Head of Account Management

**Head of Account Management - **Southern Africa**

A management commercial role accountable for the retention and development of a defined list of Top & Mid-Tier, strategically important, high & mid volume customers across the Southern Africa region.

The Head, Account Management will lead a team of experienced Account Manager utilising resources dedicated to the retention and growth of top & mid-tier customers. The role will encompass establishing best practice for top & mid-tier account development, and sharing this back into the wider Travelport MEA UK&IE organisation. Both tier of customers are critical for Travelport, and apart from the responsibility for a very key account set, the wider objective of this role is to create the model for how strategic customers should be commercially managed and developed.

**Main Accountabilities**:

- Commercial accountability for a top & mid-tier customer portfolio, managed via a commercial account management team.
- Develop retention and growth strategies for accounts within the portfolio within Southern Africa region
- Management of a dedicated commercial team. Strong collaboration and matrix/dotted line team with other critical Travelport resources including but not limited to, Search Optimisation, Project Management, Solution Consultants, Solution Developers and API support resource.
- Develop the correct account management ‘playbook’- ensuring rigorous account management practices.
- Critically the DSA should be able to ‘talk the customer’s language’- translating Travelport’s currency of segments, PNRs, etc. into the customer’s language and business metrics i.e. conversion levels, return-on-trip, margin, etc and develop an account process that supports and reflects this
- Ensure Travelport support resources are optimized to deliver the best customer experience
- Build senior relationships throughout the customers organization and play a strategic role in growing their businesses
- Form part of the MEA Agency Sales Management Team, attending regular calls and meetings
- Build key stakeholder relationships internally at Travelport to ensure wider delivery of customer requirements
- Provides input to Head - National, Agency Sales MEA UK&IE for preparation of the annual budget and quarterly sales forecasts for inclusion into the Company Business Plan ensuring targets are met within budget.
- Ensures market intelligence received is communicated to relevant departments

**Knowledge, Skills, Experience, Training, Education**:

- Educated to degree or equivalent. Relevant experience in a business to business environment with a proven sales track record
- Strong Commercial skills, including ability to translate customer business requirements into definable actions
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
- persuasive and capable of influencing senior stakeholders both internally and externally. Possessing high degree of self-motivation, confidence, assertiveness and an ability to respond to rapidly changing environments.
- Strong commercial understanding of the Travelport business model, core drivers & technology requirements
- Strong knowledge of the travel technology landscape
- Strong functional/technical knowledge of Travelport platform
- Excellent Management skills - capable of being both a sales leader but also a strong people manager
- Ability to instill the rhythm and cadence in a highly disciplined sales team
- Will have a high degree of numeracy.
- Must possess an overriding desire to understand, agree and meet customer needs and exceed their expectations, constantly striving to achieve customer satisfaction.
- Experienced of building and managing multi, cross-departmental relationships, therefore exceptional influencing skills are vital to this role

**Personal**
- Self-confident and self-aware with presence and credibility
- Approaches tasks with dynamism, drive and focus
- Holds self-accountable
- Excellent verbal and written communication
- Self-confident and self-aware with gravitas, presence and credibility
- Excellent time management
- Must be able to work closely across the Travelport organization, creating a strong template for the APAC region in particular. The HAM should also work closely with colleagues in the Enterprise Customer Group.

**Key Measures**:
Financial Scope. Responsible for the commercial performance of the defined account base
- segment production, revenue, additional revenue/services. Responsible for the cost items relating to this.

**Staff Management**
- This role would operate in a matrix environment where effective relationships across a range of stakeholder groups would be vital. An ability to be credible with senior technical stakeholders would be an important aspect of the ability to influence and drive progress.