Enterprise Sales Lead

Join to apply for the Enterprise Sales Lead role at Merkle, a dentsu company, which powers the experience economy. For more than 35 years, the company has put people at the heart of its approach to digital business transformation. As the only integrated experience consultancy in the world with a heritage in data science and business performance, Merkle delivers holistic, end-to-end experiences that drive growth, engagement, and loyalty.

As part of our EMEA Merkle Sales Leadership Team, we require an experienced Enterprise Sales Lead that will build and expand strategic relationships, identify high-value opportunities and close complex deals with clients. The role will own a new logo Merkle EMEA sales target against one or more industry verticals as a sales territory. You will report to the Merkle EMEA Chief Growth Officer, who owns an overall new logo sales number to be achieved across the team.

With substantive sales and leadership experience, you are the strategic lead and will work as a point of specialism for your allocated territory focused on sale of our Arc product and associated services to deliver our sales strategy effectively. You will develop and execute a strategic sales plan, accountable for ensuring sales quotas are met against target accounts as part of the CXM sales team.

Key Responsibilities:

• Developing and maintaining deep strategic relationships with across our Merkle practice areas and alliance partner ecosystem.
• Ownership of a set of new logo accounts to proactively drive and lead on new business revenue.
• Develop and execute a strategic pitch-winning sales plan (from lead to closed) for your industry vertical, creating own opportunities and new contacts within assigned new logo accounts.
• Establish trusted strategic relationships with client decision-makers, C-suite and alliance partners to drive sales opportunities.
• Accountable for ownership of processing inbound RFI and RFPs related to assigned sales territory following the Merkle defined sales process.
• Analyse prospective client business goals, objectives, needs, process and existing infrastructure to propose Merkle solutions proactively.
• Understand the prospect and client decision making process and define stakeholder/organisational maps.
• Apply business outcome-based sales principles and demonstrate relevant and transferable company experience in developing sales strategy and sales plans.
• Demonstrate robust leadership, working closely with our Alliance Managers and their external partner manager counterparts.
• Proactive pipeline building against target accounts and build 1:1 relationships with alliance partner account executives.
• Working closely with the Merkle solutions, strategy and practice leaders to help define and position relevant client or industry vertical specific Go-To-Market propositions.
• Accumulate the latest trends and developments in digital marketing and assigned industry verticals through an inquisitive and self-motivated approach.

Key Characteristics of a Merkle Enterprise Sales Lead:

• Strong Commercially Driven Mindset
• Goal-Oriented Focus
• Reward Motivated
• High Risk Tolerance – bold and brave
• Resilient and persistent
• Strong time management and diligence with sales administration
• Strong Communicator and Relationship builder
• Confident, credible and personable
• Curious by nature on client business, industry trends and Merkle’s evolving capabilities
• Comfort with ambiguity and adaptable to lead clients towards the right solutions
• Bold, brave and proactive in proposing Merkle solutions to prospective clients.

Required Qualifications & Experience:

• Circa 10+ years consultative sales experience.
• Strong experience in the CMS, commerce and digital/CX agency is essential, CRM expertise is also desirable.
• Demonstrates C-suite maturity, excellent communication skills, and ability to handle complex decisions and difficult situations.
• Proven ability to lead (internally and with clients) with influence, credibility and authority.
• Extensive experience of negotiating and influencing senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrable experience leading on and closing large, complex sales deals.
• Demonstrable success in driving and supporting successful prospecting and lead generation efforts.
• Substantive sales experience in marketing technology, professional services or digital agency with proven history of consistent quota attainment.
• Demonstrable success working within an individual and team environment.

Essential Skills / Attributes:

• Highly articulate with an ability to clearly and succinctly communicate with senior leadership.
• Well organised, dynamic individual who can work with multiple specialist functions to deliver a common goal.
• Leadership – ability to inspire and command respect of peers and wider functional community.
• Strong co-ordination & organisational skills.
• Ability to translate strategic ideas into actionable deliverables within the business.
• Self-starter with strategic mindset and the ability to think quickly, adapting to client needs.
• Ability to quickly develop strong relationships with senior people.
• Strong team player, collaborative style of working.

Preferred Qualifications & Experience:

• Experience of any of Salesforce, Adobe, Braze, Shopify, CMS, Content CRM, marketing automation, Commerce, Customer Data Platforms or Customer experience capabilities or platforms.
• Knowledge of the inner workings of software alliance partnerships.
• Viewed as a thought leader in an industry vertical.
• Well-connected/networked and able to leverage their network to drive Merkle sales success.

At the point of application, the candidate must have the legal right to work in the UK as we are unable to sponsor visas at this time. Merkle does not discriminate against job applicants on the basics of age, disability, gender, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.