Business Manager

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Trainingcred Institute stands at the forefront of offering research, training, and consultancy services tailored for international development organizations. Our mission is to enhance the impact, effectiveness, and efficiency of social interventions through a suite of innovative solutions aimed at sustainable outcomes. We specialize in creating both online a...

Business Manager

Job Type

Full Time

,

Onsite

Qualification

BA/BSc/HND

,

MBA/MSc/MA

Experience

5 years

Location

Nairobi

Job Field

Sales and Business Development

Job Summary

Trainingcred Institute is seeking an accomplished and commercially driven Business Manager to provide overall leadership for the Institute’s growth, profitability, operations, and organizational performance.

The Business Manager will be responsible for translating Trainingcred Institute’s strategic objectives into sustainable commercial and operational outcomes. This includes optimizing the Institute’s revenue portfolio, growing corporate and institutional business, strengthening strategic partnerships, overseeing day-to-day operations, allocating resources effectively, developing high-performing teams, and ensuring disciplined execution across the organization.

The primary objective of the role is to maximize revenue and EBITDA, improve revenue predictability, strengthen operational efficiency, expand market reach, and develop sustainable strategic alliances, while maintaining high standards of training quality, customer experience, governance, and organizational effectiveness.

Reporting to the CEO, the Business Manager will serve as the Institute’s senior operational and commercial authority, ensuring that strategy, sales, partnerships, operations, people, budgets, and execution remain aligned with Trainingcred Institute’s financial and strategic objectives.

Core Mission & Impact

Enterprise Performance & P&L Ownership

Take full responsibility for the overall financial and operational performance of Trainingcred Institute, ensuring that revenue, profitability, costs, people, and resources are effectively managed against agreed targets.

Develop and execute business plans that improve productivity, profitability, market position, operational efficiency, and long-term institutional value.

Revenue Portfolio Optimization

Serve as the strategic architect of Trainingcred Institute’s revenue portfolio, determining the appropriate investment and growth balance across the Institute’s key business lines.

The role will focus on creating a resilient, diversified, high-margin, and predictable revenue base across areas such as:

Corporate training and executive development

Professional certification programmes

Public/open-enrolment training programmes

Customized organizational learning solutions

Institutional and government training programmes

Consulting and advisory services

Digital and blended learning solutions

Intellectual property, proprietary programmes, and training content

Strategic partnerships and channel-based revenue

The Business Manager will continuously assess the balance between cash flow, revenue growth, profitability, market opportunity, and strategic value when making portfolio and investment decisions.

Unified Commercial Leadership

Provide integrated leadership across sales, business development, strategy, revenue operations, marketing support, partnerships, and other commercial functions.

Eliminate organizational silos by establishing shared objectives, methodologies, performance standards, systems, processes, and accountability across all revenue-generating teams.

Operational Excellence

Ensure that the Institute’s strategy translates into effective day-to-day execution.

Continuously review organizational structures, processes, workflows, resource deployment, employee performance, and management practices to improve productivity, efficiency, service quality, responsiveness, and accountability.

Governance & Predictability

Establish strong commercial and operational governance that gives the CEO and leadership team reliable visibility into revenue, pipeline, profitability, resource requirements, risks, and future business performance.

Serve as the senior commercial gatekeeper for significant proposals, partnerships, contracts, pricing decisions, and major revenue commitments.

Organizational & People Leadership

Build, motivate, coach, and hold accountable a high-performing management team and wider organization.

Create a culture characterized by clear expectations, accountability, collaboration, professional development, innovation, customer focus, and measurable performance.

Strategic Alliances & Market Growth

Identify and develop new markets, institutional partnerships, corporate relationships, channels, products, programmes, and business models capable of accelerating Trainingcred Institute’s growth.

Build and manage relationships with corporate clients, government agencies, professional bodies, universities, training partners, certification organizations, technology partners, and other strategic stakeholders.

Key

Minimum 5 years of progressive management and leadership experience, including at least 3 years in a senior general management, commercial leadership, business development, or equivalent role.

Demonstrated

in a combination of general management, sales, business development, revenue operations, strategy, financial management, operations, and people leadership.

in training, professional education, consulting, professional services, technology, or another knowledge-based B2B environment is highly desirable.

Demonstrated

managing multiple business lines, programmes, services, or revenue streams.

building and managing strategic partner ecosystems.

implementing CRM platforms, commercial processes, and structured sales methodologies.

Demonstrated ability to build, coach, motivate, and lead multidisciplinary teams.

Required Skills & Competencies

The successful candidate will demonstrate:

Strong commercial and financial acumen

P&L management capability

Strategic and analytical thinking

Excellent decision-making and problem-solving skills

Strong business-development and negotiation capability

Revenue forecasting and performance-management expertise

Excellent communication and executive presentation skills

Strong stakeholder-management and interpersonal skills

Proven ability to lead, motivate, develop, and hold teams accountable

Effective delegation and organizational leadership

Strong understanding of operational procedures and business processes

Working knowledge of human-resource and performance-management practices

Ability to interpret financial and commercial data and translate analysis into action

Strong organizational and time-management skills

High levels of integrity, judgment, accountability, and commercial discipline

Ability to operate effectively at both strategic and hands-on execution levels

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Method of Application

Qualified and interested candidates should submit their

CV and cover letter

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to:

recruitment@trainingcred.com

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“Business Manager”

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Responsibilities

• Corporate Strategy & Business Planning
• Lead the development and execution of Trainingcred Institute’s annual and multi-year strategic business plans.
• Translate organizational strategy into measurable financial, commercial, operational, and organizational objectives.
• Establish annual and quarterly revenue, profitability, market-share, productivity, and operational targets.
• Conduct market research, competitor analysis, and opportunity assessments to identify new growth areas.
• Evaluate opportunities within corporate learning, executive education, professional certification, digital learning, and related markets.
• Model strategic scenarios and assess alternative investment, programme, market, and resource-allocation decisions.
• Present strategic options, risks, financial implications, and recommendations to the CEO and leadership team.
• Regularly review organizational performance and adjust strategies according to market conditions and financial results.
• Identify opportunities for expansion into new markets, sectors, geographical territories, programmes, partnerships, and revenue models.
• P&L, Financial Performance & Resource Allocation
• Assume full profit-and-loss responsibility for the Institute.
• Own delivery against agreed revenue, gross margin, EBITDA, cash-flow, and profitability targets.
• Develop, implement, and maintain budgets, forecasts, and resource-allocation plans.
• Work closely with Finance to ensure appropriate financial controls, commercial discipline, expenditure management, and forecasting.
• Continuously analyze the relationship between revenue growth, cash flow, margins, investment, capacity, and strategic value.
• Allocate people, budgets, marketing resources, and management attention toward the highest-value opportunities.
• Identify and implement corrective actions where financial or operational performance falls below expectations.
• Ensure business decisions support both short-term financial performance and long-term sustainable growth.
• Revenue Strategy & Portfolio Management
• Develop and execute the annual and quarterly revenue strategy across Trainingcred Institute’s business lines.
• Establish revenue, pipeline, margin, enrolment, client-acquisition, and growth objectives for each business area.
• Optimize the portfolio between public programmes, corporate training, institutional business, certifications, digital products, consulting, and strategic partnerships.
• Identify underperforming programmes or business lines and implement strategies to improve, reposition, scale, redesign, or rationalize them.
• Protect and expand core training revenue while increasing the contribution of higher-margin, repeatable, proprietary, and recurring revenue streams.
• Use market intelligence, customer feedback, competitive analysis, and performance data to continually refine the Institute’s commercial strategy.
• Ensure business opportunities are evaluated on profitability, capacity, strategic fit, customer value, execution risk, and long-term potential.
• Sales & Business Development Leadership
• Provide direct leadership, coaching, performance management, and target-setting for sales and business-development teams.
• Ensure teams consistently achieve agreed revenue, pipeline, conversion, client-acquisition, and profitability targets.
• Develop a disciplined approach to prospecting, lead qualification, proposal development, negotiation, closing, and account expansion.
• Support teams in securing high-value corporate, government, institutional, and strategic accounts.
• Develop new business relationships that strengthen Trainingcred Institute’s market presence.
• Build and maintain a structured key-account management approach.
• Identify opportunities for cross-selling and upselling Trainingcred Institute’s programmes and services.
• Ensure commercial activity remains aligned with programme-delivery capacity, profitability requirements, quality standards, and corporate priorities.
• Recruit, onboard, develop, and retain high-performing commercial employees.
• Revenue Operations & Commercial Hub Management
• Oversee the Institute’s centralised commercial and revenue-support function.
• Ensure effective lead qualification, pipeline management, opportunity progression, forecasting, reporting, and commercial analytics.
• Establish a reliable single source of truth for sales and revenue data.
• Ensure management has timely and accurate information regarding pipeline health, conversion rates, client activity, enrolments, programme performance, and revenue forecasts.
• Develop dashboards and management reports to support effective decision-making.
• Identify commercial bottlenecks and improve processes throughout the customer lifecycle.
• Establish standards for CRM usage, lead follow-up, account management, proposal tracking, and sales reporting.
• Forecasting, Governance & Commercial Discipline
• Own the Institute’s revenue forecasting framework and ensure forecasts are timely, realistic, evidence-based, and consistently maintained.
• Conduct structured pipeline and commercial-performance reviews.
• Act as the final commercial authority for significant contracts, proposals, pricing decisions, discounts, partnerships, and commercial commitments within delegated authority.
• Ensure major commercial arrangements align with Trainingcred Institute’s profitability, quality, capacity, strategic, and financial objectives.
• Establish appropriate commercial approval thresholds and escalation procedures.
• Collaborate with Finance, Operations, Programme Management, Legal advisers, and other relevant stakeholders to manage commercial risk.
• Ensure commitments made to clients and partners are operationally deliverable and financially sustainable.
• Strategic Alliances & Partnerships
• Develop and execute Trainingcred Institute’s partnership and alliance strategy.
• Identify, evaluate, negotiate, and establish strategic relationships with corporate organizations, government agencies, professional bodies, universities, certification bodies, technology providers, training partners, consultants, subject-matter experts, and channel partners.
• Establish measurable commercial objectives, service levels, responsibilities, and governance structures for strategic partnerships.
• Evaluate partnership performance and ensure alliances generate measurable mutual value.
• Resolve partnership challenges and recommend expansion, restructuring, or termination where necessary.
• Use alliances to accelerate market access, programme development, certification opportunities, brand visibility, and revenue growth.
• Commercial Methodology & Technology
• Act as the final authority on adoption and compliance with Trainingcred Institute’s commercial methodologies and revenue-management processes.
• Develop and maintain a unified commercial playbook covering lead management, qualification, opportunity management, forecasting, account management, negotiation, and contracting.
• Introduce and refine appropriate structured sales methodologies.
• Continuously improve commercial processes based on performance data, client feedback, and market insights.
• Own the selection, implementation, governance, and optimization of the Institute’s commercial technology stack.
• Ensure CRM and related systems are effectively adopted and provide reliable information for management decision-making.
• Operations & Organizational Effectiveness
• Oversee day-to-day operations and ensure effective implementation of the Institute’s strategic and operational priorities.
• Coordinate departments and provide leadership to managers and team leaders.
• Establish weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual performance objectives and ensure accountability for delivery.
• Review organizational effectiveness and recommend improvements to processes, structures, systems, and working practices.
• Ensure standards for training quality, customer service, professionalism, compliance, and operational excellence are consistently maintained.
• Resolve operational bottlenecks and cross-functional challenges efficiently.
• Establish appropriate performance metrics for key organizational functions.
• Lead continuous-improvement initiatives aimed at increasing productivity, efficiency, service quality, and customer satisfaction.
• People, Leadership & Culture
• Build, lead, coach, and develop a high-performing management team.
• Delegate
• effectively while maintaining clear accountability for outcomes.
• Establish individual, departmental, and organizational performance expectations.
• Conduct and oversee performance evaluations and development planning.
• Recruit, onboard, train, develop, and retain high-performing employees.
• Work with HR to maintain effective workforce planning, employee development, performance management, and engagement practices.
• Identify opportunities to improve employee engagement, collaboration, productivity, and organizational culture.
• Resolve internal staff conflicts professionally, fairly, and efficiently.
• Create a high-performance culture characterized by ownership, accountability, collaboration, innovation, customer focus, and data-driven decision-making.
• Key Performance Indicators
• Performance will be measured against a balanced executive scorecard including:
• Total revenue growth and achievement against target
• Gross margin and EBITDA performance
• Cash-flow performance
• Revenue and profitability by business line
• Corporate and institutional client acquisition
• Repeat business and client retention
• Growth in proprietary, digital, recurring, and higher-margin revenue streams
• Revenue forecast accuracy
• Pipeline coverage, quality, velocity, and conversion
• Programme enrolment and commercial performance
• Strategic partnership revenue and partner performance
• Sales productivity
• Budget performance and resource utilization
• Operational productivity and organizational efficiency
• Customer satisfaction and service quality
• Employee performance, engagement, and retention
• Delivery of strategic initiatives
• Expansion into new markets and revenue streams
• Qualifications &

Education

• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Finance, Economics, Commerce, Strategy, Management, Marketing, or a related discipline.
• Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA), Management, Strategy, Finance, or a closely related field is mandatory.