Senior Sales Director Automotive  Industry

Company Overview

Are you passionate about making organisations smarter and analytics driven? The world’s largest and most analytically sophisticated enterprises use Teradata’s industry-leading Analytic technology solutions and its consulting services to enable them to capture, store, manage, integrate and analyse detailed data to understand and improve business performance. Providing real answers to the enterprise business problems – and be able deploy at scale and across a complex data eco-system. We call this Pervasive Data Intelligence - on-premises, in the Cloud, or anywhere in between (Hybrid).

Position Overview

Senior Sales Director is responsible for managing the sales organisation which is responsible for driving sales of Teradata solutions and services. To be successful, the Senior Sales Director will work closely with the Geo VP and engage the wider organisation including Sales Technology, Business Outcomes, Partner & Alliances, Consulting Delivery, HR, Customer Services & Success, Finance, and Sales Operations. The Area VP will report to the Geo VP for Central Europe.

Job Specification

The Senior Sales Director is a critical leadership role within the EMEA GTM organisation and will be responsible for managing, scaling and operationalising the sales function within a given territory. The Senior Sales Director is responsible for providing leadership and fostering a winning sales culture in the sales organisation. Furthermore, Senior Sales Director leads their team to develop and execute annual and long-term strategies with Teradata customers. The primary goal is to drive annual recurring revenue and ensure the profitability of the commercial business. Consequently, the key focus areas for the Senior Sales Director will be:

• Sales Leadership by providing clear direction (in terms of team Goals & Objectives), championing change, influencing others, and creating an environment that fosters professional and personal success. Focus is on driving Teradata software consumption through business outcome-led sales, developing relationships with partners to expand our coverage and/or solution portfolio and building profitable Consulting Services revenue and Managed Services recurring revenue.
• Sales Process Management through individual performance management (1-2-1 accountability reviews), coaching, Account and GOST (Goals, Objectives, Strategies and Tactics) planning and sales execution. This involves providing strong leadership in sales engagements, ensuring sales executives are accountable for establishing winning sales strategies, shared expectations with key decision makers and executing sales engagements.
• Change Management by influencing and driving change across multiple stake-holders and departments. The Senior Sales Director will regularly partner with relevant stakeholders across the organisation to develop and refine consistent and repeatable processes and offers that enable their Sales team to scale, compete and delight customers. Securing cross-functional support to enable change will be the key to success of the Sales function.
• Managing Sales and Business Results by effectively managing order and revenue generation and business profitability while meeting strategic business objectives. This includes demand creation, funnel management, forecasting, resource planning, asset management, pricing decisions and expense control.

Key Areas of Responsibility 

The Senior Sales Director leads a sales team for customers, which includes, but is not limited, to the following key areas of responsibility:

• Operational leadership of the commercial organisation which includes assigning accounts and quotas to account executives, managing the sales funnel and the line of sight, budget and expense control and accurately forecast business results/outlook
• Hold Monthly 1-2-1 accountability reviews with Account Executives, focusing on Results, Pipeline Coverage and Activity
• Review Account Plans for high priority Accounts, with each Account Team
• Review GOST Plans for high priority Opportunities, with each Account Team
• Set, direct, and execute winning sales strategies and drive execution of Demand Creation that lead to protecting and expanding Teradata revenue
• Develop strategies and offerings that are relevant to Teradata customers and allows the organisation to evolve ahead of changes in business conditions
• Facilitate a work environment that enables the recruitment, development and retention of top talent to drive revenue growth and increased profitability.

A sense of urgency, team collaboration, attention to detail and commitment to excellence is required. The Senior Sales Direcotr should also foster an environment of creative, “out of the box” thinking and a “can do” attitude.

Ideal Candidate Profile

A successful candidate should be a results-oriented strategic thinker with a proven track record of long-range planning. A self-starter, who is creative and driven and has strong communication and presentation skills. The candidate must possess the ability to lead, advise and advocate for customers, their internal team and previous experience selling data and analytic solutions is desirable. The candidate will need to be successful in collaborating across a matrixed environment.  The ideal candidate should be innovative and skilled at seizing opportunities and transforming strategy into results. The candidate should also have a strong executive presence and ability to positively present themselves and the Teradata value proposition to customers, prospects and internal leadership. 

Successful candidates will have the following ideal profile:

• Bachelor degree or Master degree in a business or technical discipline
• 15+ years of B2B sales experience, including account management
• 5+ years of sales management experience (mentoring, coaching, development and performance management of sales teams)
• Experience of selling Teradata Hardware, Software, Application and Consulting Solutions
• Demonstrated success in managing and growing $30m+ in annual revenue across a diverse set of industries and customers
• Demonstrated success in sales management with 75%+ success record for making personal sales management goals and minimum of 50% of associates achieving objective