General Manager, Telecoms Business

General Manager, Telecoms Business

Job Type Full Time , Hybrid Qualification BA/BSc/HND , MBA/MSc/MA , Professional Certificate Experience 12 years Location Lagos Job Field Engineering / Technical , Sales and Business Development

Level: Executive Leadership

Reports To: Board of Directors

Function: Commercial & Growth

Job Summary

The General Manager, Telecoms Business will provide strategic commercial leadership across the organization’s telecoms portfolio, with responsibility for protecting existing revenue, driving business growth, diversifying revenue streams, commercializing new products, and building strategic customer and partner relationships. The role will lead commercial strategy, business development, product commercialization, strategic partnerships, and executive-level customer engagement across Interconnect, International Direct Access (IDA), Value-Added Services (VAS), and other existing or emerging telecoms businesses. The successful candidate will combine strong commercial and business-development capabilities with sufficient technical understanding to engage credibly with MNOs, carriers, service providers, enterprise customers, regulators, and other key telecoms stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Commercial Strategy & Business Growth:

• Develop and execute the approved commercial growth strategy for the telecoms portfolio.
• Develop three-year growth strategies and annual commercial plans with clear revenue, margin, customer, and product targets.
• Protect and grow existing Interconnect, IDA, and VAS revenue, margins, and strategic customer relationships.
• Identify new markets, customer segments, products, routes, partnerships, and revenue opportunities.
• Assess market trends, competitive activity, technology developments, regulatory changes, and customer needs to identify growth opportunities and risks.
• Develop strategies to diversify revenue across customers, products, routes, and market segments.
• Provide commercially and financially supported recommendations on investment, partnerships, capability development, and new ventures.

Business Development & Revenue Delivery:

• Personally originate, develop, negotiate, and close high-value B2B telecoms opportunities.
• Build and maintain a robust sales pipeline with defined opportunity values, probabilities, decision-makers, next actions, and closing timelines.
• Lead major bids, proposals, presentations, commercial negotiations, and contract discussions.
• Develop strategic account plans covering retention, cross-selling, wallet share, customer growth, and executive engagement.
• Reactivate dormant and underdeveloped accounts and convert relationships into measurable commercial outcomes.
• Ensure signed contracts translate into active services, billable usage, revenue, collections, and acceptable margins.
• Establish a structured executive engagement programme for key customers, partners, and industry stakeholders.

Strategic Customer & Industry Relationships:

• Build and maintain senior-level relationships with MNOs, international and domestic carriers, ISPs, aggregators, enterprise customers, digital platforms, financial institutions, and relevant public-sector organizations.
• Serve as the senior commercial escalation point for strategic accounts while coordinating technical matters with the relevant technical leadership.
• Represent the organization at industry forums, strategic negotiations, partner meetings, and other high-level engagements.
• Maintain relationship maps for strategic accounts, including key decision-makers, influencers, commercial priorities, risks, and engagement plans.

Product Development & Commercialization:

• Develop a commercially viable product roadmap based on customer needs, technical capabilities, market opportunities, margins, and speed to revenue. Identify and commercialize opportunities across VAS and digital services, including:
• Enterprise messaging and A2P SMS
• USSD
• CPaaS
• APIs
• Content and subscription services
• Voice and data services
• Other approved digital and value-added solutions.
• Lead customer discovery and develop business cases covering value proposition, target market, pricing, investment requirements, risks, route-to-market, and expected returns.
• Collaborate with technical teams to translate approved concepts into service specifications, technical requirements, SLAs, implementation plans, and launch criteria.
• Lead go-to-market activities, commercial launches, customer adoption, and post-launch performance reviews.
• Review product performance and recommend improvement, repositioning, or discontinuation where agreed revenue, adoption, or margin thresholds are not achieved.

Commercial Governance & Financial Discipline:

• Establish appropriate pricing frameworks, deal-approval thresholds, and minimum margin requirements within approved authority limits.
• Ensure commercial proposals and contracts appropriately address pricing, volumes, settlement, credit exposure, service levels, liabilities, renewals, and termination provisions.
• Partner with Finance to monitor revenue assurance, billing accuracy, receivables, credit exposure, settlement risks, and customer profitability.
• Produce accurate monthly revenue and pipeline forecasts and explain significant variances.
• Maintain disciplined CRM usage and ensure critical customer and commercial information is properly documented and accessible to the organization.
• Monitor pricing, margin, contractual, credit, regulatory, and delivery risks and escalate material issues promptly.

Leadership & Team Management:

• Build and lead a high-performing commercial team covering business development, key account management, product commercialisation, and sales support.
• Set clear performance targets and KPIs and ensure effective performance management.
• Coach and develop team members while building a culture of accountability, collaboration, integrity, and commercial ownership.
• Coordinate commercial priorities across the various telecoms business lines.
• Develop appropriate commercial structures, capabilities, incentives, and succession plans as the business grows.

Cross-Business Collaboration:

• Collaborate with related business units and leadership teams on agreed growth initiatives, strategic partnership opportunities and cross-functional programs.