Renewable Gas Sales Manager

Gas Networks Ireland operates and maintains Ireland’s €2.7bn, 14,664km national gas network, which is considered one of the safest and most modern renewables-ready gas networks in the world.

Over 720,000 Irish homes and businesses trust Ireland’s gas network to provide efficient and reliable energy to meet their heating, cooking, manufacturing and transport needs.

The gas network is the cornerstone of Ireland’s energy system, securely supplying more than 30% of Ireland’s total energy, including 40% of all heating and almost 50% of the country’s electricity generation.

By working to replace natural gas with renewable gases, such as biomethane and green hydrogen, and complementing intermittent renewable electricity, Gas Networks Ireland is supporting Ireland’s journey to a cleaner energy future.

The Role: 

The Customer Acquisitions (CA) team, positioned within the Customer & Business Development (CBD) pillar of Gas Networks Ireland, is responsible for increasing customer connections and delivering sales growth within GNI.  The Large Industrial & Renewable Gas Sales Team is responsible for growing incremental connections to the gas network for both significant gas consumption consumers and renewable gas supplies to the gas network. 

The Renewable Gas Sales Manager will report directly to the Large Industrial and Renewable Gas Sales Manager with responsibility for delivering sales plans to drive incremental connections with renewable gas producers for infrastructure to inject renewable gas into the gas network, delivering towards GNI’s decarbonisation and growth targets.  The role requires negotiating large value connection contracts with corporate counterparties, managing a team of sales people to offer best-in-class customer service and seeking to implement continuous improvement initiatives across the sales process to ensure GNI provides excellent levels of service and customer experience.  Key to this role will be developing and motivating a high-performance sales team to proactively engage with market stakeholders to uncover additional opportunities, while collaborating with colleagues and departments internally within GNI to provide positive effective proposals and solutions to our customers. 

Duties and Responsibilities: 

• Responsibility to design and implement the Renewable Gas Sales Plan to deliver incremental renewable gas connections (both direct and indirect/central grid) in line with GNI’s company strategy agreed targets. 
• Manage, motivate and coach a team of sales representatives to implement the agreed sales plan(s) using best-in-class customer service to deliver incremental renewable gas producer infrastructure connections which meet or surpass the company goals. 
• Work closely with key internal stakeholders across the business including; Design, Estimation, Construction, Customer Experience, Asset Delivery, Asset Management as well as colleagues in Marketing to progress connections and provide excellent customer service. 
• Negotiate significant value contracts with corporate counterparties while adhering to the internal governance procedures within GNI; deliver new contract drafting with were required for new initiatives (e.g. renewable gas or central grid injection sites)
• Seek and identify opportunities to improve the sales processes and systems and implement continuous improvement initiatives in collaboration with internal departments to execute changes to improve the customer experience and remove waste. Report on the teams’ activities on a monthly and quarterly basis and provide updates and feedback to the business on market trends being observed. Sponsor CI initiatives of team members to effectively drive change and best in class customer service.
• Provide technical expertise and demonstrate strong sales skills to in-field team members, developing a coaching and mentoring approach to both new and existing team members. 
• Support and promote strong contractor relationship management interfaces between GNI and our key contracting partners, striving to adopt a “One-Team Culture”. 
• Represent GNI at various industry or social events and conferences and advocate for GNI’s decarbonisation strategy and related initiatives.   
• Perform other such duties that may be required from time to time. 

Knowledge, Skills and Experience: 

• Experience designing / implementing a sales plan and managing a team of professionals
• 5-years experience in a technical sales function with experience in the renewable energy or utility connections industry an advantage.
• Keen knowledge of the renewable gas industry and technologies preferably with a network of established contacts in the industry.
• Commercially aware – able to identify opportunities and objectively judge them while influencing to a positive outcome.
• Good understanding of business plans, commercial paybacks, contractual negotiations and ability in business writing skills.
• Achieve target levels of new connections.
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills with the ability to influence key decision makers.
• Highly developed presentation skills.
• Experience in dealing with senior stakeholders/customers.
• Proven ability to create and develop good working relationships and to influence effectively.
• Proactively identify new areas of learning and use newly-gained knowledge and skills on the job.
• Ability to set own high standards of performance and to deliver desired results.

Applications, including current Curriculum Vitae, should be emailed to the following address stating the job title and reference number in the subject line of your email: recruit@gasnetworks.ie

The closing date for receipt of applications for this vacancy is the

11^th of July.

Please note that applications submitted after this closing date will not be accepted.

Gas Networks Ireland is an equal opportunities employer

We are committed to providing a diverse and inclusive place of work and have a robust strategy and framework called ibelong to enable this. We are an equal opportunity employer and through our recruitment process we welcome and encourage applications from interested and suitably qualified individuals regardless of gender, age, racial or ethnic origin, membership of the traveller community, religion or beliefs, family or civil status, sexual orientation/gender identity or disability.

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