Area Sales Manager - Crop Protection

SUMMARY:

A multinational agricultural company is seeking a dedicated Area Sales Manager to be responsible for defining and executing a forward-looking vision and area strategy, aligning people, resources, and partnerships to unlock new value, strengthen competitive positioning, and deliver market share growth, channel loyalty, and sustainable profitability.

POSITION INFO:

Minimum requirements for the role:

• Must have an agricultural degree and background with proven results
• Demonstrated broad technical knowledge of crops, products, and farming practices, with approximately five years’ relevant experience
• Must have a good understanding of the business, key account management, the market and how to add customer value
• Strong focus on building partnerships, managing relationships, motivating others, and delivering on targets
• Demonstrated success and leadership potential across different departments
• Proven ability to lead, coach, and drive team performance while motivating area teams
• Strong leadership capability with effective team collaboration skills
• Effective communicator; fully bilingual with well-developed persuasion skills

• Developing and executing a transformative Area Strategy aligned with national business objectives, incorporating new routes to market, customer segmentation, and value propositions.
• Developing and implementing a 5-year strategy for each distributor in the area to support a redefined long-term ambition for the Cape Region.
• Achieving agreed profit and volume goals for the region and dealerships in line with overall sales and marketing strategy.
• Optimising territory management, resource allocation, and channel performance to deliver strategic priorities efficiently.
• Identifying new growth opportunities through data-driven analysis, competitive intelligence, and market insights.
• Leading change management initiatives to embed a high-performance culture focused on innovation, accountability, and customer centricity.
• Delivering annual sales targets for the area in line with agreed profit and volume goals.
• Managing and leading sales managers within the area.
• Managing and developing a high level of service delivery towards targeted key customers and investigating ways to improve customer share of wallet.
• Assisting and supporting sales managers with customer engagement (dealers, agents, growers) in terms of technical support, recommendations, and training.
• Overseeing and guiding collaboration between Sales, Agronomy, Marketing, and CPD teams to ensure effective execution of commercial campaigns and delivery of targets.
• Managing and developing market information, budgets, forecasts, business planning, and partnership agreements with the area team.
• Identifying, defining, establishing, and maintaining influential relationships with relevant institutes and key crop value opinion leaders, including RBMs and SPs.
• Focusing resources on growers and key influencers in the food and feed chain to create pull-based approaches.
• Building and maintaining relationships across the value chain by identifying lead influencers.
• Identifying key crop, product, and market opportunities and threats within the area.
• Supporting sales managers, technical leads, and agronomists in investigating and managing complaints and claims to minimise financial loss (acting as second line of contact for the company).
• Developing the competence, motivation, and commitment of dealers and agents through effective training, promotion, and sales support tools.
• Keeping abreast of market, trade, and competitor activity to revise strategies in response to changing requirements.
• Supporting the marketing team in ensuring market information accuracy in I-Plan for allocated crops.