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Job Description
Reporting to the Director – Digifarm. The role of the Commercial Manager, Farmer Solutions is a critical one, focused on driving Digifarm’s growth by ensuring that financial products and services designed for smallholders are accessible, effective, and scalable. This leader is responsible for creating and executing the commercial strategy that aligns with the company’s mission of improving the financial inclusion of smallholder farmers through innovative fintech solutions.
The Commercial Manager will play a strategic role in driving revenue growth, expanding market share, building partnerships, and enhancing the overall customer experience. They are expected to work closely with cross-functional teams, including product, marketing, sales, operations, and finance, to ensure that the company meets the financial needs of smallholder farmers while achieving business objectives.
Responsibilities
Revenue and Growth Strategy
- Developing the Commercial Strategy: Formulating and executing the overall commercial strategy, ensuring alignment with the company’s mission to support smallholder farmers. This includes defining the market approach, identifying target customers, and ensuring sustainable growth.
- Developing Revenue Models: Responsible for designing and implementing strategies to generate revenue through various business models (e.g., transaction fees, lending interest, or freemium models). Align these models with the company’s goals and customer needs.
- Growth and Scaling: Identify and execute on strategies to drive customer acquisition and retention across the farmer segment. Scale revenue channels by analyzing the product-market fit, optimizing pricing, and expanding into new geographic or demographic markets.
Customer Acquisition and Retention
- Customer Acquisition Strategy: Leading efforts to acquire smallholder farmers, through both digital channels (mobile apps, online platforms) and traditional means (field agents, partnerships with cooperatives).
- Partnerships with Key Stakeholders: Building relationships with stakeholders such as agricultural cooperatives, NGOs, local government bodies, and other farmer facing organizations.
- Customer Retention: Designing and implementing strategies that focus on customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. This could include educational campaigns on financial literacy, personalized services, and responsive customer support.
Sales and Marketing Leadership
- Sales Strategy Development: Leading the sales function to drive new customer acquisition and increase product adoption among smallholder farmers. This involves setting up sales processes, identifying key sales channels, and ensuring that the sales team is equipped to meet targets.
- Marketing Oversight: Collaborate with the marketing team to develop a marketing strategy to ensure that the fintech products resonate with smallholder farmers and other stakeholders. This includes digital marketing, field marketing, and grassroots outreach, often in rural or remote areas where traditional marketing channels may not work
- Customer Education: Leading initiatives to improve financial literacy among smallholder farmers, ensuring they understand and trust the fintech solutions being offered, such as digital payment systems, mobile loans, or crop insurance
Partnerships and Business Development
- Strategic Partnerships: Identify and establish partnerships with other agri-tech companies, farmer facing organizations, government bodies or platforms that can help Digifarm grow its user base, enhance product offerings, or generate new revenue streams.
- Channel Development: Build and nurture relationships with key distribution channels, resellers, or affiliates who can help drive customer acquisition and generate additional revenue for the company.
- B2B and B2C Partnerships: Manage partnerships with businesses (B2B) or other agri/fintech firms to offer integrated solutions, white-labeled products, or co-marketing initiatives.
Product Strategy & Development Collaboration
- Market Research: Understand and analyze market trends, customer pain points, and competitive landscape to ensure that Digifarm’s product meets the needs of farmers. This involves gathering customer feedback, running surveys, and tracking customer behavior.
- Product Development Collaboration: Collaborating with the product team to ensure the financial products being developed are suited to the needs of smallholder farmers. This includes working on product iterations and helping translate customer feedback into actionable product insights.
- Pricing Strategy: Develop and optimize the pricing structure based on market analysis, customer willingness to pay, and competitor pricing models. This involves testing different pricing tiers, promotional offers, and lending rates to maximize conversion and revenue.
- Operations and Logistics: Working closely with the operations team to ensure smooth delivery of financial services, particularly in rural or hard-to-reach areas where logistics and technology access may present challenges.
Financial Performance and Metrics
- Revenue Target Setting: Set and drive revenue targets for the farmer solutions unit, ensuring that the commercial team aligns with the company’s financial goals. Responsible for monitoring progress toward revenue objectives and adjusting strategies as needed.
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Establish and track KPIs to measure the success of commercial activities, such as customer acquisition costs (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), churn rate, revenue growth, conversion rates, and product engagement metrics.
- Profitability Focus: Balance growth objectives with profitability. Ensure that the farmer solutions unit’s commercial activities (sales, marketing, partnerships) are commercially viable and cost-effective, especially in rural areas where marketing and outreach can be more expensive.
- Social Impact Metrics: Tracking the social impact of the products (such as increased financial inclusion, improved livelihoods, or enhanced agricultural productivity) is important. Ensuring the products are having a meaningful impact on smallholder farmers’ financial lives.
Leadership and Team Management
- Building and Leading Teams: Lead and manage a cross-functional team, including sales, marketing, partnerships, and customer success teams. This includes hiring, training, and mentoring team members, fostering collaboration, and ensuring that all commercial efforts align with business objectives.
- Cross-Department Collaboration: Collaborate closely with other teams such as finance, product development, and operations to ensure that commercial goals are supported across the organization. This includes aligning sales and marketing with product launches or feature updates.
- Performance Management: Set clear targets, track team performance, and motivate staff to meet and exceed commercial objectives. This includes managing the team’s budgets and resources effectively.
Regulatory Compliance and Risk Management
- Understanding Regulations: Ensure that Digifarm’s farmer products and services comply with relevant financial regulations, consumer protection laws, and industry standards.
- Risk Mitigation: Identify potential business risks, including financial, operational, and reputational risks, and implementing strategies to mitigate them. This may involve setting up safeguards to prevent fraud, ensuring data security, and handling customer complaints effectively.
Data-Driven Decision Making
- Analytics and Insights: Leverage data to inform commercial strategies. This includes analyzing customer behavior, sales trends, marketing performance, and competitive dynamics to make data-driven decisions.
- A/B Testing and Optimization: Use A/B testing, customer feedback, and analytics to optimize marketing campaigns, product features, and customer acquisition strategies for better performance.
Scaling and Expansion
- Geographic Expansion: Identify new markets or regions where the farmer products could gain traction. This may include expanding internationally or targeting underserved demographics.
- Product Line Expansion: Develop strategies for expanding the farmer product portfolio to meet evolving consumer needs, such as introducing new features, services, or complementary products.
Key performance indicators:
- Revenue & Growth: Achievement of commercial KPIs including Revenue Growth, Customer Metrics and Operating Costs to ensure sustainable growth.
- Customer Acquisition & Retention: Drive customer engagement through active usage to ensure long-term relationships with smallholder farmers
- Sales & Marketing Effectiveness: Achievement of sales targets, conversion rates and effective outreach and marketing in target markets.
- Partnerships & Business Development: Build and manage strategic partnerships and drive the growth of key distribution channels to expand the customer base.
- Product & Market Alignment: Drive adoption of new products and features with strong NPS and customer loyalty.
- Financial Performance & Profitability: Manage profitability and build commercially viable operations to ensure cost-effective delivery of services
- Leadership & Team Performance: Lead team performance against targets and drive employee engagement and retention to ensure a motivated and high-performing team
- Regulatory & Risk Compliance: Ensure adherence to relevant financial regulations and industry standards, and implement risk mitigation strategies to minimize business risks.
Core competencies, knowledge and experience:
Understanding of Agriculture and Smallholder Needs
- Expert in the agricultural value chain, including crop cycles, challenges, and smallholder financial needs. Skilled in designing solutions addressing access to financing, technology, and financial literacy, with a focus on rural market conditions.
Strategic Thinking and Business Acumen
- Strong market insights, revenue growth strategy development, and ensuring product-market fit. Able to adapt strategies based on emerging trends and customer needs.
Sales Leadership
- Proven ability to develop sales strategies, manage B2C sales, and lead high-performing teams targeting rural customers. Expertise in customer segmentation and optimizing the sales funnel.
Marketing Expertise
- Experienced in creating and executing go-to-market strategies tailored to smallholder farmers. Focus on customer education, journey optimization, and leveraging digital and field marketing channels.
Customer Acquisition and Retention
- Designs strategies for customer acquisition and retention, prioritizing accessibility and engagement while continuously improving the customer experience based on feedback.
Data-Driven Decision Making
- Proficient in using analytics to track performance, optimize campaigns, and make informed decisions. Skilled in A/B testing and deriving insights from large data sets.
Financial and Social Impact Acumen
- Experienced in P&L management, pricing strategy, budgeting, and measuring social impact, ensuring alignment with business growth and sustainability goals.
Partnership and Business Development
- Skilled in identifying and managing strategic partnerships, developing distribution channels, and negotiating favorable deals with stakeholders to drive growth.
Leadership and Team Management
- Proven leadership in managing and motivating cross-functional teams, fostering collaboration, and mentoring talent to meet commercial goals.
Regulatory and Compliance Knowledge
- Knowledgeable about agricultural policies, fintech regulations, and risk management, ensuring compliance and safeguarding the company from legal and financial risks.
Adaptability and Problem-Solving
- Agile in fast-paced environments, with creative problem-solving abilities to overcome challenges faced by smallholder farmers, while resilient in navigating setbacks.
Additional Skills
- Results-oriented, strong communication, project management, and sound judgment
- Growth mindset to thrive within an early stage venture and work within unstructured environments
Qualifications
- Honors Degree from a recognized university
- 8+ years in the agriculture sector, FMCG or in rural distribution (Bonus for experience in scaling digital products) Experience gained across distribution, sales or other related commercial functions
- Strong track record in people management & / or commercial roles
- Demonstrated and well-developed commercial awareness, operational excellence and customer focus
- Must be an experienced driver with a valid drivers license
How to Apply. If you feel that you are up to the challenge and possess the necessary qualification and experience, kindly proceed to create/ update your candidate profile on the recruitment portal and then Click on the apply button. Remember to attach your resume.
