Role Purpose
To deliver revenue growth through specialist, consultative lighting sales while providing strong commercial leadership within the region. The role is accountable for building and growing a quality lighting pipeline, converting opportunities into revenue, strengthening customer relationships, and progressively building a capable lighting sales team to support scale.
This is a specialist role intended for an individual with proven lighting industry experience, a strong track record in business development and revenue generation, and the leadership capability to build, coach and lead a high-performing team over time. The role is designed as a developmental pathway towards a future Lighting Head of Department / HOD appointment, subject to performance and business need.
Key Responsibility Areas (KRAs)
1. Lighting Sales Delivery and Revenue Growth (Primary Accountability)
- Own and deliver against an agreed personal sales target and regional lighting contribution target, including pipeline growth, conversions and revenue.
- Develop and execute account plans for key lighting customers and target segments, including contractors, developers, consultants, architects, end-users and other relevant channel partners.
- Build and maintain an active opportunity pipeline through lead generation, relationship development, market penetration and qualification of new business.
- Prepare and manage quotes, proposals, lighting solution presentations and tender responses, with internal technical/design support where required, to convert opportunities into orders.
- Drive specification-led and project-based sales opportunities from early engagement through to close-out.
- Ensure strong after-sales support and ongoing account management, identifying upsell, cross-sell and repeat business opportunities.
- Maintain accurate CRM records, pipeline visibility and forecasting data through disciplined weekly updates and reporting.
2. Regional Commercial Leadership and Coordination
- Provide day-to-day leadership and coordination of the regional lighting sales function, ensuring a professional, responsive and commercially focused customer experience.
- Coordinate local sales activity and align internal support across technical, design, operations, procurement and logistics functions where relevant.
- Act as the first point of escalation for lighting-related customer, quotation or service issues within the region, resolving these promptly and escalating where needed.
- Maintain an effective regional operating rhythm, including pipeline reviews, opportunity prioritisation, internal handovers and action tracking.
- Ensure alignment to company policies, commercial standards, pricing discipline and ethical business practices.
3. People Leadership, Coaching and Performance Discipline
- Lead by example as a credible lighting specialist and strong commercial operator, setting the standard for customer engagement, solution selling and revenue delivery.
- Coach and support team members to improve sales execution, technical product confidence, quoting discipline, customer management and closing ability.
- Set clear expectations for activity levels, customer engagement, pipeline creation, quoting cadence and follow-through, and monitor these through regular 1:1s and sales reviews.
- Support performance management conversations and documentation in conjunction with the relevant leader and HR.
- Mentor junior sales consultants and new joiners through onboarding support, practical coaching, field exposure and knowledge transfer.
4. Talent Acquisition and Team Build (Progressive)
- Partner with leadership and HR to define and execute a regional lighting team build plan as growth requires.
- Identify the capability profile needed for future hires and support sourcing, screening and interviews to ensure strong role fit and commercial capability.
- Build a scalable team structure over time, with the Sales Lead playing a central role in attracting, selecting and onboarding strong lighting talent.
- Drive effective onboarding and early capability development for new hires to improve time-to-productivity and accelerate team contribution.
5. Reporting, Market Intelligence and Continuous Improvement
- Provide regular reporting on lighting pipeline health, forecast accuracy, key account progress and sales risks/opportunities.
- Share market intelligence on customer trends, competitor activity, pricing movements, project activity and emerging opportunities within the lighting sector.
- Use data and commercial insights to improve execution, conversion rates, customer responsiveness and overall team effectiveness.
- Identify and propose improvements to lighting sales processes, customer experience and internal collaboration to support growth.
Role Requirements
- Matric / NQF4 minimum; Are
- 5–8+ years' demonstrable success in external B2B consultative sales within the lighting industry.
- Proven track record as a business developer and revenue generator, with the ability to originate and close new business.
- Strong experience in managing project-based or specification-led sales cycles and building long-term customer relationships.
- Proven ability to lead, coach and grow others, with the credibility and maturity to build a team over time.
- Strong CRM discipline and forecasting capability (e.g. HubSpot, NetSuite or similar).
- Own vehicle and valid driver's licence, with willingness to travel regularly to customer and project sites within the region.
- Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to explain technical lighting concepts and commercial value clearly to non-technical stakeholders.
Key Competencies
- Strong commercial acumen and customer focus.
- Proven consultative selling, negotiation and closing capability.
- Business development drive and market-building ability.
- Leadership presence, accountability and team-building capability.
- Coaching and people development ability.
- Strong execution discipline, prioritisation and follow-through.
- Effective stakeholder management across customers and internal support teams.
- Data orientation and comfort using pipeline, forecast and conversion metrics to drive action.
- High levels of professionalism, credibility and integrity.
