Associate - Commercial Sales (B2B & B2G)

About Pula

We are an insuretech firm that provides agriculture insurance design and execution services, specialising in index based insurance and are backed by top tier VC investors who have invested more than $25 million in the business. Since 2015 we have provided climate insurance to 15.4 million smallholder farmers, 41% of which were women across 19 markets in Africa and Asia who pay an average of $6.8 per season to insure their crops. So far we've unlocked over $2.22 billion of capital from local and international insurance markets for climate risks since we started in 2015 and paid out $40.8 million to our client farmers.

Pula is a fast-paced space, constantly adapting to new opportunities and challenges and we are made up of a high-performance, multi-cultural team. We expect our team to value performance, results and professionalism.

At Pula, our values are: 

• Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!
• Connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.
• Have a Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.
• We have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better. 

According to the UN’s InterGovernmental Panel for Climate Change more than 3.3 billion people globally live in hotspots with high vulnerability to climate change and are now already feeling the impact of climate change through increased temperatures and increasingly erratic rainfall. 
Insurance is a tool for vulnerable households in these affected regions to adapt to the effects that climate change is already having today on these households. It is a tool that enables for compensation payment for losses and damages that these households had no part in causing. Insurance compensation enables these households to make adjustments to their day to day livelihoods and practices and therefore allows for an equitable and just transition.

At Pula, we are building the systems that enable farmers worldwide to access insurance, using technology to insure this previously uninsured worldwide. We work in over 17 countries across Africa and Asia, and by 2021, have facilitated crop insurance cover to over 6 million farmers, 30% of which are women, across Kenya, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Zambia, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique and Malawi. We are a for profit, and have raised over $10 million from leading venture and institutional investors as well as developed philanthropic relationships with private foundations and bilateral donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and German Insure Resilience Solutions Fund that have accelerated investments in our target markets.

Pula is proudly fast paced, constantly learning from the challenges we face and overcome. We are proudly culturally diverse but united in our ambition of continuous high-performance. By challenging ourselves we believe that we can overcome the hard problems we love solving. 

At Pula, our culture is defined by our: 

1.Obsessed with results: We are responsible for our future and therefore we get things done!

2. Ability to connect the Dots: We continuously identify different customer needs & business problems and build solutions that deliver value.

3. Our Can do Attitude! We dare to do things differently to make things work.

4. Ability to have each others’ back: We look out for each other & we share high quality, timely feedback that makes us better.

What you will be doing:

The Pula Commercial Manager is far from the typical sales role. You must be passionate to find meaning in your work. Willing to go the extra mile to evangelize the importance of crop insurance in transforming the lives of millions of small farmers across multiple stakeholders, from political elites to government systems, development agencies to the farmer. For you to be successful in the role, you need to consider it as your mission - “how you will be remembered”. While you are at it, you will be richly rewarded as we believe in “doing good and doing good”. While impacting hundreds of millions of farmers, our mantra is that those who are successful in the mission should be dollar millionaires in the end. In Pula, good deeds are rewarded.

Every day your role will involve;

Client management

• Participate in all recurring meetings internally and with the customer support team to enhance cordial relationships and customer satisfaction. Therefore, a high and smooth renewal rate.
• Specifically ensuring that Crop Development Reports, mid-season and end-of-season reports are generated in a timely manner and in the formats required by the client and presented to them. This increases customer satisfaction and ensures a smooth payment process.
• Maintain an adequate customer data sheet that includes critical customer details - such as when the quote is prepared and approved, to increase timeliness in presenting to them, especially in Collecting all customer complaints during the season and ensuring that they are all captured while the payment report is made.
• Train regional and district staff of the client and stakeholders.
• Manage client accounts while CM/CD is on leave.
• Manage and improve sales tools and processes, for example CRM.
• Assist with administrative tasks, such as requests, preparation of workshops.

Administrative support

• Assist the line manager in writing meeting notes in the appropriate tool, recording the meeting and filing the notes/recordings in the client folder.
• Internal coordination with relevant teams to ensure that customers and commercial managers have accurate and reliable information.
• Coordinate with the team carrying out producer registration (whether client or PULA) to ensure we receive producer lists on time and correctly.
• Cooperate with internal department to update tools like click-up.

Market research and pipeline development

• Provide research support on new markets and new customers, carrying out research and analysis to identify business and customer opportunities.

Sales

• Pursue leads, reach out via calls and mail, and schedule appointments

What you need to have to be successful:

• You live it. You are the best at this. You love it!
• You have a strong interest in a career in sales.
• You are open working in a sales target environment.
• You have a passion for working in the public sector and NGO environment.
• Critical thinking skills. You must have the ability to define problems, collect data, establish facts and draw valid conclusions.
• You have at least 3 years of experience working in an environment that requires people skills, relationship development and management.
• Behavioral Skills. You must be self-directed, work well alone or in a team structure, highly results-oriented, and willing to learn and expand your product and technical knowledge base. through formal education, professional training and self-study.
• Transferable skills from a customer relations role.
• You have excellent communication and presentation skills, integrity and impeccable professionalism.
• Experience and knowledge in the insurance industry will give you an advantage.
• You have the ability to use data and KPIs to make management decisions.
• You are fully comfortable with Google Drive apps like Google Sheets, Google Docs as well as MS Office apps like PowerPoint, excel, etc.

What Pula will bring to the table

• Growth potential: At Pula, we are building the systems that enable farmers worldwide to access insurance, using technology to insure this previously uninsured worldwide. We work in over 19 countries across Africa and Asia, and by 2023, have facilitated crop insurance cover to over 5 million farmers, 40% of which are women. We are a for profit, and have raised over $25 million from leading venture and institutional investors as well as developed philanthropic relationships with private foundations and bilateral donors such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and German Insure Resilience Solutions Fund that have accelerated investments in our target markets.
• Market Leader: Not only is the opportunity massive, but Pula is by far the market leader in it’s category with 11m farmers insured as of 2023.
• Solid: Pula has been funded by leading venture capital investors (Omidyar Network, ACCION, MercyCorps) and global philanthropic institutions (MasterCard Foundation, CGAP/World Bank as well as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation). Pula closed an oversubscribed $20m series B funding despite the economic downturn.
  
• Respected: Winner of the Singapore FinTech Festival 2019, Winner of The InsureTech of the Award, Africa. Featured on TED talks, The New York Times, The Economist.
• Impact and creation: This is a high-impact role, that offers a unique opportunity to bring the company to the next level, whilst developing new strategies, approaches and ideas.
• Leadership: The founders & CEO foster a culture of transparency, respect, high performance, pragmatism, execution and personal development.
• Purpose: It is rare to find a professional opportunity that offers accelerated professional development and a life purpose. Pula is going through a second phase of accelerated growth that will naturally provide professional development, whilst contributing to the financial stability of small farmers in the emerging markets.
• Remuneration: Competitive base salary accordingly with seniority and experience, commission on closed sales and an employee share option plan that offers an attractive equity upside.

To learn more about Pula you can visit

TED Talk: Crop Insurance, an Idea Worth Seeding
New York Times: He Grew up on a Farm. Now, He Helps Protect Them
The Economist: The Poor, Who Most Need Insurance, Are Least Likely to Have It

How to apply

Fill out the form below, and upload a resume in English.

Our process:

Stage 1 The Culture Interview: Your complete applications will be reviewed and those shortlisted will be invited for a culture interview to understand if you have Pula DNA

Stage 2 The Technical Interview: Those that pass the culture interview will be invited to complete an assignment that will give you a good sense of what working at Pula is like. This way you will get to know if you like the job, and we get to know you. Those with completed assignments will be invited for a technical interview with the hiring manager.

Stage 3 The Panel Interview: Those that pass the technical interview will be interviewed by a panel of future colleagues who you will be working with at Pula so you can get to know your new colleagues and they can get to know you.

Stage 4 The Reference Check: as described :-)

Stage 5 Offer: If you have gotten this far, you may pat yourself on the back- as you’ll receive an offer!

Pula’s mission is to provide farmer resilience. To achieve this, we put our small holder farmers that use our services and the employees that provide them at the heart of everything we do. For that purpose, Pula was created to be an equal opportunity employer that celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.