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Job details:
Location: Maharashtra, preferably Pune or Mumbai
Indicative compensation: ₹45–60 lakh per annum, depending on experience and fit
The mandate
The company is a biological agricultural-inputs business operating across biofertilisers, biopesticides and bio stimulants. It is building towards approximately ₹450 crore in five years.
The commercial architecture has already been designed. This is not a blank sheet strategy or marketing role. The Head of Sales will be responsible for converting that architecture into a disciplined, scalable field-sales operation.
The central task is to build a direct to dealer system capable of:
- Transitioning licensed chemical input dealers into biological products.
- Growing dealers through a structured commercial ladder.
- Increasing dealer productivity, repeat ordering and product adoption.
- Enforcing pricing, credit, product-access and account-management rules consistently.
- Scaling state by state without allowing headcount, credit or local discretion to become substitutes for execution.
- Using Salesforce Customer 360 and the Sales Coordination function to direct field activity and improve conversion, retention and dealer value.
Operating model
The company operates a tiered dealer funnel. Dealers enter through an activation layer and progress based on demonstrated commercial performance.
The operating model includes:
- Direct servicing of dealers rather than dependence on a large distributor layer.
- Different service intensity according to dealer value and potential.
- Quarterly retrospective slabs, dealer rewards and recognition programmes.
- Controlled discounting, with field flexibility above a defined minimum NRV.
- Credit access earned through transaction history, repayment behaviour and time.
- Product access linked to training and certification because the portfolio requires technical selling and stewardship.
- Farmer-to-dealer catchment mapping and direct farmer engagement to create demand at the dealer counter.
- Salesforce-based Customer 360, campaign context, dealer history, suggested actions and cohort monitoring.
- SAP integration for orders, billing, pricing, credit, collections and inventory.
- A separate Sales Coordination function responsible for analytics, execution visibility and operating cadence.
The Head of Sales owns field execution and commercial results. Sales Coordination provides the intelligence, prioritisation and control tower. Neither function substitutes for the other.
Principal responsibilities - Revenue and network growth
- Deliver annual net-revenue, contribution and collection targets.
- Build the active dealer network in Maharashtra and subsequently replicate the operating model across additional states.
- Convert appropriate chemical input dealers into productive biological input dealers.
- Increase throughput from existing dealers while preventing indiscriminate dealer opening and catchment cannibalisation.
- Separate and manage legacy, transition and greenfield dealer cohorts according to their different economics and development paths.
- Build dealer density where farmer demand, crop opportunity and service capacity justify it.
Funnel execution
- Translate the dealer funnel into weekly and monthly field routines.
- Ensure that dealer acquisition is measured by clean activation, repeat ordering and survival.
- Manage the transition from activation teams to permanent account ownership and, eventually, key account coverage.
- Eliminate dealer hoarding, premature handoffs and artificial transaction splitting.
- Ensure that incentives reward retained dealer value, clean transactions and sustainable graduation.
- Identify leakage or gaming around tier thresholds, schemes, product access and dealer identities.
Field-force leadership
- Lead a multi-level field organisation comprising activation resources, MDOs, territory and district managers, regional leadership and key account coverage.
- Build the organisation within an agreed headcount and cost envelope.
- Allocate field capacity according to dealer opportunity, funnel stage and service requirement.
- Establish clear role charters, spans of control, review cadences and productivity standards.
- Prevent the organisation from reverting to relationship led selling, excessive credit negotiation or manual exception management.
Commercial discipline
- Enforce the defined NRV floor and approved discount architecture.
- Protect contribution after discounts, rebates, rewards, returns, service costs and expected credit losses.
- Coordinate with finance and credit while preserving the separation between commercial tier and credit grade.
- Ensure that sales growth is not created through dealer inventory loading or overdue receivables.
- Maintain discipline on returns, claims, samples, schemes and local promotional expenditure.
Salesforce and execution systems
- Work with Sales Coordination to define dealer next-best actions, service priorities, dormant-dealer recovery and campaign follow-up.
- Ensure accurate capture of approaches, activation, account ownership, training, certification, orders, service activity and dealer status.
- Run reviews from shared dashboards rather than parallel spreadsheets and personal dealer lists.
- Convert system insights into field actions and hold managers responsible for closure.
- Improve data quality without allowing salespeople to spend disproportionate time on administration.
State replication
- Convert the Maharashtra rollout into a repeatable state-launch playbook.
- Define the required dealer opportunity, crop clusters, field capacity, training capacity and working capital before entering a new geography.
- Build local leadership without permitting each state to reinvent commercial rules.
- Identify which aspects of execution require geographic adaptation and which must remain standard.
Measures of success
The role will be assessed on a balanced scorecard covering:
- Net revenue and gross contribution.
- Active dealers and net productive dealer additions.
- Qualified approach-to-activation conversion.
- Six clean transaction conversion.
- Survival through 180 days or the next relevant crop window.
- Dealer purchase ramp and movement towards sustainable potential.
- Sales per active dealer and contribution per dealer.
- Sell in to observed or estimated sell out.
- Dealer inventory, returns and abnormal quarter end loading.
- Order fill rate and delivery performance.
- Collection days, DPD-90, credit losses and overdue exposure.
- Activation and service cost per surviving dealer.
- Field productivity and cost to serve.
- Salesforce adoption, data completeness and closure of recommended actions.
Candidate profile
The preferred candidate will have:
- Approximately 15–22 years of sales experience.
- Current or recent experience as an AVP, General Manager, Zonal Head, Regional Head or equivalent business leader.
- Direct ownership of revenue, contribution, pricing, schemes, collections, field productivity and dealer-network expansion.
- Experience managing a multi-state or large-state business of approximately ₹150–500 crore.
- Experience leading at least 100-250 field and managerial employees.
- Demonstrable responsibility for a large direct dealer network.
- Evidence of building a network or business in multiples, not merely delivering incremental growth from an inherited base.
- Strong operating exposure to CRM, SFA, DMS, dashboards or technology-enabled field management.
- Experience in Maharashtra or Western India and willingness to be based in Maharashtra.
- Comfort operating through published commercial rules rather than account-by-account negotiation.
- The ability to work with technical specialists without pretending to replace them.
Preferred industry backgrounds
Preference will be given to candidates from:
- Decorative paints.
- Adhesives and construction chemicals.
- Waterproofing, sealants or related building-material categories.
- Lubricants or other technically sold direct dealer categories.
- Selected consumer durable businesses with substantial rural dealer and field-force operations.
Agricultural-input experience is not required. Candidates from agri-inputs must demonstrate that they have operated a disciplined direct dealer system and have not depended primarily on distributor relationships, discretionary credit and negotiated exceptions.
Profiles that will not fit
This role is unlikely to suit:
- Brand, trade-marketing or customer-marketing leaders without sustained sales ownership.
- Institutional or project-sales leaders with limited retail dealer responsibility.
- Candidates who have inherited mature networks but cannot show how they built or transformed one.
- Relationship led “hero sellers” who resist systems, standard rules or transparent account data.
Evidence required during selection
Candidates should be prepared to demonstrate:
- The number of dealers opened, activated and retained in a previous network build.
- Revenue growth separated into network expansion and dealer-productivity growth.
- Dealer throughput before and after their intervention.
- Team size, structure, attrition and productivity.
- Control of discounting, schemes, outstanding and inventory.
- A CRM, DMS or sales process implementation they personally drove.
- An example where they enforced a commercial rule despite field or dealer pressure.
- A failed channel initiative and what they changed.
First 12-month expectations
The successful candidate will be expected to:
- Stabilise the Maharashtra operating structure and field-accountabilities.
- Transition existing dealers into the appropriate relationship-management system.
- Establish disciplined L1 activation of transition dealers.
- Implement account handoffs without loss of dealer knowledge or responsibility.
- Operationalise joint working between field sales and Sales Coordination.
- Establish funnel and cohort reviews using Salesforce Customer 360.
- Improve repeat ordering and survival without using indiscriminate credit.
- Validate field capacity, training capacity and cost-to-serve.
- Produce a documented and executable playbook for the next state rollout.
- Build a leadership bench capable of scaling the organisation beyond Maharashtra.
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