Commercial Principal

What you’ll do

Role title: Commercial Lead
Department: Commercial Operations
Reports to: Head of Commercial Management, CSO    
Band: F
Location: Hybrid

Role purpose: 

• The Commercial Lead is responsible for leading strategic and complex transformation bid responses for CSO’s largest opportunities with Vodafone local markets, group companies and joint ventures whilst driving growth and supporting the expansion of the business by developing innovative commercial propositions.
• This is a customer facing role that requires a deep understanding of Vodafone’s shared operations business service lines and propositions and how these can be leveraged to help solve our customer’s business challenges. The Commercial Lead will create a strong commercial strategy that delivers against the customer’s objectives, whilst also driving profitable growth for Commercial Shared Operations.
• This role will align closely with the Customer Account lead and wider GTM teams to bring their growth strategy to commercial reality, focusing on maximising value for all parties and will lead complex commercial negotiations to successful closure. This role requires strong relationships across the organisation, operating in a matrix structure, to drive optimal collaboration and alignment and full governance of all opportunities.

Key accountabilities and decision ownership: 

• Bringing thought leadership, innovative deal structuring and commercial expertise to all opportunities, which mitigates risk and contributes to the growth of the CSO.
• Commercial leadership across the customer life cycle from pre-qualification and deal shaping to negotiation, contracting and hand over into in-life. 
• Collaborative creation of a compelling win-strategies through strong alignment with business stakeholders.
• Strong stakeholder relationships within CSO and across all functions involved in the commercial process.
• Develop and refine the CSO Commercial processes, ways of working and governance models to enable business growth.
• Approve the submission of pricing proposals developed by pricing architects or account team and review contract financials for all deals in new business meetings.
• Review high level business case, resourcing plan and business development funding estimate and seek approval in respective NBM meetings.
• Assess and support pricing methodologies for large complex deals to meet CSO and customer objectives, aligned with the commercial strategy set by CALs; Work with pricing architects to prepare and present financial findings, including daily rate calculations, resource mix, profitability, and deal shaping simulations in governance forums.
• Support CALs by producing accurate views of CSO’s sales, profitability, and P&L position using internal financial model intelligence from Finance.
• Ensure compliance with CSO’s commercial policies and processes and closely integrate with Finance to manage risks proactively.

Key performance indicators:

• Year on year improvement on win rate and OCR (Opportunity Capture Rate)
• New business growth, renewal and retention rates by market
• Achieving profitability targets at market and service tower level

Who you are

Core competencies, knowledge and experience:

• Proven leadership working with customers, internally and externally, and a strong appreciation of sales processes and methodologies.
• Consistent delivery of exceptional results through matrix team structures driving optimal on and offshore structure
• Strong decision making – ability to balance conflicting priorities and strong, individual personalities.
• Proven negotiation skills with customers up to C level
• Strong leadership of Risk during every bid, able to identify most appropriate mitigation actions to reduce CSO’s exposure

Technical / professional qualifications: 

• Proven Commercial acumen achieved through experience working on complex sales pursuits in either a commercial, sales or bid related role.
• Over 10 years of experience working for global corporates/organisations.
• Over 10 years of experience in Commercial, Sales or Operations, leading virtual teams in the delivery of complex, global projects.
• Data driven with strong analytical and insight focus.
• Understand the competitive landscape of our markets, and of our customer base, and act as a credible advisor to CxO level.
• Understand the complexity of Vodafone and how it impacts our customer proposals.

Direct reports:

• None to start but likely to grow to 5 – 10 as the function expands

Not a perfect fit?

Worried that you don’t meet all the desired criteria exactly? At Vodafone we are passionate about Inclusion for All and creating a workplace where everyone can thrive, whatever their personal or professional background. If you’re excited about this role but your experience doesn’t align exactly with every part of the job description, we encourage you to apply as you may be the right candidate for this role or another role, and our recruitment team can help you see how your skills fit in.

What's in it for you

We want you to feel happy and fulfilled at work, without compromising the other things in life that matter to you. There are lots of ways we support this, including hybrid working and generous parental leave. You'll also get four Spirit Days a year to focus on your personal development and wellbeing, plus a host of other great benefits too.

Who we are

You may have already heard of Vodafone - We're a leading Telecommunications company in Europe and Africa. But what you might not know is that we are continuously investing in new technologies to improve the lives of millions of customers, businesses and people around the world, creating a better future for everyone.

As part of our global family, whether that's Vodafone, Vodacom or _VOIS, you'll feel a sense of pride and purpose as you contribute to our culture of innovation. We pursue equality of opportunity and inclusion for all candidates through our employment policies and practices. We recognise and celebrate the importance of diversity and inclusivity in our workspace and we do not tolerate any form of discrimination especially related to but not limited to race, colour, age, veteran status, gender identification, sexual orientation, pregnancy, ethnicity, disability, religion, political affiliation, trade union membership, nationality, indigenous status, medical condition, HIV status, social origin, cultural background, social, or marital status.

Together we can.