Business Development Manager, Consumer Finance

Greenlight Planet is a VC-funded, impact-focused US-based business which builds and distributes low cost solar home lights for the 2 billion off-grid villagers in Asia and Africa who use dirty, dangerous kerosene lanterns for work, study and life. Greenlight Planet has been selected as the most innovative solar company in the BoP space by Deutsche Bank and Ashoka's global Solar for All initiative and our products have been recently recognized as "the best solar lamp" in the Economist. 

Uniquely, we sell our life-changing Sun King™ solar home lights to off-grid families in India and Africa through a massive direct sales force of trusted, village-level sales agents that penetrate deeply into rural markets to promote our products home to home and build trust in our brand at a micro level. 

Today, over 5,000 active village sales agents sell Sun King™ each month, increasing their own incomes by about 40% on average. Since 2009 over 1,500,000 homes in India and Africa have started using Sun King in their house, every night. And now we’re employing the resources to scale up dramatically— to over 1,500 frontline staff and 25,000 rural sales agents across several international markets. 

Job Location: Nairobi, Kenya

Reporting to: VP, Business Development based in Nairobi, Kenya. 

The Role:

The Business Development Manager, Consumer Finance will be responsible for expanding Greenlight’s reach in Sub-Saharan African and Latin America through large, strategic partnerships with microfinance institutions (MFIs) and consumer finance channels.  Specifically, he/she will be involved in prospecting, closing, and launching partnerships with MFIs and consumer finance organizations to drive substantial growth of its consumer finance portfolio.

Key responsibilities for the role include:

• Identifying and engaging suitable microfinance/ consumer finance channel partners
• Understanding the nuanced operations and priorities of various MFIs and consumer finance channels to effectively pitch the value of adding a business line centered around Greenlight’s range of Sun King solar home energy solutions to their core businesses.
• Managing opportunities through prospecting and closing stages including: designing relevant partnership models to align with channel partners’ strategic priorities, crafting commercial and operational service models to enable scale and establishing new internal processes to serve consumer finance channels.
• Transitioning newly established partnerships to Greenlight’s Account Management and Operations teams for ongoing sales and service.
• Meeting aggressive sales and revenue targets

The ideal Sun King™ Business Development Manager:

• Has a college degree and at least 4-7 years of experience in commercial research, business development, lead generation and relationship management, preferably in a microfinance/ venture capital/ private equity/ private debt setting in Sub-Saharan Africa. 
• Can understand the nuances of various channels’ operating models and create customized sales and service models.
• Is a strong people-person, one that thrives off of the energy of navigating complex organizations and building relationships both within the organization and externally.
• Can tell a great story, communicates clearly and can capture the interest and attention of 2, 20 or 200 people naturally.
• Has a strong a record of meeting revenue targets and experience growing new business lines
• Is entrepreneurial and excited about the opportunity to creatively build effective, non-traditional sales channels in a nascent product category
• Is passionate about his/her work and driven by Greenlight’s social mission of bringing innovative, renewable energy and life-enhancing products to off-grid homes across Africa (85%) and Latin America (15%).
• Is willing to spend 30-40% of his/her time on the road interacting with prospective partners

We are looking for someone that is excited about entrepreneurial sales and marketing to join our fast-growing global sales team. If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you.

Greenlight Planet offers a competitive salary, a fun, supportive work environment and opportunities for continued professional growth within a fast-growing global enterprise.

 APPLY NOW