Country Manager at VisionSpring

VisionSpring is creating access to affordable eyewear, everywhere. Clear vision creates opportunities for increased learning, work, safety, civic participation, and quality of life. As a social enterprise, social change motivates us first. Our focus on sales and revenue targets serves and advances our mission objective—to increase functioning, productivity, and income earning potential for our low-income consumers by correcting refractive error and presbyopia with eyeglasses. We are working to transform the systemic dysfunction of an optical market that has failed to deliver eyeglasses—a 700-year-old technology—to 2.7 billion consumers in need of vision correction, most of whom live on less than $4 a day.

We serve low-income consumers, not as beneficiaries but as customers. Our customers expect a high-quality and affordable product, and they will spend limited discretionary income for the immediate and tangible benefits of vision correction. By selling eyeglasses, we awaken new demand and seed a viable market. By selling new eyeglasses we are able to serve four times as many people per dollar input than the alternative of donating recycled ones. To efficiently scale, we must deliver each new unit at a lower cost. We run our business on both sales metrics and social impact measures. We use a range of organizational forms and practices to get the job done. We believe in scaling our impact, not our organization. We are a lean team of doers.

Job Position: Country Manager

Job Location: Lagos

Job Description

1. The Country Manager will lead a growing team of 4 people and is responsible for business development; program expansion and implementation; sales operations; and the execution of shared services with the support of global functional leaders for programs, human resources, supply chain, finance, and marketing.
2. The Country Manager will cultivate high levels of mission alignment, team engagement, customer satisfaction, and the development of associated processes and culture.
3. This position is based in our Lagos office and reports to the Africa Region Director, located in VisionSpring’s Nigeria office. The Country Manager is a member of VisionSpring’s Africa leadership team and will collaborate with colleagues in Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Nigeria and the U.S. to achieve successful outcomes.

Job Requirements

1. You are passionate about building a purpose-first business that creates positive, lasting change in the lives of low-income consumers. You are energized by the constructive tension of growing sales and programs, and blending business and non-profit practices.
2. You are resourceful and decisive in a fast-growing organization. You seek answers, create structure, and devise solutions when obstacles appear.
3. You look for opportunities to develop team members’ competencies and strengths. You facilitate personal development and team learning. Former colleagues still call you for advice because you help them thrive.
4. You are innately rigorous in all that you do, from strategy to process development. You monitor progress against goals and make data-driven decisions.
5. You are an effective communicator. You motivate teams, partners, and clients around shared goals and what can be accomplished together. You solicit input and give and receive candid, respectful feedback.

Job Responsibilities
Leadership & Strategic Direction (15% of time):

As a member of the Africa leadership team:

1. Model VisionSpring’s core values and sustain an inclusive team culture built upon them: 1) Help others to do; 2) Advance equity; 3) Constantly adapt, relentlessly improve; 4) Default to transparency, reveal hard truths; and 5) Learn together.
2. Work with the Africa Region Director and Global Programs Vice President to develop a five-year Nigeria strategy, aligned to enterprise-wide goals, for scaling-up Vision Access Programs. Pharmacy and Institutional Sales to serve more target customers and maintain eyeglasses coverage rates.
3. Oversee the implementation of annual plans and budgets. Help Nigeria team members to develop work plans, meet milestones and targets, and adapt in the face of challenges and risks.
4. Make recommendations for building team capacity and processes to deliver on growth objectives.
5. Foster cross-organizational learning. Share best practices from Nigeria and absorb lessons from other markets into Nigeria.
6. Identify opportunities for partnerships with government, professional bodies, private sector and non-profit organizations to facilitate scaling.

Product Sales and Institutional Partnerships (20% of time):

1. Support the sales team in developing market penetration plans and achieving eyeglasses sales targets.
2. For Institutional Partners, guide key account management, negotiations and resolution of customer complaints.
3. Ensure all sales activities are tracked in Salesforce, VisionSpring’s CRM system.
4. Ensure sales performance is recorded by the Nigeria finance department.
5. Ensure marketing campaigns are implemented across all channels.

Program Planning and Management (30% of time):
In collaboration with the global program office to:

1. Guide the expansion and achievement of outcomes for Vision Access Programs, particularly: See to Earn: Work with the Africa Program Coordinator and Nigeria Program Lead to rapidly expand the implementation of vision screening and eyeglasses dispensing, particularly for farmers, artisans and micro-entrepreneurs particularly in cocoa-growing regions. Pharmacy Channel: Work with the Global Pharmacy Sales Manager and Nigeria Pharmacy Lead to develop a scalable channel to establish durable points of sale of reading glasses. Leverage the demand generation work of See to Earn programs.
2. Ensure programs are achieving targets on time and budget. Guide team members in making data-backed decisions and problem solving.
3. Lead continuous improvement. Establish routines to gather and act upon customer and frontline team member feedback. Oversea the introduction of new technologies, products and approaches to improve quality, efficacy and efficiency of service delivery.
4. Ensure implementing partners have information and steady support to achieve goals.

Shared Services: People, Supply Chain and Financial Management (20% of time):

1. Work with human resources to strengthen team members’ abilities to deliver results and assume greater responsibilities, manage performance and address concerns.
2. Maintain a culture and working environment that fosters high levels of mission alignment, diversity, cohesion and motivation.
3. Plan and guide promotions and recruitment, including the timely release of job requisitions.
4. Inform procurement and supply chain activities, including inventory planning and new product introduction.
5. Manage the country budget in accordance with the profit & loss statement. Manage costs and margins. Effectively use financial resources, demonstrating value for money.
6. Support the global finance team to deliver accurate and timely financial reporting and annual audits.
7. Manage resources with transparency and proactively respond to suspicions of fraud. violations of VisionSpring’s Code of Conduct and other complaints.

Resource Mobilization (15%):

1. Partner with the global resource mobilization and global program offices to effectively build relationships and secure terms of service contracts and raise philanthropic funds, from corporates, foundations and governments.
2. Identify and pursue funding opportunities to advance VisionSpring’s strategic priorities.
3. Contribute to proposals and reports that accurately convey context, progress against objectives, lessons learned, and detailed budgets and utilization.
4. Support proactive and transparent communication with donors and stakeholders.
5. Represent VisionSpring in forums to share what we are learning, build external relationships and advocate for our mission.

Job Requirements

1. A minimum of 10 years of professional experience in public health, international development, fast-moving consumer goods, pharmacy/medical sales, or other relevant business.
2. Prior responsibility for teams of at least 5 people and budgets of $500,000 or more.
3. Experience in growth-stage, target driven operations for sales and/or program objectives.
4. Business development or fundraising experience resulting in more than $100,000 in revenues.
5. Experience managing network of partners and/or multi-stakeholder collaborations.
6. Timely decision-making, follow-through and a strong personal sense of accountability.
7. Committed to respectful collaboration with colleagues from diverse backgrounds.
8. Must meet the highest standards of ethics, with a demonstrated capacity for discretion and for handling sensitive information with care.
9. Fluency in English, written and verbal.

Preferred Experience:

1. Project Management Professional (PMP) certification;
2. Consultative sales experience;
3. Graduate education in a relevant field; and/or
4. Familiarity with Salesforce, SAP or similar systems.

Compensation

1. Salary range is based on experience, education and location.
2. We offer comprehensive benefits, including health insurance and generous vacation time.

How to Apply
Interested and qualified candidates should:
Click here to apply online