Head of Emerging Business

Job Description :

Job Title: Head of Emerging Business

                                                                       

About the Function:

Our Sales team love building relationships, connecting with customers to sell our much-loved brands in new and vibrant markets where they can thrive. They help sell our iconic brands across 180 countries every year.

We’re operating across different markets, channels, and areas of expertise. Using your curiosity and passion, you’ll make the most of consumer insight and digital platforms, reaching new customers, markets, and celebrations to help us achieve our growth potential. We’ll support your learning and growth as you develop your career with us and work with people across our business to realise your fullest potential.

About the role:

The Head of Emerging Business plays a critical role in achieving KBL’s short-, medium-, and long-term NSV ambitions. This role is accountable for delivering KES 35B in annual NSV, while driving operational excellence across distributors, route-to-market (RTM) operations, and the overall commercial ecosystem.

The role provides strong and inspirational leadership to the Emerging Business team through effective mentoring, coaching, and capability development. It ensures that RTM strategies, commercial capabilities, and key sales drivers are fully implemented and optimized.

In addition, the Head of Emerging Business motivates the team, identifies market opportunities, and ensures these opportunities are efficiently captured to accelerate growth. The position is central to building a high-performing team and unlocking incremental value within the commercial landscape.

Market Complexity:

Cultural - The alcohol market has a growing base of brews and locally made drinks that do not conform to set standards.

Distribution - EABL has 62 Distributors across the country who each face unique and area specific threats and require focused attention to achieve on targets

Role Responsibilities:

• Develop and implement a comprehensive strategy aligned to the business mission, ensuring sustainable growth and commercial excellence.

• Design and execute an effective Route-to-Market (RTM) strategy to capture and grow share within the informal alcohol market, ensuring strong market penetration and competitive advantage.

• Drive sales effectiveness by optimizing sales processes, strengthening execution standards, and ensuring the team consistently outperforms competition.

• Ensure disciplined budget management by controlling costs, reducing inefficiencies, and maximizing return on investment.

• Build people capability through consistent coaching, mentoring, and investing time in development to enhance team performance and readiness.

• Support the team through change, ensuring clarity, alignment, and commitment to business priorities.

• Embed and reinforce the sales incentive framework so that performance expectations are fully understood and consistently met.

• Develop and sustain a high-performing team that delivers exceptional results and demonstrates strong commercial capability.

Experience / skills required:

A bachelor degree in a business related field

• Circa 10  years’ experience gained across commercial

• Track record of success in highly demanding sales organization

• Leadership of teams operating in multi-channel settings

• Experience of making strategic choices, evaluating alternatives, balancing short and long-term issues, and living with the consequences

• Solid understanding & demonstrated delivery in challenging trading environments, understanding of channel, pricing, negotiations and strategy development

• Exposure to and track record of resolving difficult situations

Flexible Working Statement:

Flexibility is key to our success. Talk to us about what flexibility means to you so that you’re supported to manage your wellbeing and balance your priorities from day one. 

Diversity statement:

Our purpose is to celebrate life, every day, everywhere. And creating an inclusive culture, where everyone feels valued and that they can belong, is a crucial part of this.

We embrace diversity in the broadest possible sense. This means that you’ll be welcomed and celebrated for who you are just by being you. You’ll be part of and help build and champion an inclusive culture that celebrates people of different gender, ethnicity, ability, age, sexual orientation, social class, educational backgrounds, experiences, mindsets, and more.

Our ambition is to create the best performing, most trusted and respected consumer products companies in the world. Join us and help transform our business as we take our brands to the next level and build new ones as part of shaping the next generation of celebrations for consumers around the world.

Feel inspired? Then this may be the opportunity for you. 

If you require a reasonable adjustment, please ensure that you capture this information when you submit your application.

Worker Type :

Regular

Primary Location:

KBL

Additional Locations :

Job Posting Start Date :

2025-12-04