Job Purpose
Lawson Fuses is on the cusp of sustainable turnaround, and the role holder will be responsible and accountable to drive overall new sales and business development strategy implementation within target markets (Primary - Middle East & Africa, Asia Pacific and Europe). We are looking for a commercially driven individual, who is passionate about developing and sustaining relationships resulting in a sustainable pipeline.
The role holder will be responsible for driving sales development across assigned global markets by finding, recruiting, and developing new channel/wholesale partners, winning utility contracts and direct selling to established OEMs in the region. This is a dynamic, customer facing role that will require the candidate to travel across the region, observe local protocols, and understand the route to market in each individual region.
This is a fantastic opportunity for the right candidate, as you will influence and help shape the profile, reputation, and growth of Lawson Fuses. This role also gives an opportunity to develop and grow the sales team globally.
Business Overview
Lawson Fuses specialises in the design, development and manufacture of low voltage, high rupturing capacity (HRC) fuse links and fuse holders. Sold directly and via distributors, applications are suitable for electric and electronic capital equipment, utilities, renewable energy, and domestic households.
Job Context
Incorporated in 1938, Lawson Fuses Limited (LFL) is a global firm that operates in the fuse gear market with a focus on the design, development, and manufacture of Low Voltage High Rupture Capacity (HRC) fuses and associated fuse holders. With manufacturing facilities in the UK and India, LFL's global clientele is spread across several countries including (but not limited to) the UK, Middle East, Africa, India, Malaysia, Australia, South Korea, and Hong Kong. The customer segment for the business is utilities, wholesale distribution, and original equipment manufacturers across the globe. With ISO 17025 ASTA certified R&D lab and ASTA certified manufacturing plants, LFL focuses on safety, quality, and speed of product delivery.
LFL is part of Lucy Group, a diversified international group operating in businesses across several sectors and has three main business divisions: Lucy Controls, Lucy Electric & Lucy Real Estate. LFL is part of the Lucy Control business.
Lawson Fuses is a business that is going through a period of exciting change. The role of the business development lead will be directly influencing the vision of the business.
Job Dimensions
This role reports to the Business Head (GM) and will work closely with cross functional teams to implement the sales strategy. The role will take a lead on end to end business development activities in assigned global regions and will be offered autonomy to drive strategy forward.
Role Base: Hybrid, albeit majority of time spent at Lawson Head Quarters in Newcastle upon Tyne and/or at customer location, will require up to 50% international travel.
Key Accountabilities
- Develop and execute business development strategies aligned with the company's yearly budget and medium term plans
- Create go to market strategies for new product launches within the assigned regions
- Identify key partnerships in assigned regions to build long term opportunities
- Generate and qualify new leads through networking, research and outreach
- Build key relationships with utilities, wholesalers, and OEMs and understand key trends and gaps in the market alongside competitor updates
- Manage and nurture long term relationships to increase share of the market
- Represent the company at key networking events, exhibitions and industry conferences
- Oversee sales funnel on a regular basis and ensure appropriate follow up and closure
- Work closely with UK sales, sales support and marketing teams to improve lead generation and conversion rates in global markets
- Cross functional collaboration with marketing (on campaigns), product and operations teams (service levels, quality) and offer transparent feedback from market on conditions, price and positioning
- Lead, motivate and align sales team to meet targets. Create a results driven culture and monitor performance on a weekly and monthly basis.
- Track, analyse, report and publish key business development metrics
- Prepare monthly and quarterly progress report to leadership team
- Adopt best practices in CRM and leverage data to drive decision making
- Support in preparation of yearly budget and medium term plans
Minimum Qualifications, Knowledge, and Experience
- Qualification in Business Management, Business Administration
- Overall Experience Level: years; in new sales / business development
- Ideally, we are looking for candidates from the UK and Europe
- Ideally from fusegear industry, although we are open to exploring candidates from electronics and switchgear industries provided they deal with power distribution companies, wholesalers and OEMs.
Market Experience
Global OEM business development experience, international / territory experience: Middle East, Asia Pacific, Europe - or some combination of these is required.
New Business Development - Strategic Experience
- Expertise in collaborating with senior leaders to develop credible medium term plans backed by robust vision, goals and strategies
- Seasoned skills in analysing market trends, customer behaviour and identifying gaps/opportunities in the market
- Experience in developing credible annual business plans with clear execution paths to address identified opportunities
- Skills to foster strong long term relationships with customers and partners across the globe
Sales - Technical Experience
- Experience in qualifying fusegear products (or similar) with global power utilities and global OEM accounts.
- Experience in penetrating new major global OEM accounts especially in Europe, Middle East and Asia. Experience in Africa and/or India and/or Australia & New Zealand will be an added advantage.
- Experience in growing OEM market and major accounts (not limited to manufacturers of LV panels, feeder pillars, RMUs, motor control / drives etc) for fusegear products in varied industries and applications: renewables, LV & MV power distribution, power electronics, motor control, industrial machinery and other industries.
- Experience in identifying and growing partnerships in global regions via wholesalers and/or value added resellers.
- Candidates with a good network of existing relationships will be preferred.
Sales - Tactical Experience
- Driving sales to monthly, quarterly and yearly targets with profitable and sustainable growth in mind
- Experience in collaborating with sales support teams on both pre sales and post sales activities. This includes a tactical approach to increase win ratios on tenders.
- Monthly, quarterly and annual report generation to support board to make robust decisions
- Capability to build out a partner network, setting expectations and tracking performance
- Cross functional collaboration with other internal and external stakeholders to bring opportunity to closure
Soft skills
Strong business development and communication skills along with analytical and problem solving aptitude. In essence, following traits are desirable-progressive, tenacious, results orientated, collaborative, agile and flexible.
Values
- We support and respect each other
- We collaborate
- We continually improve
- We 'can do'