#S-DNI
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Job Title: Business Development Specialist
Department: Business Development
Direct Report: Business Development Manager
Date: March 2025
Applications can be sent to jobs@maptek.co.za. The closing date for applications is March 28, 2025.
General Description
Business Development is responsible for identifying opportunities for Maptek products working closely with Management, Global Product Managers, Global Customer Success Managers and other Maptek resources to develop and execute strategic sales and marketing plans to grow Maptek’s business.
The jobholder is expected to present solution capabilities to senior level, decision makers, enlisting Maptek resources to provide technical expertise, whilst continuing to manage the sales consulting process to a successful conclusion.
Building and maintaining a sales pipeline of key customer accounts and achieving agreed sales targets at required profit margins is a key function of this role.
The primary responsibility of the jobholder is to engage with prospective customers and convert them into actual clients. The main focus is not on expanding sales activities. Additionally, the jobholder is expected to promote the Maptek Store in South Africa.
Duties and Responsibilities
The jobholder will be expected to perform the following and meet specific criteria in each of these Key Result Areas within the scope of their position:
Technical Expertise
1. Demonstrate Product Knowledge
Actively develop and maintain a working knowledge of Maptek’s range of products, their interactions, and applications:
- Become familiar with the features and benefits of Maptek products and maintain knowledge as current.
- Become familiar with the application of Maptek products to meet specific customer needs.
- Be able to nominate the full range of Maptek products, understand their interaction, and be able to discuss features and benefits from a solution perspective.
- Maintain an in-depth knowledge of mining technical and commercial drivers and current trends and/or opportunities in the industry.
- Participate in Maptek’s user conferences.
- Study technical papers, reports, articles, case studies relevant to area of expertise.
- Attend industry conferences, exhibitions, trade shows, seminars, and other regional events and overseas, within approved Maptek guidelines, to keep technical knowledge current; and
- Take opportunities to represent Maptek as a technical subject matter expert/guest speaker.
- Translate business requirement specification to technical and functional information visualisation requirement specifications.
- Design, implement, maintain, and support standardised data cubes, data mart and information visualisation.
- Installation, repairs, maintenance, and final testing of MRT product hardware.
- Perform client installations, configuration, upgrades, and training.
- Provide 24/7 roster-based client support for MRT systems using Microsoft SQL, product configuration,
- and setup utilities.
- Responsible for delivering and conducting site sprints, as well as on-site support when required.
- Ensure that current and future clients and IT architecture are aligned with project requirements.
- Create and provide onsite training for current clients and demonstration for potential clients.
- Ensure collaboration with clients and fellow employees regarding client requirements to recommend optimal solutions.
2. Strategic Sales and Marketing Planning
Contribute towards the development and implementation of the strategic sales and marketing plan and budget in the region to achieve substantial revenue growth from product and solution sales in the marketplace:
- Analyse business opportunities to grow the customer base for Maptek.
- Identify a range of strategies to actively develop new markets.
- Develop customised strategies to engage with new customer accounts/prospects.
- Analyse competitor activities in the marketplace and identify threats to potential customer accounts.
- Develop competitor mitigation strategies to ensure Maptek maintains its market leading credentials.
3. Develop New Business and Customer Relationships
Actively pursue business development opportunities, seeking out and qualifying new customers at senior and decision-maker level to meet Maptek’s strategic business development goals:
- Work with prospective customers to fully understand their needs and requirements to formulate strategies for the provision of Maptek’s integrated solutions.
- Build sustainable and mutually beneficial customer relationships at senior decision-maker level within prospective customer accounts.
- Promptly follow up all sales leads and report progress to management.
- Enlist Maptek technical resources to assist with the technical sales pitch and to demonstrate products.
- Provide sales proposals highlighting the features and value of Maptek solutions.
- Conduct sales demonstrations within the market as required.
- Support existing customers by providing sales, product advice, and business improvement advice as and when required.
- Work with the Maptek Customer Success team to create and implement marketing activities, promoting solutions and products at targeted events; and
- Conduct business development and promotional activities as required to satisfy Maptek’s strategic goals, financial performance, and corporate requirements.
- Document business outcomes to ensure this information is available to the Customer Success Lead, to guarantee adoption once the sale is closed.
4. Salesforce CRM System and Reporting
Create and maintain a customer database in the Salesforce CRM system including:
- Create detailed and accurate records of all prospective customers.
- Create detailed and accurate records of all prospective customer contacts; and
- Search for and remove duplicated and/or inaccurate customer and or contact records.
Own a pipeline of sales opportunities and update it on a weekly basis, in compliance with Maptek’s CRM Usage Policy, including:
- Opportunities identified.
- Solutions pitched.
- Demonstrations provided.
- Sales proposals submitted; and
- Progress achieved.
Create and submit accurate, monthly sales activity reports to management on a timely basis (or as requested) including:
- Brief description of sales call activities.
- Outcome/next steps/results.
- Monthly sales revenue achieved; and
- Future sales revenue forecast (based on opportunities in the sales pipeline);
- Promptly and accurately complete, maintain and process all pertinent job/sales related paperwork/documentation; and
Comply with Maptek’s Policies on Travel and Work-Related Expenses and Company Issued Credit Cards:
- Submit detailed expense claims on a timely basis and provide required receipts; and
- Provide details of items charged to a company issued credit card.
5. Team Focus
- Actively participate in company team events, sessions, and training.
- Actively promote open communication with other Maptek employees.
- Respect the boundaries when colleagues are account managing existing customers and try to understand the customer’s perspective to manage the transition from previous relationships effectively.
6. Customer Service (Internal and External)
- Provide customer service to agreed standards by following standard operating procedures.
- Work collaboratively with customers to identify needs and design and develop solutions.
- Document and communicate customer needs and requirements to other employees and management.
- Provide agreed services to customers at scheduled intervals.
- Escalate unanswered/unresolved customer questions, issues and/or complaints promptly to management.
- Actively participate in Maptek product user groups and online forums.
- Review other customer feedback mechanisms to inform understanding of changing customer requirements; and
- Suggest customer service improvements to management.
7. Work Health and Safety
- Comply with Maptek work health and safety policies and procedures.
- Comply with customer work health and safety requirements when on customer sites.
- Take reasonable care for your own health, safety and wellbeing.
- Take reasonable care to ensure that your acts or omissions do not adversely affect the health and safety and wellbeing of others.
- Follow all reasonable instructions of Emergency Wardens, First Aid Officers, Contact Persons, and Rehabilitation and Return to Work Coordinators.
- Follow safe work practices and wear all personal protective equipment provided as appropriate for individual task completion.
- Attend and actively participate in work health and safety induction training, emergency response training, risk specific training programs and refresher training as required; and
- Immediately report any workplace hazards, incidents, accidents or near misses to management and document them using a Hazard/Incident Report Form.
8. Other
- Perform other reasonable tasks as directed by your supervisor from time to time; and
- All responsibilities are subject to reasonable adjustment to meet organisational needs.
- Travel extensively both domestically and internationally.
Minimum Requirements – Education and Experience
- Mining Engineering, or Geology Degree, or related Postgraduate qualifications.
- A current and valid South African Driver’s License.
- At least 5 years’ combined experience in the mining or energy industry.
- Proven experience in a similar role within the mining or energy industry is an advantage.
- Proven experience in a mining technology solutions role, preferably within the mining or energy industry would be beneficial.
- Basic knowledge of the work health and safety requirements in all regions of operation.
- Valid passport and able and willing to travel extensively.
Minimum Requirements – Professional/Technical Skills/Abilities/Aptitudes
- Ability to identify key pain points of the individual buyers within the prospect.
- Ability to build the outcome and value story for the customer based on standard offers.
- Ability to quantify the potential value of a proposed solution.
- Ability to overcome objections.
- Ability to build strong relationships with key decision makers.
- Ability to maintain a healthy pipeline, good forecasting practices and data quality to maintain internal systems (SFDC);
- Excellent customer relationship building skills including the ability to:
- Leverage existing mining contact networks.
- Develop multiple contacts across and at all levels of customer organisations; and
- Gain the confidence of customer geologists, engineers, and managers.
- Excellent command of standard sales techniques such as cold calling, needs identification, objections handling, and closing sales.
- Confident, enthusiastic, and energetic self-starter.
- Proven ability to demonstrate initiative, to drive sales and achieve positive results. Excellent solution sales skills, including active listening and expert questioning, to uncover detailed customer requirements.
- Professional personal presentation and business attire.
- Excellent communication skills in both written and spoken English.
- Additional languages preferred.
- Excellent business writing skills for developing sales proposals and presentations. Ability to respond professionally to complex enquiries and resolve complaints from customers, regulatory agencies or members of the business community.
- Ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts, and draw valid conclusions. Ability to promote Maptek solutions on professional Social Media platforms like LinkedIn. Excellent ability to influence stakeholder decisions, at senior level, by referencing valid information
- (systems integration, product benefits, efficiencies, cost savings, risk mitigation etc.) Highly organised, efficient and able to prioritise activities by appropriately assessing urgency versus risk.
- Ability to work effectively unsupervised and equally able to work effectively as part of the sales team.
- www.maptek.com
- Demonstrable expertise using Salesforce.com (or a similar, modern CRM system) to manage customer records.
- High level of competence across the Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc.) for developing sales documentation; and
- Excellent sales presentation skills and techniques, and competent in using presentation tools such as PowerPoint.
Applications can be sent to jobs@maptek.co.za. The closing date for applications is March 28, 2025.
** Note that in accordance with our Employment Equity practices, preference will be given to suitably qualified and experienced South Africans who are considered previously disadvantaged in terms of the Employment Equity Act.
