About the role

BURN is looking for a Commercial Manager who will work closely with the Market Research Team in the design and sale of new products.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Commercial Strategy:

Play an active role in the development and implementation of the strategic direction the product should take.
Define the product B2B and B2C sales strategies.
Ensure plans are well supported with market research and testing.
Communicate and collaborate with senior management to ensure alignment with other business goals.
Defining (in collaboration with product management) project objectives, budget, timelines, and deliverables.
Identify and develop strategic partnerships.

Sale Pilot Design:

Work with the market research team to design and execute pilots to answer key product questions, collect user feedback, and measure product impact.
Own the sales process definition for research pilots.
Support pilot design by setting pilot, goals, methodologies, and locations.
Set goals to reach grant-funded milestones.
Proactively identify major project risks and develop risk mitigation strategies.

Problem Solving:

Solve a variety of challenges as they arise in distribution, staffing, partnerships, and financials.

Team management:

Implement and lead systems and tools for proper management of direct reports.
Coordinate team members, procurements, schedules, and tasks to deliver results for project milestones.
Work together with the project controller (finance) to keep the budget tracking updated.
Making sure that projects and teams are well structured, and communication is efficient and effective.
Managing sales teams to ensure implementation of pilots and sales activities is correctly carried out.
Coordinate regular project meetings, develop agenda, and send meeting minutes.
Assist with hiring and onboarding new team members.
Identify staffing needs based on the business strategy.

Support Product Development:

Synthesize product specifications and parameters based on market research, lab testing results, and product development goals, as well as develop reports and gate presentations
Initiate risk and safety analyses of new products.
Ensure lab testing, electronics development, and market research are answering key product development questions.

Fundraising and partnership development:

Assist with building partnerships across the electric and clean cooking sector to support the project.
Actively initiate and maintain internal and external communication, develop, and give presentations for management, grantors, and other external collaborators.
Assist in identifying and writing grants that are well aligned with Burns’s mission, vision, and capacity.
Drafting narrative and financial proposals and reports for internal and external use
When required, represent BURN at conferences and events in Kenya and abroad.

Skills and Experience

Essential

Experience developing business strategies and plans.
Bachelor or MBA degree, preferably in business, market intelligence or marketing
5 years’ experience in project management and demonstrated ability to coordinate complex projects with many stakeholders to deliver results on time.
Strong analytic/number-crunching background, particularly with sales and marketing data
High level of comfort working with high-level business clients.

Desired

BURN does not charge a fee at any stage of the recruitment process (application, interview, meeting, processing, training, or any other fees).