Chief Marketing Officer — Tower And Infrastructure Portfolio

The mandate

This tower and infrastructure portfolio has grown across markets, acquisitions and long-term tenant agreements. Its commercial offer is still represented through different site databases, amendment processes, availability tools and local service catalogues. Mobile-network customers receive inconsistent answers on what can be ordered, how quickly capacity can be delivered and which ancillary services are included. The planned retirement of several legacy commercial platforms creates an opportunity to correct that experience, but also risks disrupting active rollout programmes and obscuring valuable contractual differences.

The board is creating a Chief Marketing Officer role to own the proposition and customer transition. In this business, marketing is not mass communication. The CMO will lead portfolio strategy, customer and competitor intelligence, segment propositions, commercial catalogue, sales enablement, brand and the customer logic that governs migration to the new platform. They will work with sales, operations, technology and legal teams so that the digital representation of each service corresponds to something the portfolio can contract, build, operate and bill.

The appointment is urgent because the technology timetable is advancing faster than customer and product decisions. The CMO must prevent obsolete complexity from being copied into the new environment, while preserving terms or capabilities that matter to tenant economics. Success means customers can discover, evaluate and order infrastructure with greater confidence, not simply that old software is switched off.

Scope and operating context

The role is based in Johannesburg under a hybrid model and influences approximately 1,250 employees and material partners across South Africa and a wider international region. The operating perimeter includes proposition and product management, market intelligence, brand, digital channels, bid content, sales enablement and customer insight. Critical interfaces include key-account sales, site acquisition, engineering, energy, operations, finance, technology, contracts and country management.

The customer base is concentrated but not homogeneous. Established mobile operators buy colocation, amendments and power under detailed master agreements. Newer network entrants, private-network providers, public bodies and connectivity partners may need more guided solutioning. Each country has different power, access, permitting and currency conditions, so a single global price list would be misleading.

Legacy commercial data contains both error and value. Duplicate site descriptions, inconsistent product names and outdated availability should be removed. Contract-specific rights, technical constraints and local service knowledge must be retained. The CMO must establish product truth without assuming that standardisation means identical delivery everywhere.

First-year agenda

The first twelve weeks will map the current customer journey from coverage inquiry through feasibility, quotation, order, amendment, access and in-life change. The CMO will review lost bids, delayed orders, disputes and customer interviews alongside platform and contract data. The work should identify where customers cannot understand the offer, where commercial promises exceed site capability and where internal terminology creates avoidable rework.

A portfolio taxonomy will follow. Colocation, amendment, power, fibre adjacency, managed access and other approved services will each have a customer need, eligibility, technical envelope, price logic, service commitment, data requirement and owner. Country variation will be explicit and governed. Products without a viable operational or contractual basis will not migrate merely because historic revenue exists.

The CMO will segment customers by buying context rather than size alone. High-volume rollout programmes may need application interfaces, bulk feasibility and programme governance. Occasional buyers may value assisted design and clear standard options. Strategic tenants with bespoke agreements require controlled entitlement logic. The future portal and sales process will reflect these differences while preserving a common underlying catalogue.

Migration cohorts will be designed with account leaders. Customers will receive accurate explanation of what changes in inquiry, ordering, documentation, access and support. Active orders and amendments will have a clear system of record and cutover rule. No tenant should be forced to reconstruct an agreed requirement because internal systems changed. Where the new catalogue alters an entitlement or price, contract and relationship owners must resolve it before cutover.

Market intelligence will become operational. The team will combine customer rollout signals, spectrum obligations, competitor supply, tenancy opportunity, site readiness and lost-order causes to identify priority clusters. Insight will inform site investment and sales coverage, not just an annual market deck. Confidence and source quality will be visible so uncertain demand is not treated as contracted growth.

Sales enablement will be rebuilt around deliverable propositions. Account teams will receive tools to explain technical options, economics, timelines and evidence requirements. Incentives and pipeline stages will distinguish interest, qualified site demand, contracted order and delivered recurring revenue. Brand messages will emphasise dependable delivery and transparent partnership, supported by operational proof rather than broad claims of footprint or innovation.

The CMO will also define post-launch product governance. Customer feedback, order fallout, site rejection, delivery performance and billing disputes will flow to named owners. Catalogue changes will be versioned and communicated. Technology teams will maintain platforms, but marketing will remain accountable for the commercial meaning they carry.

Within a year, the portfolio should have a coherent service catalogue, completed migration of priority customers, improved order quality and a sharper view of addressable tenancy demand. The retirement programme should remove outdated platforms without transferring their confusion to spreadsheets and email.

Leadership responsibilities

The CMO will represent customer and market evidence in executive capital and operating decisions. They will own proposition choices and the commercial requirements for platform retirement, while respecting sales ownership of accounts and operational authority over site delivery. When those perspectives conflict, the executive must frame the decision in customer, contractual and economic terms.

They will build a small, high-calibre function that can work with technical detail and concentrated B2B relationships. Product managers must spend time with operations and customers; insight leaders must understand the limits of demand data; brand colleagues must ground claims in evidence. The CMO will develop successors and avoid dependence on external agencies for core proposition judgement.

Strategic tenant relationships will require personal involvement, particularly where migration reveals contractual ambiguity or a service gap. The CMO must listen without turning every request into a product and say no without treating market power as a substitute for partnership.

Measures of success

The board will track qualified tenancy pipeline, inquiry-to-order conversion, feasibility time, order fallout, amendments captured, delivery interval and recurring revenue by proposition. Platform-retirement measures include customer cohort readiness, active-order integrity, catalogue exceptions, disputes and use of off-system workarounds.

Customer confidence will be assessed through strategic-account feedback, repeated data requests, escalation and renewal behaviour. Product health includes margin, service performance, adoption and retirement of unused complexity. Marketing effectiveness will be judged by commercial outcomes and sales capability, not impressions or campaign volume.

Candidate profile

Candidates should bring 22–28 years in B2B telecommunications, towers, digital infrastructure or an adjacent technical service, with senior responsibility for proposition and commercial strategy. They must have simplified a complex catalogue or migrated concentrated customers through a commercial-platform change. Conventional consumer brand leadership alone will not qualify.

The board will seek evidence of translating site or network capability into a clear offer, using market intelligence to change infrastructure priorities and declining customer-specific complexity that lacked repeatable value. Candidates should understand tower agreements, amendments, power and access services, enterprise buying, product economics and digital ordering.

The right CMO will be commercially imaginative and operationally exact. They must earn respect from engineers and key-account leaders, interrogate ambiguous data and protect customer trust when the underlying platform is changing. Strong judgement in a multi-country, contract-led environment is essential.

Compensation and appointment terms

The indicative base range is ZAR 6,800,000–9,200,000, with annual incentive and long-term participation. Reward will balance qualified growth, order quality, tenant trust, platform-transition outcomes and portfolio profitability. Final terms will recognise relevant infrastructure scale, cross-border experience and forfeited awards verified during appointment.

Confidentiality

The portfolio is unnamed because tenant agreements, site capability, rollout demand and platform weaknesses are sensitive. Detailed customer and catalogue information will be released only after identity, conflict and confidentiality review. Applicants must not share tenant plans, site records, contract schedules or proprietary market intelligence from another employer.