Our client, a growing data company in AI is looking for a Director of BD to help spearhead go to market efforts to find and grow our customer base. You already come from a data company
This job is not for your average salesperson, so I'm not writing this job description like an average job description. We are a startup and we need someone who can fully embrace that. I'm not talking about sleeping under your desk (we are remote so that would be pointless anyway). It's really about sacrificing the comfort of a well-worn playbook, the backdrop of a marketing team to set up all your leads and prepare your decks, the fully-baked product sitting on the shelf, and a phone ringing with customers ready to place orders, and instead embracing the entrepreneurialness of making an impact and having everything you do matter. If this tradeoff appeals to you, keep reading.
What we're looking for:
It will be pretty essential that you have some experience selling data, or data-related products. We're also looking for someone with full-funnel sales experience, and it has to include enterprise. This is not currently a high-volume SMB kind of thing, we are currently selling into some of the biggest companies in the world so you'd need that kind of experience to be successful. You'll be responsible for sourcing the leads whether using our board members on LinkedIn to find connections to leads, being savvy about navigating conferences, or coming up with other creative ways to meet with prospects and use your relationship skills to build trust. This is a consultative sale where success will require that prospects see you as someone who can add value, someone who is intellectually curious about their business and their problems, and who really listens to their feedback instead of trying to just sell the crap out of them.
So let's be specific - we're realistically talking about 7-10 years sales experience, enterprise, and data-related. This is currently an IC role, so if you are looking to manage a big team, we're not there yet - hang tight for future roles. But for the right aspiring leader who has sales experience, a sense of founder-like ownership over the company's success and wants to be on the ground floor (or maybe first or second floor) while we grow this business, make a huge impact, and grow in your responsibilities as we grow, then this could be perfect for you.
Our interviews are not supposed to be a pop quiz where we're measuring how well you can BS us. We want the real deal - so we want to tell you what we're going to ask in advance so you can give us thoughtful answers. During the interview process, be prepared to talk about your experiences building a pipeline that demonstrates a hustle-factor or some creativity - what is your secret-sauce to getting people to take meetings with you or more importantly, getting them to take the next meeting? Also, selling is a team sport - this is not a role for lone wolves - so we will be asking about your experiences collaborating with product, engineering, and execs in your sales process. Having a growth mindset is an important attribute for this role - whatever you have done in the past - you will still need to be curious and learn, know what you don't know, and be humble but confident - so we will be digging into examples of that as well in the interview.
In this role you will report to the CRO and collaborate with our Product, Engineering, and Science teams to build a strong pipeline of quality leads within our target market and use your creativity to close enterprise customers.
What you will be doing:
- Building a strong pipeline of quality leads and using your exceptional creativity and relationship building skills to close paying customers
- Structuring and closing deals that create value
- Collaborating with Marketing and Product to develop and execute experiments to test compelling value propositions with target personas
- Identify compelling use cases and target customers across industries, including financial services, insurance, data products and more.
- Partnering across Go-to-Market (GTM) and Product teams to build the GTM playbook
We value:
- Track record for building pipelines and closing customers without an established playbook
- Extensive experience structuring and closing complex deals for deeply technical products, ideally within B2B software
- Experience in or strong understanding of the sales motions around data and analytics products, ideally related to financial services and insurance verticals.
- A proven track record of identifying customer needs and connecting those to technology solutions
- Super problem solving ability and ability to navigate complex business relationships with minimal oversight
- Experience developing and running very large customer deals for an early stage software startup is a plus
- An entrepreneurial spirit: you're a self-starter, can identify opportunities, understand potential impact and effectively prioritize across multiple competing priorities
- Passion for expanding your knowledge on all things related to machine learning, trust & ethics in AI, successful integration and our clients' industries in general