Sales Manager - Direct

Role Overview

This position is focused on managing sales activities through the direct channel, including builders, connectors, brokers, references, and similar sources. The role supports the branch plan by driving target achievement, guiding the Sales Officer team, maintaining strong client relationships, and ensuring that sales activity remains compliant, efficient, and aligned to portfolio health goals. It also includes cross-selling across ABHFL and other Aditya Birla Capital solutions based on branch priorities and customer needs.

Business Context

Aditya Birla Housing Finance Limited (ABHFL), part of Aditya Birla Capital Limited, is registered with the National Housing Bank under the National Housing Bank Act, 1987. The company provides housing finance solutions such as home loans, home improvement loans, home construction loans, balance transfer and top-up loans, loans against property, and construction finance. After obtaining its license on 9 July 2014, the company has been pursuing aggressive growth.

The sales organization serves three broad customer groups: retail customers, institutional customers, and builders. Retail business contributes the largest share. Customers may also be salaried or self-employed, and these segments have different expectations and buying needs.

ABHFL supports housing finance for homebuyers, loans against property, commercial property purchase, lease rental discounting, and construction finance for builders. Because the business is heavily retail driven, it involves a high volume of loan transactions and ongoing customer interactions. Performance is influenced by people, processes, organizational efficiency, product and solution quality, channel performance, customer relationship management, and risk control. Business success is measured not only by loan book size, but also by profitability and low delinquency. Higher funding costs can reduce profitability and also affect the competitiveness of loan pricing.

Key Challenges

• Set and allocate sales targets for the team while accounting for local market realities such as competition, existing relationships, and fresh opportunity areas.
• Strengthen the commercial and operational understanding of self and team members, including negotiation, relationship management, and loan processing discipline.
• Improve loan conversion, sanction, and utilization performance by maintaining a healthy sourcing funnel.
• Protect portfolio quality by working closely with the Risk team and carrying out strong pre-screening and credit-quality checks.
• Maintain fully compliant sales practices even when facing aggressive targets or changing market conditions.

Key Accountabilities

• Plan sales activity with the ASM-ABHFL, translate targets into branch-level action plans, and communicate expectations clearly to the team.
• Track market movement and competitor offers regularly, and use those insights to guide field execution.
• Monitor target progress closely and step in with personal references, prospecting, and other actions when needed to keep achievement on track.
• Explain business goals, product features, and key selling points to team members so they can perform effectively.
• Use sales schemes that support both growth and profitability, balancing expansion with cost efficiency.
• Prepare and share periodic MIS on disbursements, profitability, NPAs, market expansion, and related indicators.
• Identify local growth opportunities and support customer acquisition, including direct involvement in complex relationship or origination cases.
• Support the team in closing important transactions and resolving customer issues or complaints in a timely manner.
• Improve business process effectiveness across sourcing, approval, servicing, and collections.
• Coordinate with senior stakeholders and cross-functional teams to keep operations running smoothly across distribution channels.
• Push for faster TAT and better process efficiency by working with Risk, Operations, and Sales Governance.
• Promote cross-selling across ABFSG products in line with the strategy agreed with the ASM-ABHFL.
• Coach team members with communication, training, and customer-facing support to strengthen cross-sell execution.
• Develop team capability through guidance, hand-holding, and nomination for technical and behavioral learning programs.
• Work with internal stakeholders to ensure alignment and smooth delivery against targets.
• Collaborate with Risk, Operations, and Sales Governance teams to maintain control mechanisms and strong risk practices.
• Train and guide the team on early warning signals and other actions that help reduce NPA exposure.
• Maintain accurate MIS on NPAs and credit trends and provide inputs that help protect portfolio quality.

Skills and Qualifications

The role calls for strong commercial understanding, people leadership, communication ability, market awareness, and solid execution skills. The ideal background is a graduate with 5 to 7 years of overall sales experience in the banking or NBFC sector, including 2 to 3 recent years in HFC sales.

Additional Information

This position requires the ability to manage sales outcomes while maintaining compliance, customer satisfaction, and portfolio health. The role is centered in Gujarat, India and is designed for an on-site working setup.

Cross-functional coordination with Risk, Operations, and Sales Governance is an important part of the job, along with regular monitoring of business performance indicators such as book growth, profitability, customer service, and NPA control.