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Avanade is embarking on a multi-year sales transformation as part of a wider CEO-led company-wide business transformation to dramatically grow Avanade across multiple corporate metrics such as sales, revenue, profit and market share.
The European Area is a multi-billion $ business spanning 6 Regions with over 200 sales professionals and is undergoing significant change and evolution. The European Area Sales Operations Lead role provides a unique opportunity to influence and drive the performance of that sales portfolio in partnership with sales and business leadership. The remit will include managing a team of 20 sales operations professionals onshore and offshore and taking the lead on elevating and expanding the service provided to the organisation by Sales Operations. The role will report into the Global Leader of Sales Operations with critical day to day partnership with the Area Sales Lead (effectively the Area CSO) and regular interaction with Area Leadership team particularly Area President, Area COO and Area CFO.
Responsibilities & Essential functions
- Own the pipeline, sales forecasting and opportunity close processes for a multi-billion $ portfolio across the entire Area. Deliver improvements to the mid and long-term visibility of sales performance outlook.
- Own and lead all business reporting for sales – both structured, formalized and regular reporting and ad hoc executive requests and support for executive forums such as Board, Executive Committee and Area LT forums
- Deliver regular and innovative insights with predictions and trending patterns to the Area Sales & Executive Leadership on sales performance & particularly on the sales outlook, sales productivity, cost of sale, client portfolio performance, sales headcount, and sales planning.
- The Area Sales Operations Lead has a critical role to play in providing ‘early warnings’ of patterns and trends of business for the Area CSO, Global Sales Operations Lead and Global CSO with suggested course corrections where required
- As a trusted advisor and partner to the Area CSO, act on behalf of the Area CSO when required, on key matters relating to sales forecasting, planning, targeting and quotas; own and drive the ‘rhythm of business’ cadence for sales
- Support the Global Sales Operations Leader who owns the annual sales budgeting, account planning and territories and quota planning process.
- Support the Area CSO and Area sales leadership on territory assignment, sales force deployments and quotas process – in line with key market opportunities and growth potential.
- Sales compensation – partner with Sales and the Total Rewards team to ensure plans are well designed, well understood and act as ‘point of contact’ for the sales field. With the Global Sales Operations Lead, manage the Area participation and reporting and preparation into the process for managing sales incentive/compensation changes, adjustments, exceptions.
- Support quarterly seller performance management processes with Area Sales and HR leadership
- Manage the Deal Desk functions for the Area, which looks after all internal review and compliance processes
- Under guidance of Global Sales Operations Lead, contribute to evolution of Sales policies – support the roll out, retirement, changes to sales policies and ensure compliance to sales and related policies.
- Manage the Regional Sales Operations function and team across the Area - including functions delivered from our shared service centres offshore.
- Identify and implement operational improvements across both the Deal Desk, Sales Operations functions and sales.
- Closely collaborate with Sales Enablement, Alliances and Sales Transformation teams to share best practices, support improvement programs and change management for the sales and selling community
- Lead the adoption and use of modern digital technology and tools to support and automate Sales operations and seller functions where appropriate to improve seller productivity
- As part of the global Sales Operations leadership, partner with other Sales Operations leaders across the business to re-imagine the sales ops function to ensure it is focused on high-value activities and is a desirable career path for individuals.
- Be an ambassador to elevate the discipline of Sales Operations in the organization by establishing close relationships with other functional leaders. Cultivate strong and mutually respected relationships across the organization and partner with the Area Sales Leadership Team to solve complex problems and identify productivity improvement opportunities.
- Act as change agent for global sales and sales ops initiatives.
- Drive a culture of continuous innovation and globally consistent standards.
Competencies
Sales Acumen ~ Experience with Clients and Sellers, driving the streamlining and optimizing of the sales process.
Analytical Mindset
- The ability to logically analyze data and present relevant business insights and recommendations in a condensed and impactful way. i.e. Provide a regular analysis of Sales to Revenue conversion which is integrated into the sales forecast and pipeline management and shared with Sales Leadership, Area COO & CFO
- Sophisticated understanding of sales performance metrics and KPIs.
- Expert and/or ‘quick study’ at executing data analysis with Excel, PowerBI and market leading AI/ML tools
Positive ‘can do’ bias for action
- An optimistic and motivational mindset to support the sales community in achieving their goals with a ‘can do’ style
- Focus on standard and novel analysis and reporting that propels action and supports goal attainment and the company strategy
Supporting Strategy
- The inclination to seek and analyze data from a variety of sources to support decisions and to align others with the organization's overall strategy.
- An entrepreneurial and creative approach to developing new, innovative ideas that will stretch the organization and push the boundaries within the industry.
Executing for Results
- Supporting the selling workforce in their attainment of challenging top line growth goals with proactivity and thoughtful support to suit the performance needs.
- Comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty
- A leader who is viewed by others as having a high degree of integrity and forethought in his/her approach to making decisions; the ability to act in a transparent and consistent manner while always taking into account what is best for the organization.
Leading Teams
- The ability to attract and recruit top talent, motivate the team, delegate effectively, celebrate diversity within the team, and manage performance; a developer of others.
- A leader who is self-reflective and aware of his/her own limitations; leads by example and drives the organization's performance with an attitude of continuous improvement by being open to feedback and self-improvement.
Relationships and Influence
- Naturally connects and builds strong relationships with the selling community and with Executive stakeholders, demonstrating emotional intelligence and an ability to communicate clearly and persuasively.
- An ability to inspire trust and followership in others through compelling influence, passion in his/her beliefs, and active drive.
- Encourages others to share the spotlight and visibly celebrates and supports the success of the team.
- Creates a sense of purpose/meaning for the team that generates followership beyond his/her own personality and engages others to the greater purpose for the organization as a whole.
Qualifications & requirements
- 5+ years relevant business experience
- Minimum 2+ years leading sales operations in a high-growth environment (or equivalent functions, such as revenue operations, commercial operations, marketing operations).
- Mix of sales, management consulting and operational leadership experience strongly preferred.
- Experience in technology sector and or consulting services sector highly preferred.
- Bachelor’s Degree required. Master’s preferred. Degrees or other qualifications / certifications with a concentration in statistics, data science, finance, business management or economics preferred.
- Ability to deconstruct complex problems, identify the most impactful levers, and prioritize efforts in addressing them.
- Highly analytical and strategic
- Comfortable with ambiguity
You’ve got this!