Marketplace Specialist

About the job

What if you help create a world where smallholder farmers are financially rewarded for their crops, buyers are able to trace and source crops sustainably from farm to factory, and consumers are able to trace their foods from farm to table?

Zowasel is dedicated to building a sustainable supply chain across communities, people, and the planet.

The role of the Marketplace Specialist will be to talk to sellers all day long concerning cash grain marketing, encourage the use of the correct cash grain tools for unique situations, and articulate cash grain solutions that meet sellers’ cash flow/logistical needs.

This role will be the primary sales and service touchpoint for our customers. They represent Zowasel and are well versed in all Zowasel value propositions and will be able to execute with the clear objective of supporting the crop sellers in business decisions to help improve the profitability of their crops. Customer experience is core to the success of these team members in a quest to develop “enterprise” seller customers.

The role of the Grain Marketplace Specialist is to build and maintain close, emotional relationships with Zowasel Marketplace customers.

Key Responsibilities:

Serves as a primary relationship manager for seller-customers and leads a buyer-facing team of Subject Matter Experts
Develop a strong cadence of calls and communications with their in-process book of business. Continually developing relationships to create more crop profitability and value for Zowasel
Takes overall market and business development accountability within the predefined area in Nigeria
Establish a network of growers and crop sellers as a target customer list
Organize sellers meeting events to present Zowasel and its solutions and digital technologies, as well as its Marketplace and Certified Crop opportunities
Design locally adapted value propositions and business models that accelerate Zowasel technology adoption
Partners with sellers-customers resulting in their adopting Zowasel solutions (financial, digital technologies, Marketplace, and Certified Crop)
Identifies and operationally manages crop quality specifications and partners’ supply chain expectations
Follow up through the season until harvest to assess product yield uplift
Promote Zowasel MarketplaceTM Zowasel Certified CropTM as part of Zowasel’s overall offer within target seller-customers
Support the development of a network of sellers on Zowasel MarketplaceTM within their own areas or region
Support the design of scale-up strategy and the assessment of sellers
Stay aligned with business unit direction and team
Maintains seller accounts, sales stages, important notes, and sales process information in CRM tool and utilizes other sales enablement technologies provided to them
Have developed a book of business such that repeat transactions become the norm and we are on track to be transacting 65%+ of each buyer’s grain through Marketplace
Interact with 100% of assigned leads
Able to respond to new leads within 24 hours (1 business day)
Build a book of business (from warm, qualified leads) that are increasingly using Marketplace and other Zowasel products
Learn the Zowasel structured product offerings and Marketplace software
Attributes and Competencies:
Strong self-starter, comfortable in rapidly changing and entrepreneurial agtech start-up environment
Commercially minded, sales-results oriented, highly confident, deal closer
High energy, positive attitude, goal-getter, never-give-up mindset
Passionate about agriculture, crop production, and sustainability
Good understanding of cropping practices, seed genetics, and downstream mill quality/ value drivers
Open-minded to new ways and digital technologies that shape the future of agriculture
Very comfortable discussing business in front of buyers, crop sellers, growers, financial partners, and agronomy technical advisors
Strong record-keeping, organizational, and multitasking skills
It is highly preferable that a candidate brings a strong network of growers within their target area
Willingness to work flexible hours to align with customer convenience
Ability to manage a large portfolio of sellers and growers
Strong Phone skills-ability to develop long-term, trusting relationships over the phone
Familiar with agribusiness industry products, Minimum Price Contracts, etc.
Experience selling in a team environment
Analytical and Smart
Ability to quickly develop relationships with someone over the phone
High energy
Flexible in mindset and approach
Ambitious and successful – the high internal drive
Strong farm and agribusiness acumen
High ability to use new software and continually learn new functions
High integrity, ownership, and accountability
Someone whom we would want to be in a room with all day under high pressure
Ability to sell successfully in a high-growth company

Qualifications & Experience:

Bachelor’s degree is required
Preferred degrees: Agribusiness, Agronomy, Marketing, Finance, and Business, or similar
Roles dealing directly with enterprise processors
The ideal candidate has strong experience in grain marketing and sales within the Nigerian market, candidates with outstanding sales or technical agribusiness backgrounds also considered
2+ years of Cash Crops and Grain experience
2+ years of Salesforce or a CRM system, or equivalent skillset required
2+ years of Production Ag, Grain Marketing experience
Previous experience and current knowledge about maize and soybean, specifically
Nigerian native languages (Hausa, Yoruba, etc), strong English skills
Experience with QMS systems is a plus
Experience with Agriculture science work is plus