Sales Operations Manager

Job Description

• A leading FMCG distributor operating in the nicotine and vaping category across Southern Africa is looking for an experienced Sales Operations Manager with strong experience in hands-on FMCG field execution to join their team. This deliberately hands-on role exists to ensure execution happens in the field every day, across all three regions (Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, and Johannesburg). The successful candidate will personally get into stores, depots, and trucks across these regions to find where execution is breaking down, fix it at the source, and build simple systems to make the fix stick.

Responsibilities:

• Own execution standards nationally: call coverage, distribution, ranging, shelf compliance, and promotional execution.
• Build and implement a practical national execution scorecard.
• Run regular in-field audits personally across all three regions.
• Identify execution breakdowns and fix them directly with the people responsible.
• Close the loop on every issue found with a fix, an owner, and a follow-up date.
• Set and run the national operating rhythm: weekly execution reviews, daily activity checks, and non-negotiable reporting deadlines.
• Hold Regional Sales Managers and reps accountable to execution standards in partnership with the National Sales Manager.
• Identify and fix process and systems gaps (e.g., CRM discipline, call planning, order-to-cash friction).
• Produce a weekly national execution report tracking compliance and remediation.

Requirements:

• Proven, hands-on FMCG field execution experience (coverage, distribution, ranging, in-store standards) personally driven, not delegated.
• A demonstrable history of fixing an execution gap, evidenced with numbers (before and after compliance or coverage).
• Comfortable spending significant time in the field—stores, depots, trucks, with reps (this is not an office-based role).
• Experience holding regional or field teams accountable to standards without direct management authority over them.
• Practical systems and process discipline (CRM, call planning, reporting tools).
• Willing and able to travel extensively on a national basis.
• Valid driver's licence and own reliable vehicle.
• Based in, or willing to relocate to, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, or Johannesburg.
• If based in Johannesburg: able to work independently without a dedicated company office (hot-desk access at a distributor's warehouse is available).
• Comfortable operating within a clearly scoped execution mandate long-term, without needing broader commercial or strategic authority.