---
title: 'Senior Commercial Manager - Sales at M-KOPA'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-commercial-manager-sales-m-kopa-kenya-7xpw4hhahtq9'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-02'
---

# Senior Commercial Manager - Sales at M-KOPA

- **Company:** [M-KOPA](https://feeny.ai/companies/m-kopa)
- **Location:** Kenya
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Posted:** 2026-10-31
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-02
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/m-kopa/8526eab4-42f8-4755-95ce-424a151295cd

## Job description

We are looking for a Senior Commercial Manager – Sales to lead M-KOPA Kenya’s regional field sales performance, delivering sustainable commercial growth across four regions while building a world-class sales leadership team.

This role offers the opportunity to own Kenya’s entire regional sales engine—translating strategy into field execution, developing Regional Managers, driving DSR productivity, and ensuring every region delivers with discipline and consistency. You’ll lead four Regional Managers and their teams, own recruitment pipelines, manage budgets, and work closely with Product, Marketing, Operations, Finance, and HR to turn commercial priorities into results that matter. Operating with significant autonomy and clear accountability, this is a role for someone who thrives close to the market, the team, and the numbers not behind a desk.

## About Us

We foster a culture where commercial leadership meets field accountability. Our team values data-driven decision-making, strong people development, and sales execution that doesn’t compromise customer outcomes. You’ll be empowered to make timely performance decisions, design territory strategies, and drive improvements that directly impact revenue, DSR productivity, and customer satisfaction across M-KOPA Kenya’s most critical growth function. At M-KOPA, our Senior Commercial Manager isn’t just a sales director—they’re the commercial architect who builds regional leaders, protects sales quality, and creates the field execution engine that connects millions of Kenyan customers to life-changing products.

## Why This Role is Different

Most senior sales roles offer either strategy or execution. This one demands both—and rewards excellence in both. You’ll represent field priorities in senior leadership forums while also visiting clusters, reviewing scorecards, and coaching Regional Managers on the ground. You’ll own budgets while building people. You’ll protect repayment performance while driving conversion. The role requires the commercial instincts of a strategist, the people leadership of a coach, and the operational discipline of someone who understands that results in the field are earned one DSR, one cluster, one region at a time.

In this role, you would be responsible for

Commercial Strategic Direction and Oversight

- Translating commercial strategy into regional priorities and action plans that support sustainable growth and sales quality
- Using data and field insight to identify market opportunities and execution risks, and recommending timely adjustments to regional plans
- Overseeing the rollout of new products, pricing, and promotions across all regions
- Representing field priorities and insights in senior leadership forums

Regional Sales Leadership

- Leading and developing Regional Managers and their management teams, strengthening succession pipelines
- Making timely, fair decisions on performance, promotions, moves, and exits
- Agreeing measurable targets and using scorecards, coaching, field visits, and structured business reviews to reinforce accountability and consistent execution
- Building a strong sales leadership culture where Regional Managers own their results and develop their own teams

Sales Recruitment, Retention and F30 Pass Rates

- Owning regional hiring plans with the HR Business Partner, maintaining a strong pipeline of DSRs and Cluster Leaders to meet territory needs
- Holding Regional Managers accountable for recruitment quality and F30 pass rates
- Partnering with Sales Training to support onboarding and new-hire productivity
- Reducing DSR attrition through targeted action on regional root causes, strengthening retention and continuity of field coverage

Sales Efficiency, DSR Productivity and Targets

- Owning regional sales delivery, translating targets into clear expectations for clusters and individual DSRs
- Improving sales per DSR, active selling days, and conversion rates through regular performance reviews and timely recovery plans
- Optimising routes to market, territory coverage, and headcount deployment
- Partnering with Business Operations and Credit to protect sales quality and repayment performance

Budget and Commercial Financial Management

- Owning regional budgets for headcount, incentives, field operations, and activations within approved limits
- Ensuring incentives reinforce the right behaviours and commission payments are accurate and timely
- Monitoring cost per sale and return on sales expenditure, taking corrective action where needed
- Developing cost and resource plans with the Head of Sales

Cross-Functional Partnership

- Aligning regional plans with Product, Marketing, Customer Care, Retail, Business Operations, Finance, and HR
- Working with the Head of Business Management to resolve dependencies
- Sharing customer, competitor, and product feedback to improve commercial decisions and execution

Reporting, Forecasting and Insight

- Providing concise weekly and monthly reports on results, DSR productivity, recruitment, attrition, and budgets—highlighting risks, priorities, and required action
- Producing reliable forecasts and practical dashboards
- Presenting regional performance to senior leadership and the MD, explaining variances and proposed responses clearly

Governance, Compliance and Customer Outcomes

- Enforcing policies, sales processes, and the code of conduct across all regions
- Addressing fraud, mis-selling, and misconduct promptly and decisively
- Maintaining data privacy, safety, and field risk standards
- Supporting audits, investigations, and completing corrective actions on time

Additional Responsibilities

- Undertaking other responsibilities assigned by the Head of Sales

This is a senior leadership role (Job Band C1) based in Nairobi, Kenya, with regular field travel across regions. If successful, you would be reporting to the Head of Sales. Your direct reports include Regional Managers across four regions, with dotted-line collaboration with the Senior People Partner and HR Talent Acquisition.

Your application should demonstrate: Education & Experience

- Bachelor’s degree in Business, Commerce, Marketing, Economics, or a related field (MBA or relevant postgraduate qualification is an advantage)
- 8+ years of progressive sales leadership experience in FMCG, telecommunications, financial services, consumer finance, fintech, distribution, or a comparable high-volume field sales environment
- 5+ years leading managers and multi-region or multi-area field sales teams with a clear track record of achieving targets
- Experience running DSR, agent, or distributor networks including route-to-market planning and territory design
- Proven success in sales recruitment and retention including hiring pipelines, new-hire pass rates, and reducing field attrition
- Experience with asset finance, pay-as-you-go, or mobile-money-linked products is an advantage

## Skills & Competencies

- Strong performance management, coaching, and people-decision skills—you make fair, timely calls on talent
- Sound budget management and financial acumen—you treat commercial resources with discipline
- Confidence with sales dashboards, forecasting, and productivity metrics—you turn data into practical action
- Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills including influencing cross-functional peers and presenting to senior leadership
- Resilience and high integrity—you uphold standards under pressure and in the field
- Customer-first approach embedded in every sales decision you make
- Willingness to travel regularly to the field—you lead from where the work happens

If the above is of interest to you, please apply.

Why M-KOPA? At M-KOPA, we empower our people to own their careers through diverse development programs, coaching partnerships, and on-the-job training. We support individual journeys with family-friendly policies, prioritize well-being, and embrace flexibility.

Join us in shaping the future of M-KOPA as we grow together. Explore more at [m-kopa.com](http://m-kopa.com).

Recognized four times by the Financial Times as one Africa's fastest growing companies (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026), named on CNBC's World’s Top Fintech Companies 2025 & 2026 and by TIME100 Most influential companies in the world 2023 and 2024 , we've served over 10 million customers, unlocking $2 billion in cumulative credit for the everyday earners across Africa, in addition to over 10,000 e-bikes financed in Kenya.

Important Notice

M-KOPA is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to assembling a diverse, broadly trained staff. Women, minorities, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

M-KOPA explicitly prohibits the use of Forced or Child Labour and respects the rights of its employees to agree to terms and conditions of employment voluntarily, without coercion, and freely terminate their employment on appropriate notice. M-KOPA shall ensure that its Employees are of legal working age and shall comply with local laws for youth employment or student work, such as internships or apprenticeships.

M-KOPA does not collect/charge any money as a pre-employment or post-employment requirement. This means that we never ask for ‘recruitment fees’, ‘processing fees’, ‘interview fees’, or any other kind of money in exchange for offer letters or interviews at any time during the hiring process.

Applications for this position will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Shortlisting and interviews will take place at any stage during the recruitment process. We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a suitable candidate is selected before the advertised closing date.

If your application is successful M-KOPA undertakes pre-employment background checks as part of its recruitment process, these include; criminal records, identification verification, academic qualifications, employment dates and employer references.

## About M-KOPA

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: M-KOPA is a leading African fintech platform that provides affordable financial and digital products to cash-based earners, enabling them to finance everyday essentials through daily micropayments.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Growth Stage)
- **Headquarters**: Nairobi, Kenya (Global HQ with additional offices in London, UK)
- **Founded**: 2010
- **Founders**: Jesse Moore (CEO & Co-Founder) and Nick Hughes

## Core Business
- **Primary Industry**: Fintech / Financial Services
- **Target Customers**: B2C focused on "Every Day Earners" — underserved, cash-based entrepreneurs and individuals across Sub-Saharan Africa who lack formal collateral, credit history, or a monthly salary.
- **Mission/Purpose**: "To make financing for everyday essentials accessible to everyone." Their core mission is to "finance progress" for millions of unbanked and underbanked people.

## Products & Services
- **Smartphone Financing**: The core entry product. Customers pay a small deposit (e.g., ~$35) followed by daily micro-instalments (~$0.50/day) via mobile money (like M-Pesa) to own a smartphone. This is the primary gateway to the digital economy.
- **Digital Loans**: After building a repayment credit history, customers can access small, flexible digital loans on an instalment basis.
- **Hospital Coverage (Insurance)**: Affordable health insurance packages offered via the same daily micropayment model.
- **Device Protection**: Insurance for the financed smartphone.
- **Affordable Data Bundles**: Digital subscriptions and data packages available on a similar instalment basis.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly disclosed. However, M-KOPA has raised substantial growth capital from top-tier global investors.
- **Key Metric**: Over **$1.5 billion in cumulative credit deployed** to more than **5 million customers** across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa. [m-kopa.com](https://www.m-kopa.com/about)
- **Notable Investors**: Includes **Generation Investment Management** (co-founded by Al Gore), **Sumitomo Corporation**, and other leading impact and growth investors. Board members often come from these firms. [m-kopa.com](https://www.m-kopa.com/about)
- **Growth Signals**: M-KOPA now employs over **3,000 staff members** and has a direct sales force of over **30,000 agents**. The company operates one of the largest smartphone assembly factories in the region, producing over 1 million phones locally. [wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Kopa)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Proprietary Tech & Data Stack**: Processes over **1 million payments daily**, using AI-driven analytics to create credit records for individuals with no formal financial history. This is a deep, defensible data moat.
- **Asset-Light Distribution**: A massive, managed direct sales force of 30,000 agents provides a powerful on-the-ground distribution network that is hard to replicate.
- **Customer-Centric Lending**: Offers "Inclusive, Fair, and Flexible" terms. No collateral or proof of income required. Customers can return a product, get their deposit back, and be released from obligations if they cannot pay. This builds immense trust. [m-kopa.com](https://www.m-kopa.com/about)
- **Vertical Integration**: From smartphone assembly to fintech lending to digital services, M-KOPA controls the entire value chain, creating a sticky ecosystem.

## Strategic Focus
- **Deepening Financial Services**: Expanding beyond smartphone financing into digital loans, insurance, and health coverage to become a comprehensive financial partner.
- **Geographic Expansion**: Already in 5 African countries (Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa) with potential for further market entry.
- **Leveraging AI for Credit Scoring**: Constantly improving their proprietary data models to offer more products and better manage risk for a traditionally "unscoreable" population.
- **M-KOPA Labs**: A research arm that deploys grants to test new technologies and extensions of their platform. [wikipedia.org](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Kopa)

## Why Work Here
- **Purpose-Driven Mission**: The work directly impacts financial inclusion and poverty alleviation for millions across Africa. A deeply motivating "why."
- **Rapid Growth & Scale**: Operating in a high-growth environment with a team of 3,000+, providing significant opportunities for career advancement and tackling complex, real-world problems.
- **Global, Pan-African Team**: A diverse team with a "proudly Pan-African footprint" and offices in London, offering a unique cultural experience.
- **Flexible Work**: Offers hybrid and remote working options that suit the demands of the role. [m-kopa.com](https://www.m-kopa.com/careers)
- **Strong Benefits Package**: Includes comprehensive health plans, learning & development resources, and recognition & rewards. They emphasize a culture of "Progress, Excellence, and Humility." [m-kopa.com](https://www.m-kopa.com/careers)
- **Engineering Culture**: Known for building a world-class tech stack from scratch for a unique market.

## Sources
1. [m-kopa.com/about](https://www.m-kopa.com/about)
2. [m-kopa.com/careers](https://www.m-kopa.com/careers)
3. [wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Kopa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Kopa)
4. [uk.linkedin.com/company/m-kopa](https://uk.linkedin.com/company/m-kopa)
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/m-kopa](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/m-kopa)

## Other roles at M-KOPA

- [Sales Executive - Amasaman](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-executive-amasaman-m-kopa-ghana-94p3j7qkr205) — Ghana
- [Sales Trainer](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-trainer-m-kopa-takoradi-ab9d871p4sdb) — Takoradi, Ghana
- [Sales Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-executive-m-kopa-kenya-0pgsbs9j4wdc) — Kenya
- [Sales Executive, Indirect Channel - Eastern](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-executive-indirect-channel-eastern-m-kopa-hohoe-na5pbx645bk4) — Hohoe, Ghana
- [Sales Executive, Indirect Channel - Central](https://feeny.ai/job/sales-executive-indirect-channel-central-m-kopa-cape-coast-2csm2cenzgmg) — Cape Coast, Ghana
- [Internal Audit Senior](https://feeny.ai/job/internal-audit-senior-m-kopa-kenya-a3y9shj154kn) — Kenya
- [Senior CRM Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-crm-manager-m-kopa-nairobi-eyfz0vc4z9z9) — Nairobi, Kenya
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