Careers

Working Sales Manager

Leadership Strategies – The Facilitation Company is seeking a Working Sales Manager with proven skills to join our growing Sales team.

We are the nation’s leader in providing professional facilitators and facilitation skills training to corporate, government and non-profit organizations.  Our facilitators lead executive retreats, strategy sessions, focus groups, conferences and other group sessions.  Through our flagship training course, The Effective Facilitator, we have trained more people in facilitation skills than any other organization in the US. We also provide training classes in consulting skills, presentation skills, leadership and other areas.

A. General Description

The successful candidate will initially function as a Senior Client Executive selling our private training classes and meeting facilitation services with the longer-term objective of taking on the additional responsibility of managing the existing sales team after a period of successful execution as a Senior Client Executive. This position will report to the President and will work closely with the entire Sales Team to drive revenue growth.

The successful candidate will have a proven history of displaying certain clearly defined core competencies.

  1. Drive for Achievement and Growth. You will have an exceptional level of motivation, energy and drive. We are a small but growing organization and we’re focused on extremely high levels of achievement. We have a high-performance sales culture and we need every member of our team focused on their own personal and professional success as well as the success of the team. We are the right place for team members who enjoy working hard, accomplishing big things, collaborating and gaining insights from others, and developing their skills.
  2. Coachable learner. No one is perfect. We find that people are better when they recognize the areas in which they need to improve. If you can’t identify one or two areas you are working on improving right now, or if you are afraid to admit mistakes you’ve made in the past and what you learned from them, or if you can’t name any changes you have made based on feedback you have received, we are not the right environment for you.
  3. Collaboration. As the leading facilitation ` company in the nation, we are highly collaborative in our decision-making, believe strongly that great ideas can come from anywhere in the company, and therefore place a premium on giving opportunities for input. If you enjoy making decisions on your own and find it bothersome to hear the input of others, you will not find a comfortable home here.

B. Responsibilities

We are looking for a talented, motivated individual to work with an assigned list of existing clients to sell additional services and grow our presence and market share in those accounts. You will proactively reach out to existing contacts in each account as well as respond to any inbound leads for your assigned accounts.

A key component to success will be the ability to conduct business dealings in a way that creates a superior prospect experience as well as positioning the Leadership Strategies solutions in a way that drives value for the client. Being able to navigate to and effective work with key Decision Makers is also critical to success in this role. This position requires a high level of creativity, attention to detail, and communication skills.

Upon successful completion of a period where the successful candidate has exhibited a mastery of product knowledge, the ability to successfully close business, and a track record of building additional relationships within assigned accounts, the candidate will be considered for promotion to Sales Manager while keeping responsibility for continuing to work to deliver revenue from an assigned list of accounts for a period of time.

Selling Responsibilities include:

  • Establishing, maintaining and executing a territory plan for assigned accounts to maximize the revenue generated from the territory.
  • Meeting and exceeding sales and business development goals as established by management.
  • Generating individual sales campaigns including emails and phone follow up to create new opportunities within assigned accounts.
  • Working with the Marketing team to generate automated email campaigns for assigned accounts where appropriate.
  • Following up on all leads provided in a timely fashion (typically 4-48 hours).
  • Following up with private class/consulting clients and public class attendees from the prior month within one week of the engagement to review facilitator performance and seek other opportunities and referrals.
  • Contacting each key account at least monthly and all assigned accounts at least quarterly.
  • Meeting administrative responsibilities, including timely updating of engagement summaries, sales opportunities, and all sales activities in the CRM system.
  • Successfully managing and overcoming prospect objections.
  • Developing proficiency and product knowledge in order to easily discuss, answer questions about, and effectively sell all Leadership Strategies course offerings and meeting facilitation services.
  • Attending trade shows, increase skills through training, moderate webinars, attend association meetings of facilitators and other outside activities as your manager deems beneficial.
  • Reporting to the President on (weekly/monthly/quarterly) your sales and revenue results.

 Sales Director Responsibilities include:

The expectation is that in the second half of 2022, depending on your performance in the sales role and your demonstration of strategic thinking, management expertise, and alignment with company values, you will be promoted to Sales Director.

In this role your responsibilities would include:

  • Successfully executing our sales plan, including achieving revenue and profitability targets
  • Managing the sales team and their day-to-day sales activities to include coaching on opportunity and account strategies
  • Drive the sales force in successfully implementing proactive strategies for achieving significant growth from existing accounts
  • Hold weekly pipeline review meetings with each sales team member
  • Establish and monitor sales target for all members of the sales force
  • Recruit, equip, motivate, coach, evaluate, reward and retain a quality sales force focused on achieving sales targets using a consultative selling approach
  • Champion the use of our client relationship management system and the continued refinement of the sales process
  • Promote account management strategies
  • Refine and improve the compensation system for the sales department to maximize performance while increasing profitability
  • Oversee an annual survey of our customers to identify client satisfaction levels and new needs we may be able to fulfill
  • Ensure outstanding levels of customer service
  • Reporting to the Leadership Team on (weekly/monthly/quarterly) results

C. Requirements

  • Education: B.A. or B.S. in Marketing, Business Administration or Equivalent Experience.
  • Experience: Mandatory: 4-8 B2B sales experience.
  • Experience: Mandatory: 2-4 years selling in a role requiring a consultative sales approach
  • Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook experience.
  • Desirable:
    • Experience leading a small sales team
    • At least one year selling in a service industry
    • At least one year selling training or consulting services
    • At least one year experience utilizing customer centric selling, solution selling, or some other structured consultative sales methodology
    • At least one year in a small business with less than $10 million in revenue
    • Experience with Microsoft Dynamics CRM a plus

D. Skills and Characteristics

  • Excellent oral, written, and communication skills
  • Strong attention to detail. Ability to achieve thoroughness and accuracy when accomplishing a task
  • Ability to diagnose a customer’s need and compare to our product set to develop a specific solution for that customer
  • Engage clients and prospects in meaningful discussion to create a vision that will enable clients to envision how our services will address their needs and create value
  • Ability to gain a customer’s trust; establish expectations; and follow through on those expectations
  • Be proactive in seeking out opportunities and growing the territory
  • Ability to manage multiple competing tasks.
  • Highly motivated self-starter.
  • Demonstrated business acumen
  • Excellent problem-solving skills
  • The highest level of integrity
  • Strong customer, entrepreneurial, quality, and results orientation
  • Strong planning and organizational skills
  • Thoroughness and attention to follow up
  • Ability to collaborate and work well within a team
  • Strong interpersonal skills
  • High energy
  • Professionalism
  • Persistence
  • Personal responsibility

Send to personnel@leadstrat.com your resume AND a letter that responds to the following items:

  1. Proactive Pipeline Creation – Tell us about a time you proactively grew your pipeline and what specific steps you took to accomplish this.
  2. Engaging Clients –  We would like to get an idea of your ability to engage prospects over the phone. Choose a product that you have sold in the past, and give us the 2 – 5 sentences you would use in an email if you were contacting a prospect for the first time about that product.
  3. Coachable learner – Tell us about a change you have made in the past two years in the way you sell, based on feedback you have received.
  4. Think Strategically – We are seeking to understand your ability to help clients think strategically. Tell us about a client of yours that started with one product and you were able to grow to use other products?  What did the client start with?  What additional products did they purchase?  What did you do to get them to make the additional investment?

We recognize that we are asking you for a lot of information. However, by answering the questions in your narrative letter, you will demonstrate that you understand our needs and are a good fit for this position.