Head of Sales

Location: Pretoria, or a SADC country where our client operates (Zimbabwe preferred)

Our client, an established South African education technology company, builds a school management platform used by schools across South Africa and a growing number of African markets. They are looking for a commercially driven sales leader to own and grow their revenue across Africa outside South Africa.

About the Role

You will lead the international sales team, open new markets through senior relationships with school associations, ministries and public sector bodies, and build a sales engine that grows revenue faster than headcount by putting data, automation and AI agents at its centre. The role reports to the Leader: Customer Growth, who is based in Pretoria.

Key Responsibilities

Drive African revenue growth

• Set and deliver quarterly and annual targets for schools and recurring revenue outside South Africa.
• Defend and grow current markets and enter new ones using proven, repeatable methods.
• Work with Customer Success and Support so onboarding and retention keep pace with growth.

Build association and institutional partnerships

• Build senior relationships with pan-African school associations, industry bodies, ministries and districts.
• Navigate tender and procurement cycles, and turn partnerships into repeatable lead sources.

Scale through automation and AI

• Design an AI-first, automation-first sales engine across prospecting, qualification, outreach, proposals and CRM updates.
• Keep people focused where relationships matter most: associations, ministries, key accounts and closing.

Lead with data

• Prioritise countries, segments and channels on evidence, and run regular pipeline, win/loss and market reviews.
• Maintain a live Africa sales dashboard in Zoho as the single source of truth.

Lead a multi-country team

• Set clear targets, coach and develop a remote team across countries and cultures, and keep pipeline and forecasts clean.

Requirements

• A degree in Business, Marketing or a related field (a postgraduate qualification is an advantage).
• At least 5 years in B2B SaaS sales owning recurring revenue, including 3 years leading an international sales team, ideally across more than one African country.
• Experience selling into schools, education, government or the public sector in African markets.
• Advanced data and CRM literacy: dashboards, conversion funnels, forecasting and unit economics.
• Hands-on, daily use of AI tools in sales, and a track record of using AI agents to automate sales workflows.
• Awareness of learner data protection obligations (POPIA and equivalent regional laws).
• Willingness to travel across Africa once or twice a month, usually three to five days, weekdays only.

Advantageous

• French, Portuguese or Swahili.
• Experience connecting AI tools to CRM and data sources (for example through MCP), and sales automation tools.

What's on Offer

• A competitive basic salary plus an attractive commission scheme.
• The chance to open up a large, fast-growing market with a product suite few competitors can match.
• Visible impact on how schools across the continent run.

Our client will not consider candidates who have already applied to them directly.

If you do not hear back from us within one month, please consider your application unsuccessful. Due to the high volume of applications we receive, we are unable to respond to each applicant individually.