The Client Relationship Manager – Financial Sector owns the growth, profitability, retention, and overall commercial performance of an assigned portfolio of financial-services clients across Lagos and other designated markets. The role develops and executes sector and account strategies, wins new business, deepens existing relationships, and delivers approved revenue, gross-margin, collection, pipeline, and customer-retention targets. Acting as the primary commercial interface between clients and the company, the role identifies business needs, shapes technology-enabled solutions with internal specialists, and leads opportunities from prospecting and qualification through proposal, negotiation, contracting, implementation handover, and post-sale review. The role maintains executive-level relationships, protects commercial and contractual interests, ensures accurate forecasting and CRM discipline, provides actionable market intelligence, and coordinates cross-functional teams to deliver a consistently high-quality client experience. The role is also accountable for timely escalation of risks, adherence to delegated authority and approval processes, and compliance with applicable laws, client obligations, information-security requirements, and the Company’s Code of Conduct.
Business Development and Revenue Growth
- Translate annual company objectives into a documented financial-sector territory and account plan, with target segments, priority accounts, value propositions, revenue goals, margin expectations, pipeline requirements, activities, and review milestones.
- Build and maintain a qualified pipeline through disciplined prospecting, referrals, executive networking, industry events, strategic alliances, partner channels, and account-based campaigns.
- Own the complete opportunity lifecycle, including lead qualification, discovery, stakeholder mapping, solution positioning, proposal development, pricing, negotiation, contracting, closure, implementation handover, and post-sale review.
- Deliver agreed revenue, gross-margin, new-logo, cross-sell, upsell, renewal, retention, and collection targets while maintaining the approved pipeline coverage and opportunity mix.
- Develop opportunity strategies and close plans for material deals, clearly identifying decision criteria, buying process, competition, dependencies, risks, resources, and next actions.
- Prepare accurate quotations, business cases, and commercial models with Finance, Technical, Procurement, Legal, and Delivery teams, protecting profitability and controlling commercial exposure.
- Lead periodic performance reviews against targets and implement corrective actions where activity levels, conversion rates, sales velocity, margin, or collections fall below plan.
Client and Account Management
- Create and maintain strategic account plans for priority clients, including organisational profiles, stakeholder maps, whitespace opportunities, contract positions, relationship risks, competitive threats, and growth actions.
- Build trusted, multi-level relationships with executives, decision-makers, influencers, procurement teams, technology leaders, risk and compliance stakeholders, and operational users.
- Establish account governance rhythms, including contact plans, opportunity reviews, service reviews, executive business reviews, renewal planning, and documented action tracking.
- Monitor client satisfaction, adoption, service performance, commitments, and emerging needs; coordinate timely resolution of issues and lead commercial aspects of service recovery.
- Maintain complete records of commitments, proposals, contracts, renewals, service issues, decision history, and follow-up actions in approved systems.
- Identify and execute retention, renewal, cross-sell, and upsell opportunities based on demonstrable client value and evolving business priorities.
- Serve as the client’s commercial advocate internally while setting realistic expectations, preventing unmanaged scope, and protecting the company’s contractual and financial position.
Solution Development and Commercial Management
- Translate client business and technical requirements into clear opportunity briefs, qualification records, solution narratives, and measurable business outcomes.
- Coordinate bids, proposals, presentations, demonstrations, workshops, due diligence, and proof-of-concept activities, ensuring clear ownership, timelines, quality standards, and approvals.
- Partner with Technical, Product, Security, Legal, Finance, Procurement, Project Management, and Service Delivery teams to validate scope, feasibility, architecture, costs, timelines, dependencies, service levels, acceptance criteria, and delivery capacity before commitment.
- Lead commercial negotiations within delegated authority, maintain an auditable record of concessions and approvals, and secure all required legal, finance, security, delivery, and management sign-offs.
- Identify and mitigate commercial, contractual, delivery, credit, regulatory, and reputational risks throughout the opportunity lifecycle.
- Ensure complete and timely handover of won opportunities, including signed documentation, agreed scope, assumptions, obligations, milestones, dependencies, risks, billing triggers, and success measures.
- Track contract performance, invoicing, collections, variations, renewals, profitability, and client value realisation; escalate material risks and delays promptly.
Pipeline Governance, Forecasting, and Reporting
- Maintain complete, current, and auditable account, contact, activity, opportunity, proposal, contract, and forecast data in the approved CRM system.
- Apply approved opportunity stages, qualification criteria, probability rules, pricing controls, delegated authority, approval workflows, and documentation standards consistently.
- Submit accurate weekly and monthly reports covering activities, pipeline, weighted forecast, bookings, revenue, gross margin, expenses, collections, conversion, win/loss, renewals, risks, and corrective actions.
- Maintain a credible rolling forecast, distinguish committed, probable, and upside opportunities, and explain material variances against plan.
- Analyse pipeline quality, coverage, ageing, sales-cycle velocity, conversion rates, competitive position, loss reasons, margin, and forecast accuracy; implement agreed improvement actions.
- Provide early visibility of significant opportunities, delivery dependencies, resource needs, approval requirements, client concerns, credit exposure, and commercial risks.
- Maintain evidence supporting management reviews and internal audits, and close agreed data-quality or process-control gaps promptly.
- Market Intelligence and Brand Development
- Monitor financial-sector strategy, investment priorities, regulation, competitor activity, pricing, emerging technologies, procurement patterns, and client demand.
- Convert market and client intelligence into actionable recommendations for offerings, partnerships, campaigns, pricing, capacity planning, and go-to-market priorities.
- Develop clear sector value propositions and reusable sales assets with Product, Technical, Marketing, and Delivery teams.
- Represent the company professionally at client meetings, conferences, industry forums, partner engagements, and networking events, safeguarding brand reputation.
- Collaborate with Marketing on targeted campaigns, thought leadership, case studies, events, references, and lead-generation programmes, and track resulting opportunities.
- Build productive relationships with technology partners, industry bodies, and relevant ecosystem stakeholders to improve market access and solution capability.
Leadership, Collaboration, and Compliance
- Coordinate Client Relationship Support and other assigned resources, set clear priorities and service standards, coach team members, and reinforce sales-process discipline.