrete) to the customers.
Ensure all backlogs/pending orders are cleared and necessary documents are met.
Placing & Finishing Service:
Ability to propose placing & finish service policy when it is relevant
Write and give placing & finishing service prices for swift closing of jobsite
Follow jobsite, applications, deliveries, invoicing, and funds collection to a completion.
Advisory Functions:
Understand standard concrete and range of VAP (specifications applications) and make adequate recommendations in termof (production, transport, pouring).
Advanced understanding of applications and building system. (individual hosing, commercial & institutional, industrial and civil works roads/utilities)
Suggest adapted products, services, solutions with proper consideration of technical abilities and financial situations of each customer.
Reports:
Key sales indicators and reports main action to Line Manager for close out.
Monthly Customer relationship Management in terms of issues, new lead/closed out sales.
Regularly scheduled reports from sales database monthly and report to Area Manager
Report all market intelligent activities on a weekly basis, with clear understanding of trade activities.
Competition law:
Adequate knowledge of competition law and apply it when needed.
Production, Transportation/Plant Daily Support:
Monitor monthly purchase and sales are in line with pumping and delivery unit scheduling and business target.
Environment:
Ability to respect and enforce procedures in place to indicate a non-compliance of environmental incident and report to line Manager for daily decisions and cascade such information to plant Operator/Batcher.
Credit, Administrative, Invoicing functions:
Identifies creditworthy customers, following the in house process, negotiates payment terms and the implementation in collaboration with credit department for debt recovery and billing.
Establish new customers are smoothly registered on the database.
Ensure all pre-invoicing to avoid claims and manages the cash (price and payment terms) with the credit department
Ensure all procedure are in place for cancellation of orders and deliveries
Participate in credit meetings for adequate resolution
Requirements
What we are looking for:
Minimum of a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering, Building Technology, Architecture, Marketing, Humanities and Social Science with Master’s degree as added advantage.
At least 3-4 years working experience and above in sales
Good knowledge of construction materials In the industry
Good Presentation, communication and networking skills
Vision, business sense, basic financial knowledge and negotiation skills
Strong customer focus
Result oriented, proactive, capable of delivering under pressure
Basic knowledge of concrete and production tool
Knowledge of Value Added Product and Ultra Series products.
Knowledge of transportation management
Knowledge of computer tools: SFDC, CG Mix (if possible BC Mix), Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Ready-soft and pricing matrix.
Knowledge of quality management.
Ability to use social media platforms to drives sales
Long Term Goal:
Ensure the optimization of customer’s portfolio
Adapt sales to Lafarge’s priorities
Improve the profitability of his portfolio
Behavioral and /or managerial competencies:
Independent thinker and manager of own time
Ability to discuss and influence others
Good team player with effective interpersonal skills covering growth facilitation and customer interface aspects