Sales Operations Manager

Key Recruitment Group; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 700,000 - 1,000,000; Full time

Job summary

Key Recruitment Group is seeking a Sales Operations Manager for a fast-growing FMCG distributor operating in the nicotine and vaping category across Southern Africa.

The role is hands-on and focused on day-to-day execution in stores, depots, and trucks to ensure coverage, compliance and in-store standards.

Qualifications

• Hands-on FMCG field execution experience across coverage, distribution, and in-store standards.
• Proven ability to fix execution gaps with measurable before/after results.
• Willingness to spend significant time in stores, depots and on trucks.
• Experience holding regional/field teams accountable without direct management authority.
• Ability to implement practical systems and processes for field teams (CRM, call planning, reporting).
• Willing and able to travel extensively on a national basis.
• Valid driver’s licence and own reliable vehicle.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of execution in the field across three regions.
• Identify and fix root causes of in-store and distribution gaps.
• Develop simple systems to sustain improvements and compliance.
• Operate hands-on in the stores, depots and with field reps.
• Collaborate with National Sales Manager/Head of Sales as an executor, not a strategist.

Skills

FMCG field execution

Data-driven improvement

Field accountability

CRM & reporting tools

Travel readiness

Driver's license & vehicle

Tools

CRM software

Job description

Sales Operations Manager
a fast-growing FMCG distributor operating in the nicotine and vaping category across Southern Africa. As the business scales across three regions, execution consistency – coverage, compliance, in-store standards, and the day-to-day discipline that turns a sales plan into an actual result on shelf – needs a dedicated owner. Are seeking a Sales Operations Manager to take that on.
This is a deliberately hands-on role. It exists to make sure execution happens in the field, every day, in every region – not to build strategy decks or manage exclusively through layers of subordinate managers. The successful candidate will personally get into stores, depots and trucks, find where execution is breaking down, fix it at the source, and build simple systems that make the fix stick.
The right candidate is a strong, credible operator who has personally driven measurable execution improvement before – not someone several organisational layers removed from the field. This role sits below the National Sales Manager / Head of Sales in seniority, and deliberately so: we need an executor, not another layer of strategic oversight

Required Skills & Experience

• Proven, hands-on FMCG field execution experience – coverage, distribution, ranging and in-store standards, personally driven, not delegated
• Demonstrable history of fixing an execution gap – must be able to evidence with numbers (before and after compliance or coverage) and explain specifically what they personally did
• 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

Non-negotiable requirements – Location & Other

• 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 – only hot-desk access at the distributor’s warehouse is available
• Comfortable operating within a clearly scoped execution mandate long-term, without needing broader commercial or strategic authority to feel effective in the role

Preferred experience – strong differentiators

• Experience stepping into a business with a known execution gap and personally turning it around
• History of working alongside – not replacing – a National Sales Manager or Head of Sales
• FMCG experience in a founder-led, fast-scaling or entrepreneurial environment
• Experience in the nicotine, vaping, tobacco or regulated consumer goods category
• Practical experience building a compliance or audit tool that a field team actually adopted

We do not subscribe to the hackneyed expression – “ourpeople are our most valuable assets” – simply because assets are bought andsold and exploited for gain.

We believe emphatically that “your people are your business”and therefore we remain committed to the deployment of top quality recruitmentpractices in service to clients.

Through an established collaborative network of HRPractitioners whose essential purpose resonates with our own, we are able tooffer comprehensive people centred Management Consulting and Executive Coachingservices.