Sales Manager - Rwanda

Description/Role purpose
The Sales Manager is responsible for building and converting AvadaPay's commercial pipeline in Rwanda and delivering agreed merchant acquisition, transaction-volume and revenue targets.
The position requires a commercially active manager who can acquire merchants at scale, not only manage a limited number of large accounts.
The ideal candidate should already understand the current Rwanda merchant-acquiring environment, know how merchants are approached and converted in practice, understand current pricing and competitor behavior, and preferably come from payments, fintech, mobile money, acquiring, banking, telecom or another adjacent sector where merchant acquisition is a core activity.
The role covers acquisition and development of merchants, corporate customers and strategic commercial partners that can use AvadaPay's payment infrastructure and services.
The Sales Manager owns the commercial relationship from prospect identification through negotiation and contracting and remains commercially responsible for ensuring that signed customers progress toward activation and revenue generation.

Requirements
The successful candidate must be able to:

• prospect independently;
• acquire merchants at scale;
• reach senior decision-makers;
• qualify opportunities;
• organize high-volume merchant prospecting;
• understand customer payment flows;
• identify commercially viable use cases;
• build proposals;
• negotiate pricing and contracts;
• close deals;
• manage long B2B sales cycles;
• maintain accurate pipeline data;
• follow signed customers through activation;
• develop existing accounts;
• work against measurable merchant, revenue and transaction targets.

The position requires a hands-on salesperson. It is not primarily a relationship-management, marketing or administrative position.

Responsibilities
​The ​Sales Manager will be responsible for:

1. Merchant Acquisition scale: building a repeatable merchant-acquisition engine for Rwanda.

2. Sales pipeline and revenue

3. Merchant and corporate customers' acquisition: acquiring businesses that can generate meaningful payment volumes through AvadaPay

4. Market knowledge and competitive positioning: He/She must have a strong practical understanding of the current Rwanda payments and merchant-acquiring market

5. Solution based selling: understanding the customer's payment flow before proposing an AvadaPay solution.

6. Key Account development: managing commercial relationships with major merchants after signing.

7. Commercial partnerships: Identifying and developing partnerships that can expand AvadaPay's distribution, transaction volumes or customer base in Rwanda.

8. Commercial negotiations: preparing and negotiate commercial proposals

9. Sales to integration handover: ensuring that signed deals move efficiently from sales into implementation.

10. CRM, Pipeline discipline and reporting: maintaining accurate sales information for every material opportunity and provide management with concise weekly reports

Nice to have

• At least 5 years of B2B sales or business development experience, preferably in payments, fintech, mobile money, acquiring, banking, telecom or another closely related sector.
• Proven experience acquiring merchants in meaningful numbers, not only managing a small number of enterprise accounts.
• Demonstrable track record of building merchant pipelines, converting merchants and achieving monthly acquisition targets.
• Strong current knowledge of the Rwanda merchant-acquiring and payments market.
• Practical understanding of competitor offers market pricing, merchant expectations and current commercial conditions.
• Existing network among merchants, corporates, financial institutions, payment providers or relevant industry participants in Rwanda is strongly preferred.
• Previous employment with a PSP, payment aggregator, acquiring business, mobile-money provider, bank, fintech, telecom company or another adjacent merchant-acquisition business is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated experience closing corporate or enterprise customers.
• Experience selling solutions involving transaction fees, payment volumes or recurring commercial revenue.
• Experience managing sales pipelines and revenue forecasts.
• Ability to understand API-based payment products and merchant integrations from a commercial perspective.

Working conditions
Strong preference for ​candidates with background ​in some sectors of activities such as:

• Payment Service Provider;
• merchant acquiring;
• payment aggregation;
• mobile money;
• fintech;
• banking merchant services;
• payment gateway;
• telecom merchant or enterprise sales;
• digital payments;
• financial-services distribution.

Bachelor's degree in one of the following areas is preferred:

• Business Administration;
• Sales and Marketing;
• Finance;
• Economics;
• Banking;
• Management;
• Information Technology with commercial experience or equivalent relevant professional experience.

Languages:

• English: strong professional working proficiency.
• Kinyarwanda: required for effective local commercial work.
• French: strong advantage.