eCommerce Sales Manager

What you’ll be doing in brief:

Managing the sales process from initial contact through to signing the contract. You’ll work with the senior team to coordinate the multitude of new business enquiries, through our mature sales process before handing over to the delivery team and setting them up for success.

You’ll be a pivotal figure in managing a fast moving and demanding part of the business adding your own experience and energy to help us continue to spot the best opportunities and quickly establish the right way to navigate the process.

Here’s how your week may look:

It’s Monday morning and you’re preparing your priorities for the week ahead. At 9.15am you’re in the Heads Together meeting, a weekly stand up for the senior team to catch up on what the priorities for the week are and get aligned around them. You want to make sure everyone is aware of the upcoming deadlines for pitches and tenders for the various enquiries we have at different stages of the sales funnel.

At 10am it’s the All Agency standup where you are thrilled to announce that we found out on the Friday before that we had won a tender for a really exciting business who are a perfect fit for Space 48. It had been quite an epic procurement process but we’d had the best possible result. The entire team are overjoyed and whilst the work is yet to be done you’re absolutely delighted to have been able to bring in such a great project and customer.

Straight after the All Agency stand up the senior team gather for the Sales meeting. It’s 30 minutes to run through the status of all opportunities in flight and what actions need to be taken this week. Whilst you’re responsible for the overall process you work with various members of the team from Director through to Account Manager to deliver on all the pitches and tenders that we have in progress. Despite the win from Friday you already know that this week we need to finalise the documents for a remote pitch we have been invited to later in the week. You’re able to re-use a lot of the same material but you want to add some specific content around the business requirements and you know that previously we’ve achieved something similar so want to source this from the team. You arrange a separate session to talk to the delivery team who were on this project for tomorrow so as to flesh out the information for pitch.

During the updates of all the opportunities you include conversations you’ve had this past week with customers who have contacted us through our enquiry form. Some you'll take forward but you let everyone know that there were a few you just didn't think were a good fit.

At the end of the call you finalise lists of actions that you want from the team and make sure everyone is clear on when these need to be delivered.

Happy that everything is set up for the week ahead you decide to give one last chance to a customer who had enquired weeks ago but hadn’t replied to any of your emails/calls. You felt it was worth pursuing so didn’t let it go and have been trying but this is the last reminder in your calendar to call them. They answer! The customer explains they’ve been very busy at work and appreciate your patience. They’ve been working on some requirements documents in the background which has taken a lot longer than they thought to produce and they tell you they’re hoping to be done in a few more weeks. Knowing they’re busy you offer to help and suggest they send over what they have with a view to working with them to get the info together and you let them know that we can probably help with a lot of this during our discovery process.

It’s Tuesday and you’re in the session you set up to get more information for the pitch later in the week. The delivery team has what you want but not in the format or in a finished state that you can use. It’s a challenge but over the hour you are able to get your head around what we built, why it was relevant and pull together three slides that illustrate why this is a good reason to work with us over anyone else. You agree with the Technical Lead in the meeting that you may need them to attend a part of the pitch so that they can explain in better detail than you could.

Wednesday morning is taken up with more in-bound calls and your meetings with the other team members that are the sponsors for their new business opportunities. Both the MD and Strategy Director are regularly in conversations with people about new opportunities but it’s your job to run point on the process. You’ve a good working relationship with both but time is always a factor so you are using this session to document everything they have found out so far and agree on who is doing what this week to make progress. In one case it’s still early days so you’re helping to pull together the right team to have an initial chat but the second opportunity is much further down the line and you’re wanting to finalise the Statement of Work for the project. This time the MD is handling the negotiation but you are responsible for making sure the documents get signed so want to get the details agreed and emailed over so as to not lose another week.

Thursday is pitch day. You’re nervous and excited about it as this is a fully remote pitch for a big business. The deck is just under 100 slides but you’re confident you can keep the team to time and make sure we hit all the main points. You act as facilitator, setting up the video call, inviting all the right people on both sides, make sure the tech works and after briefly introducing the team you let the other members of the team take point on their specialist areas. You do a bit of nudging throughout making sure we cover what we want to and at the end make sure we’re provided everything the business was expecting and ask for a timeline of next steps. It went well but it’s competitive so you suggest a follow up call between yourself and the main point of contact just to see if there’s anything else we could do to get this over the line.

Friday has rolled around again but this week is the bi-weekly catch up with our Head of Partnerships who has been a great source of leads and has promised that will be the case. Rather than being a typical new customer the opportunity here is to build out some integration technology between two 3rd parties we work regularly with. You gather as much information as possible but this is clearly something you’ll be talking to the Technical Director about as a priority.

You wrap up the week preparing for Monday morning. A lot has progressed this week and you’ve a great feeling about the pitch but that news will have to wait until next week. Oh, and you did all of this from your home with a team that is also working remotely in a business that trusts you to self motivate and proactively engage with the wider business and your customers.

If you read this and it sounds like your ideal job — we want you on the team!

What You’ll Be Doing

The following should give you an idea of how you’ll be expected to typically be spending your time. It’s not set in stone and it may change from week-to-week, but it gives an idea of what is expected from the role.

Communication (60%)

You’re going to be juggling a number of leads all in various phases and talking to these and the internal team members that can help progress thiem will be your number one priority. Keeping everyone up to date and being proactive in your comms to chase down answers and documents is vital to not losing a step in the race. Reporting back to the business progress, results and ensuring that the Sales process is visible and dovetailing with the delivery function is paramount to its success.

You’ll achieve this through emails, calls, video conferences and then track all these updates via the Hubspot deal board.

Document writing and pitches (30%)

You are responsible for helping to create engaging, informative and appropriately framed pitch and tender documents. These will range from Google Slideshow decks to huge RFP responses in spreadsheets with multiple attachments and supplementary supporting documents e.g. Space 48 insurances, security credentials etc

Whilst you won't necessarily produce all the content you are responsible for making sure we hit our deadlines and that the people involved have been appropriately briefed.

Personal Development (10%)

As a team, we are constantly wanting to improve. Your input into our working practices is very much welcomed and encouraged. We have an experimentation culture and believe that the best ideas will come from those who are closest to the work.

Requirements

In a nutshell:

• Ability to establish rapport and credibility with customers from the first conversation
• Be organised and understand the importance of process when so many moving parts are involved.
• A track record of working in a sales position where you’re led on pitches in the technology sector
• A good writer able to bring together disparate information into a succinct structure for both long and short form documents
• Enjoy the challenge and rewards of a fast paced agency environment but always keeping an eye on what matters
• Demonstrable commercial acumen, able to talk figures, comfortable with budgets and able to probe for details beyond what is provided.

Benefits

• We're fully remote and will support you in working from wherever you like
• Flexible working hours to suit your lifestyle
• 22 days holiday + 8 public holidays + an extra day's holiday for each year worked
• Your birthday off
• Vitality private health cover (Currently UK & Ukraine only. After 1 year.)
• Pension scheme (UK only)
• Perkbox (Currently UK only. Access to a wide range of discounts and special offers)
• Long service bonus (5 years and 10 years)
• £1000 referral bonus - recommend a friend for a job!
• Eyecare vouchers (Currently UK only)
• Company wellness initiatives
• Access to Employee Assistance Programme
• Training and development plans for everyone
• Collaborative, supportive culture led by strong values
• Regular social events and networking opportunities
• Relaxed and friendly team