Our client is seeking an experienced, commercially driven manager to assume end-to-end accountability for their sales performance, Customer Service Department (CSD), and sales administration functions. The successful candidate will drive revenue growth and gross-profit targets while aligning customer commitments with operational capacity across procurement, warehousing, logistics, and finance. This position requires strong team coaching, pipeline management, ERP (Acumatica) proficiency, and performance accountability. Notably, this role also serves as the designated second-in-command, stepping in as the primary operational authority in the absence of the CEO or General Operations Manager. (Permanent role based in Johannesburg).
Duties and Responsibilities:
- Assuming end-to-end management accountability for sales performance, customer service department (CSD) performance, and the quality of the interface between both functions
- Translating company strategy and approved budgets into clear team and individual sales targets, gross profit expectations, customer priorities, and service standards
- Directing and managing external and field sales representatives, internal sales, and CSD and administrative staff within the organisational structure
- Setting priorities, allocating resources, clarifying ownership, and ensuring material opportunities, commitments, service risks, and unresolved actions remain visible until closed
- Maintaining an appropriate balance between external sales leadership, internal co-ordination, and timely intervention in matters affecting growth, profitability, customer confidence, or business continuity
- Developing and executing practical sales plans covering priority markets, territories, target accounts, customer retention, dormant account recovery, and new business acquisition
- Driving achievement of approved revenue, gross profit, and margin targets at both individual and team levels, ensuring sales employees focus effort on qualified opportunities with a credible path to profitable conversion and maintain meaningful client-facing activity
- Managing pipeline value, quotation follow-ups, opportunity ageing, win and loss reasons, conversion, and forecast accuracy throughout the month rather than only at month-end
- Supporting complex, high-value, strategically important, or at-risk opportunities and negotiations where management involvement adds commercial value
- Identifying weak commercial signals early, including insufficient pipeline, low conversion, poor follow-through, and uncontrolled pricing and margin exceptions, and initiating focused corrective action
- Ensuring realistic, documented, and staged targets and ramp-up expectations for new sales employees during their onboarding period
- Leading concise weekly sales performance conversations using the approved DELTA sales management tool and current source information to move from visibility to focus, decisions, and action
- Reviewing team and individual performance against sales and gross profit targets, qualified opportunities, quoted margins, client-facing actions, and data quality
- Holding focused one-to-one reviews to diagnose causes of performance gaps, including clarity of expectations, skill and knowledge gaps, effort, system constraints, or cross-functional blockers
- Providing early and reasonable support through coaching, field accompaniment, product and systems training, clearer priorities, and removal of obstacles
- Agreeing and documenting fair, structured Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs) when standards are not being met, establishing required standards, support, review dates, and reasonable timelines
- Recognising sustained improvement and, where sufficient improvement is not being achieved despite clear support, initiating formal Human Resources (HR)-compliant performance processes, up to termination as a last resort
- Applying performance standards consistently, respectfully, and without surprise, and avoiding the use of management tools as a punitive scorecard
- Leading CSD to ensure efficient processing, tracking, and fulfilment of customer orders from quotation acceptance through delivery and post-delivery communication
- Ensuring sales records contain complete requirements, product specifications, approved prices, delivery expectations, and site conditions before handover to CSD
- Ensuring CSD assumes clear ownership post-handover, providing accurate and timely updates on stock, procurement, dispatch, delivery, and exceptions
- Aligning customer commitments with stock availability, procurement lead times, operational capacity, and realistic delivery dates to prevent unsupported promises, while maintaining sales involvement after handover where clarification, commercial judgement, or relationship management is required
- Ensuring queries, complaints, delivery concerns, and service failures are investigated and resolved timeously, keeping the customer informed while using recurring gaps to improve processes
- Positioning CSD as a value-adding sales-enablement function that protects external selling time, strengthens visibility, and removes operational barriers to fulfilment
- Ensuring one consolidated Acumatica report is refreshed for the full sales team before weekly reviews, certifying data freshness and record counts
- Ensuring all opportunity, quotation, customer, salesperson, status, next-action, and loss-reason fields are complete and accurate at source
- Resolving data gaps with responsible employees or allocating clear ownership with due dates, and escalating recurring non-compliance rather than allowing silent gaps
- Maintaining the CSD Co-ordination view to keep operational blockers and service-date risks visible with an accountable owner
- Protecting remuneration confidentiality by keeping individual pay data strictly outside shared team workbooks
- Ensuring a professional, responsive, and customer-centred experience across prospecting, quotation, order fulfilment, delivery, complaints, and after-sales engagement
- Driving customer acquisition, retention, account development, and meaningful relationship management across the team
- Monitoring strategically important, dormant, declining, vulnerable, or dissatisfied accounts and implementing targeted recovery plans
- Participating in significant negotiations, relationship-recovery discussions, and service interventions when executive or management presence is required
- Using customer feedback, service trends, and lost opportunities to refine sales execution and service delivery
- Representing sales priorities, customer requirements, forecast demand, and commercial risks in cross-functional planning discussions
- Facilitating smooth collaboration across sales, CSD, Buying, Warehouse and Logistics, and Finance to ensure promises are accurate and executable
- Preventing departmental silos, duplicated communication, contradictory customer messages, and unowned inter-departmental tasks
- Establishing clear handover standards, communication protocols, escalation routes, meeting rhythms, and service expectations across the customer lifecycle
- Escalating significant pricing, margin, credit, supply, quality, reputational, or process risks to the appropriate authority with practical recommendations
- Ensuring customer, opportunity, quotation, order, communication, and service records are accurate, current, and maintained in Acumatica or approved systems
- Maintaining a reliable pipeline showing value, qualification stage, probability, timing, next actions, owners, and material risks
- Ensuring significant negotiations, promises, decisions, complaints, and commitments are documented for reliable team reference
- Using management information to improve forecasting, conversion rates, coaching effectiveness, workflow visibility, and early risk identification
- Ensuring approved systems remain an aid to managerial judgement and action rather than replacing direct customer knowledge or managerial responsibility
- Maintaining sound knowledge of DELTA products, services, applications, personal protective equipment (PPE) and safety-industry practices, and operational fulfilment realities
- Ensuring sales and CSD teams receive relevant updates regarding products, stock, suppliers, fulfilment constraints, and customer needs
- Using market and competitor intelligence to identify new opportunities, risk factors, priority sectors, and targeted sales actions
- Ensuring customer-facing staff recommend suitable solutions without making unsupported product, compliance, stock, pricing, or delivery claims
- Promoting appropriate cross-selling, upselling, and alternative product and service solutions that add genuine customer value
- Overseeing sales administration, CSD administration, customer correspondence, reporting, meeting actions, document control, and office-support workflows
- Ensuring administrative duties support productive selling and fulfilment without creating unnecessary bureaucracy or duplication
- Understanding selling prices, margins, discounts, customer terms, and financial implications, and enforcing strict compliance with delegated authority levels
- Supporting Finance with accurate operational and commercial information relating to invoicing, customer onboarding, account administration, and transaction queries
- Escalating material commercial or financial-administration discrepancies through proper channels
- Excluding core bookkeeping, financial accounting, debtors and creditors accounting, bank reconciliations, and general ledger functions from the role
- Leading, coaching, supporting, motivating, and developing sales and CSD employees according to the distinct outputs required by their roles
- Building a customer-centred, high-performance culture based on commercial drive, accountability, professionalism, collaboration, and ethical conduct
- Setting clear expectations, key performance areas (KPAs), key performance indicators (KPIs), targets, service levels, turnaround times, and behavioural standards
- Conducting formal performance appraisals for direct reports, using outcomes to recognise achievement, identify training needs, and agree on corrective action
- Managing recruitment, onboarding, succession, and fair performance processes in collaboration with Human Resources (HR) and company policies
- Providing competent employees with appropriate autonomy while remaining visible, informed, and accessible when intervention or risk management is required
- Ensuring full compliance with company policies, procedures, delegated authority levels, documentation standards, audit guidelines, and legal obligations
- Promoting honest selling, realistic commitments, accurate recordkeeping, confidentiality, and responsible business conduct
- Guaranteeing that sales pressure never justifies misleading claims, unauthorised terms, incomplete records, or unrealistic promises that expose the company to risk
- Managing employee performance, disciplinary, or incapacity processes with Human Resources (HR) guidance, ensuring procedural and substantive fairness and respect for dignity
- Identifying internal control weaknesses and recommending practical improvements to governance, commercial discipline, service quality, and operational sustainability
Minimum Requirements:
- Grade 12 (Matric) required, and a tertiary qualification in Sales, Marketing, Business/Operations Management, Commerce, or CRM is highly advantageous
- Strong, proven leadership and practical experience will be considered alongside formal qualifications
- At least 5+ years of relevant experience spanning sales, customer service, administration management, operational support, or order fulfillment
- Proven B2B sales track record – demonstrated success in meeting targets, developing key accounts, driving customer retention, and generating new business
- Hands-on experience leading sales teams, including coaching, pipeline reviews, forecasting, and holding team members accountable to performance standards
- Proven ability to align customer commitments across Sales, Customer Service (CSD), Procurement, Warehousing, Logistics, and Finance
- Experience supporting performance management and handling formal HR-aligned performance processes is advantageous
- Prior experience within PPE, safety equipment, industrial supply, warehousing, or distribution environments is a strong plus
- Solid experience in ERP-driven environments (Acumatica experience is highly advantageous)
- Proven capability in CRM management, customer communications, complaint resolution, and service-delivery coordination
- Advanced Microsoft Office skills, with high proficiency in Excel