First Line Sales Manager - Coastal
Bayer
At Bayer, we believe work should matter. Every day, our teams push toward a future where "Health for all, Hunger for none" is within reach, and every role, from the lab to the field to the boardroom, helps us get there. We give people the ownership to shape outcomes, the support to grow through new skills and experiences, and a global community where different perspectives are valued. If you want your work to count and the room to become your best, you'll find it here.
First Line Sales Manager - Coastal
Job Purpose:
- Lead and develop a high-performing team of Customer Engagement Specialists across Gauteng Inspire high performance, build future-ready capabilities and deliver sustainable,profitable growth while embodying Bayer leadership principles and maintaining uncompromising ethical and customer standards.
- Provide clear regional strategic direction by translating enterprise, portfolio and customer priorities into focused execution choices, resource allocation and measurable commercial outcomes.
- Navigate the evolving healthcare and pharmaceutical ecosystem, including wholesalers, corporate and independent pharmacy groups, public-sector stakeholders, healthcare professionals and other channel partners.
- Operate with an enterprise mindset, balancing regional delivery with end-to-end value creation across Sales, Marketing, Market Access, Supply Chain and Medical.
Key Responsibilities and Tasks:
Enterprise Leadership, Strategic Direction and Team Development
- Demonstrate VACC leadership by adapting leadership behaviours to team needs while cultivating a high-performance, psychologically safe environment grounded in trust, agility, accountability and results.
- Set a compelling regional direction and convert business strategy into clear priorities, trade-offs, customer plans and execution rhythms for the team.
- Contributing to enterprise-wide decisions, connecting cross-functional priorities and making choices that optimise total business value rather than local outcomes only.
- Coach the team to define aligned missions, goals and success metrics linked to individual sales plans and Customer Excellence KPIs.
- Build succession strength and future capabilities through differentiated coaching, field development, talent reviews, development plans and retention actions.
- Champion empowerment, collaboration, continuous learning and a creative growth mindset, enabling team members to own their business and contribute actively to Customer and Product teams.
Key Account and Ecosystem Leadership
- Provide leadership for priority regional key accounts and ensure account strategies are based on customer economics, channel dynamics, portfolio opportunities and mutual value creation.
- Build credible relationships with wholesalers, corporate pharmacy groups, buying groups and other strategic stakeholders.
- Guide the development of joint business plans, account growth plans and customer engagement strategies with clear objectives, value propositions, measures and review cadence.
- Ensure field execution strengthens product availability, appropriate stock levels, customer reach, portfolio penetration and quality of customer engagement.
Commercial Leadership and Profitable Growth
- Enable profitable sales delivery using commercial excellence tools, deep portfolio knowledge and customer-focused selling approaches.
- Translate portfolio, market and customer insights into commercially robust regional plans, including customer segmentation, targeting, resource deployment, risk mitigation and opportunity activation.
- Identify performance gaps early and drive cross-functional corrective action.
- Embed sales discipline and executional excellence by coaching the team to deliver defined KPIs, behaviours and customer outcomes.
Business, Data and Analytical Acumen
- Use data to make evidence-based decisions across territories, customers, channels, brands and SKUs.
- Turn demand, sales, inventory, market and competitor trends into action.
- Improve forecasts using customer and field insights, and escalate risks early.
Coaching and Performance Management
- Mentor and coach team members through regular field visits, formal In Call Quality assessments and structured business reviews.
- Set clear performance expectations, identify gaps for performance management
- Cross-Functional Execution and Change Leadership
- Align cross-functional teams to resolve barriers and deliver shared outcomes.
- Lead regional change adoption and sustain implementation.
- Support digital transformation and a hybrid, future-ready customer interaction model that strengthens engagement with healthcare professionals and other customers.
Compliance and Operational Oversight
- Ensure all sales activities comply with the South African Marketing Code of Practice, applicable IFPMA guidance, Bayer policies and relevant legal and regulatory requirements.
- Manage sales administration and reporting, and continuously simplify and improve regional operating rhythms, systems and processes.
Experience, Skills and Qualifications:
- Relevant university degree, for example BCom Business Management, commerce, finance, marketing or a healthcare-related qualification.
- Minimum three years of successful sales-management experience in the pharmaceutical or healthcare industry, or substantial internal customer-engagement experience with demonstrated leadership readiness.
- Demonstrated ability to create accurate sales forecasts, explain variance and bias, and contribute credible demand intelligence.
- Proficiency in Microsoft 365, CRM platforms such as Veeva CRM, and business performance dashboards or analytics tools.
As part of our commitment to inclusion, we want to ensure persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations. If reasonable accommodation is needed to participate in the job application or interview process, please contact us at nicole.gien.ext@bayer.com.