Country Sales Manager - France

The Pilot Group - Country Sales Manager - France

Our businesses cover electrical wholesale, energy management, and traffic control systems, working across a wide range of commercial and industrial applications. This role sits specifically in ESL, one of the businesses that make up the group; they are in essence a global trading business.

ESL connects the demand and supply of electrical components. As the world shifts to a more electric future, ESL helps customers procure their needs in this space by thinking and operating differently.

The company joins supply chains together in a simple and easy-to-deliver way. We operate globally, offering fast deliveries and making things easy for our customers and suppliers, developing long-term relationships with them.

ESL is headquartered in Manchester and operates with a strong international presence. It was founded by two female entrepreneurs 17 years ago (both are still in the business) and the company has 75 amazing people with brilliant skills.

We are now on a journey to build on this fabulous platform to create an even more connected and automated environment that delivers outstanding service to our chosen markets.

Country Sales Manager - France

This dual role will be responsible for leading, inspiring, and coaching the internal sales team, ensuring the workflow is well organized and distributed to achieve sales aims and maintain and improve customer service levels. Alongside this, you will also be a key contributor to market growth by personally opening and developing new sales accounts through cold calling.

You will lead the internal sales team and delegate tasks as appropriate while developing new sales relationships. You will have a good working knowledge of the industry climate and competition to effectively support the delivery of the sales strategy. You will understand the importance of praising and rewarding team members who do a stellar job and implement bonuses and incentives for achievements in line with main business focuses.

Main Responsibilities

• Manage a small team and continually support and develop them to ensure we have a high-performing team.
• Ensure the team is business development-focused and is continuously driving industry-leading service for our customers.
• Develop strategic sales plans that diversify the customers and brands, ensuring the company maintains a strong presence in the industry.
• Implement sales strategy to drive business development in the region by personally opening sales accounts and supporting your team in doing the same (while hitting your own sales targets to achieve growth).
• Manage and organize trips with the team and for your own sales account development, providing support, training, and feedback to maximize ROI to team members.
• Consistent sales development of your own sales accounts as well as in the team.
• Utilize data to help drive decision-making.
• Ensure class-leading customer service and commercial considerations are always maintained.
• Produce weekly and monthly reporting on key indicators.
• Lead and facilitate cross-functional communication across the business.
• Opportunity maximization by consistently improving procurement processes.
• Proactively use data to identify potential problems and opportunities and to continually improve.

Essential Skills and Experience

• French-speaking (native, professional level).
• B2B sales in French language (minimum 2 years cold calling).
• B2B sales leadership and management.
• A confident communicator who can delegate and manage the team effectively while also having difficult conversations.
• Ability to function in a fast-paced, changing environment and interface effectively within a cross-functional team.
• Self-motivated and results-oriented.
• Excellent organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple tasks and projects as well as using own initiative.
• Able to work in a fast-paced, pragmatic working environment - you must be able to build relationships quickly, establish credibility, and manage all aspects of the procurement process.

Desired

• Experience managing remote workers out of the country would be beneficial.
• Experience of working in a project setting and project delivery.