Business Development Manager
Nuru's first dedicated commercial hire. Build a repeatable B2B revenue engine across Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Somalia, closing complex institutional deals with banks, MFIs, and insurers.
About Nuru Solutions
Nuru Solutions is a B2B agricultural data intelligence platform operating across Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, and Somalia. We combine satellite imagery, weather data, ground-truth and machine learning to deliver farm-level intelligence to insurers, lenders, and agribusinesses serving smallholder farmers. Our platform powers six core analytical pillars: crop health monitoring, yield prediction, risk profiling, farm boundary detection, credit risk assessment, and market price forecasting. We achieve 80–98% accuracy through a hybrid approach that fuses multi-source satellite data, ML models, and validated ground-truth data, a combination that outperforms single-source competitors.
The Role
Core Responsibilities
Pipeline Generation & Market Mapping
- Systematically map the addressable market of financial institutions across Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Somalia — identifying who lends to or insures smallholders, at what volume, with what risk problem, and who inside the institution owns that problem.
- Build and maintain qualified pipeline through structured outbound: targeted outreach, referral generation, and consistent follow-through against a defined activity model.
- Prioritise ruthlessly — identifying which segments, institution types and geographies produce the shortest path to revenue, and concentrating effort accordingly.
Sales Execution & Deal Ownership
- Own the full sales cycle from origination through discovery, demonstration, technical validation, pilot design, commercial negotiation and close.
- Deliver credible product demonstrations to sophisticated institutional buyers — credit, risk, underwriting and actuarial leads — translating model performance into commercial consequence: loss ratio, default rate, portfolio expansion, cost to serve.
- Navigate complex, multi-stakeholder decision-making processes. Our sales cycles routinely involve credit, risk, operations, technology, procurement, and often a board or regulator. Building a coalition inside each account is the job, not an obstacle to it.
- Structure and negotiate pilots and commercial agreements that convert into recurring revenue rather than stranding as unpaid proofs of concept.
Commercial Infrastructure & Reporting
- Own and operate Nuru’s CRM as a working system: accurate pipeline hygiene, stage discipline, and reliable forecasting.
- Apply a consistent qualification framework across all opportunities so that pipeline reported to the CEO and board reflects reality.
- Produce clear commercial reporting — pipeline coverage, conversion rates, cycle length, win/loss analysis — and use it to improve the process.
- Build the assets the function will run on: outreach sequences, discovery frameworks, objection handling, pricing guidance, case materials.
Market Intelligence & Stakeholder Communication
- Act as the company’s ear in the market, feeding competitive intelligence, pricing signals and unmet needs back into product and pricing decisions.
- Represent Nuru’s methodology and results accurately to institutional partners. Accuracy and performance claims must align with Nuru’s model validation standards — independently validated results only.
- Represent Nuru at industry events, partner forums and investor-facing engagements alongside the CEO.
What We're Looking For
Must-haves
- 5+ years of B2B business development or enterprise sales experience, with a demonstrated track record of carrying and hitting a number.
- Experience selling to financial services clients — banks, MFIs, insurers, or fintechs. (The single most important qualifier).
- Proven experience demonstrating a product to clients and leading technical or solution-led sales conversations with credibility.
- Demonstrated experience in market mapping and territory construction — building a target universe from first principles rather than working an inherited list.
- Track record managing complex sales cycles and complex decision-making processes: long timelines, multiple stakeholders, procurement, phased commitments.
- Fluent, disciplined use of a CRM as an operating tool, not an administrative afterthought.
- Entrepreneurial, mature and proactive: operate without supervision and establish commercial priorities in a fast-moving, lean environment.
- Strong upward management reporting directly to the CEO: proactive expectation management and unvarnished visibility into pipeline reality.
- Excellent written and verbal communication, with the ability to hold a technical conversation and a commercial one in the same meeting.
Strongly Preferred
- Working knowledge of the MEDDIC qualification framework (or equivalent — MEDDPICC, Command of the Message) and a habit of applying it rigorously.
- Exposure to agriculture, agri-data, geospatial or climate risk (advantageous).
- Experience in early-stage or scale-up environments where you built the systems rather than inherited them.
- Familiarity with credit risk, insurance or financial product design in agricultural or development contexts.
- Existing network across East, Southern or West African financial services.
- Willingness to travel across our four markets (Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Somalia).
Why This Role Is Unique
You are the first: First commercial hire with the opportunity to build the function and define how Nuru sells.
Direct access to the founder: Work side by side with the CEO daily with no bureaucratic layers or decision delays.
A clear growth pathway: Foundation of Nuru’s commercial function with leadership progression as the team grows.
Regional scope over time: Commercial ownership across four African markets (Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Somalia).
A genuinely engaged advisory board: Direct exposure to and mentorship from senior operators and sector investors.
External validation: Recognised among top 30 African startups with 25,000 farmers served through our platform.
How to Apply
Send your CV and a brief note on why this role interests you to hr@nuru.solutions. Please include a short description of a complex deal you have closed: who was involved, what nearly killed it, and what you did about it. You can also submit directly online below.