VP Sales, SAAS Product
Company Overview
The company was founded in 2007 by a person in a local dealership who had a better way of understanding how to convert incoming calls to sales. The business expanded to more than 1000 dealerships. In 2017 Serent Capital, a San Francisco based private equity firm began investing in the company so they could become the leading provider of call management software for automotive dealers. The software leverages technology and machine learning to help their auto dealers understand and manage their customers to create more sales appointments that drive auto purchases. The company has tripled in size and monitors more than 100 million calls with 3,300 dealer locations, and more than 30 global auto manufacturers. Callers are typically high value sales prospects that need sales assistance at the dealership to help them get their questions answered, test drive and make a final purchasing decision. Due to recent investments the company has increased its growth significantly in the last 6 months and is expecting to double sales in the next few years. The company is currently headquartered in Northern Baltimore, MD but is open to working with qualified candidates in other major metro areas.
Position Summary
The VP Sales will have total Sales Management and Customer Business Development responsibility for the entire US. The ideal candidate will have proven experience managing national, regional accounts and local automotive accounts. They need strong expertise in SAAS, sales planning, operational planning and execution, partnership management, pricing/revenue growth management, and organizational transformation. They will be responsible for driving revenue and profitability across all channels. The position is expected to develop strong partnerships and collaborative relationships with key accounts and to lead the sales team to success. The ideal hire will be cheerleader across the company, inspiring the team and partnering with the senior leadership team to win in the market. This will require thought leadership to find new channels of opportunity while continuing to grow the existing channels.
The company is owned by private equity firm and growing very quickly. The VP of Sales must be experienced at scaling the business beyond the early stages to a more predictable high growth phase and then forward to a stable national growth status.
The VP of sales must partner with the 4 regional sales managers, and be part of the senior leadership team. They will be expected to manage the sales team to enhance the gross margin through lower COGS. They will also be responsible for achieving the team’s quotas, and increasing the tenure of the sales staff (keeping turnover low). The focus will be bringing on high value customers who stay with the program, increasing customer life time value. Overall the goal is to increase market penetration and market share by 50%.
Reporting Relationships
The VP Sales will report directly to the Chief Executive Officer
Location
The VP Sales position can be located anywhere in the US, with the ability to travel to support the regional sales teams and the Headquarters’ team in Hunt Valley, MD (North of Baltimore, MD.) The sales leader will be expected to travel to HQT on a regular basis and be able to manage a remote team. They will also travel for in person meetings with key customers and partners to develop these important relationships.
Scope of Key Responsibilities
Company Growth Plan: The VP of Sales is responsible for supporting the growth of the company. The VP of Sales will be a critical growth partner to the CEO, helping shape both the annual and long-term growth plans. These plans will address how to expand the product portfolio to new and existing categories, increasing retention of auto dealers, expanding OEM and other partnership channels, and continuing to keep abreast of the consumer shopping trends. There will also be an emphasis on controlling the cost of sales, and increasing the life time value of customers. The goal is to increase market penetration and market share by 50%.
3 Year Sales Plan: As part of the overall strategic plan, the VP of Sales will craft a long term (3 year) sales plan designed to deliver both topline and bottom line financials for the business . Based on the company’s decisions on where to expand this plan will consider all customer segments, channels, partners, and customers. The plan must include an accounting for the level of investment required to deliver the plan goals, including people, pricing, investment dollars for marketing and product improvements. They are responsible for managing the sales budget and increasing NPV by 5%..They will be responsible for recommending the sales force structure for growth.
Lead Generation: The VP of sales is expected to develop lead gen strategies with the marketing team to help feed the sales pipeline, increase brand awareness and bring in new customers. They will measure the effectiveness of their strategies using Salesforce to improve their ROI. They will work to generate sales qualified leads, develop content to engage the key decision makers, build a screening mechanism for evaluating potential opportunities. They will have the ability to penetrate new accounts, build relationships that last and close deals to increase YOY growth by 25%.
Generate Revenue and Net Margin: The new sales leader will own the responsibility for securing revenue, and hitting the net margin objectives by delivering a wide range of profitable customer and partner deals. They will lead the selling effort for major customers and OEMs/partner deals. They are responsible for enhancing the capabilities of their sales team to help close and execute these deals. They will develop new sales presentations and to help close deals through cross selling, upselling and bringing in new business.They will manage key customer relationships and assist in closing these accounts. They will provide detailed and accurate sales forecasting based on customer data and interactions that reflect current market conditions.
Thought Leadership: The VP sales must be an intellectual thought leader who understands the overall auto industry trends and key strategic customer objectives and strategies. This includes a strong command of shopper marketing, customer needs, competitive value propositions and strategies, category management, and partner eco-system initiatives. The sales leader must be able to synthesize the company’s products and strategies into a compelling selling presentation that builds revenue and profit while meeting/exceeding customer needs and being able to position themselves against key competitors.
Team Development: Proven experience and success in hiring, training and developing strong functional sales people and sales leadership. The leader is expected to help other sales associates increase their skills, encourage worker collaboration and mentoring, and create an open environment where people can share their failures and successes so they can continue to grow. They will continue to motivate the team to achieve new goals, provide ongoing coaching and mentoring to help increase overall performance. They will work to develop a culture where top level sales people want to join the team.
Salesforce Productivity: The new VP of Sales is expected to improve the current team’s selling capabilities (e.g. annual customer business planning, solution-based selling, partner management) and productivity ( higher close rates, increased customer satisfaction and Life time value) . The VP of Sales will develop an organization wide scorecard/ dashboard of metrics for managing overall performance as a priority for growing the company and the effectiveness of the sales force. They will develop best practices and share them with the team. The will help the team focus on Customer First planning and engagement to drive life time value. They will define the sales process and stages and identify the improvements needed to achieve success. There may be a need for a different focus for each region depending on the customer segments served. They will define and oversea the staff compensation and incentive programs that motivate the sales team to achieve their targets.
New Product/Channel Innovations: Innovation is a key element of the company’s future growth strategy. Sales is often in a position to hear customer concerns and identify new opportunities for growth that are current gaps in the industry. The VP of Sales will need to partner with Finance, Marketing, Customer Success, and Product Development to help support this strategy. The VP of Sales must be a leader in the innovation process and work closely with the other functions to continually understand customer needs and identify opportunities for relevant innovation in pricing, product delivery, and new products. The VP of sales will also help sell in any new products/service to existing clients. The goal is to continue to be the leader in call intelligence for the automotive industry and expand to other industries/partners. They will monitor customer, market and competitor activity and provide feedback to company leadership and executives.
Change Management: The VP of Sales must help the current sales team transition to a new more robust selling organization. The company had many gaps in the basic blocking and tackling that need to be addressed before the VP can help the team innovate and be more agile in working together to bring new products/service to new and existing markets. The company overall is moving from a service-oriented business to a SAAS business requiring new repeatable process improvements and different mindsets.
Performance Measures
- Expand partners and resellers
- Increase revenue
- Enhanced profitability
- Sales productivity
- Client retention and satisfaction ( Life time value)
- Increased margin through controlling Cost of sales and reduced customer churn
Staff and Resources
The VP of Sales will oversee a sales team of 12., including 3 direct reports: a regional Sales VP of the Midwest, a Regional sales VP for the Eastern Region and a Sr. Director of Sales who is responsible for day to day training and reporting.
Qualifications & Experience
Our client seeks a senior sales professional with 15+ years of proven sales experience with at least 5 years in leadership roles. The ideal candidate will have the following qualifications and experience:
- 8 years’ experience creating and running successful demand generational campaigns. with the ability to influence and collaborate with both internal team members and external agency partners
- Excellent analytical, communication and presentation skills; must be action-oriented
- Ability to influence Executive Team, and other key stakeholders with innovative and detailed sales proposals and plans
- Excellent interpersonal skills and commitment to empowerment
- Quick study of complex problems and a highly organized approach to finding high impact solutions
- Team player with a collaborative approach who shares success
- Ability to deal with ambiguity and establish clear plans and directions. Takes accountability for results and is a proactive problem solver
- Excels in a fast-paced environment where growth is expected and the resources are not in place to help make everything work smoothly. High sense of urgency to get things done.
- Experience in selling into Tier 3 Segments (dealers) of the automotive sector ( Tier 2- ad agencies and Tier 1 OEMS is a bonus but not required). Ability to work though sales channels like CRM resellers and others.
- Sales leader with experience in managing remote sales teams of 10+
- Management of key accounts and experience closing multimillion ARR deals or MRR deals of $50-$60K per month.
- Ability to lead and manage other sales teams to help them address new sales, customer retention and churn.
- Software experience in working with a SAAS company.
- Previous experience in using Salesforce CRM to manage sales tasks, pipeline and closing data.
- Experience in high growth businesses for $5 to $550 Million.
- Ability to understand the customer journey to increase customer retention and reinforce the value proposition of our products and services.
- Experience in building a go to market strategy and corporate sales plan
- Working in a small company environment ( less than 100) and growing it to 300+ employees
- Hiring, training, onboarding and coaching sales people.
Personality Profile
- Adaptable
- Resourceful
- Trustworthy
- Accountable
- Problem Solver
- Leader
- Collaborator
- Entrepreneurial
- Results oriented
- Quick study
Compensation
As our client is seeking an outstanding individual for this import senior-level sales leadership role, they are offering an attractive compensation package including base salary, discretionary incentive compensation, equity after one year and employee benefits.
Contact
Executive Connections LLC is handling this executive search on a contingency basis.
For additional information, please contact:
Darcy Bevelacqua
Managing Partner
917 520-0261
DBevelacqua@executiveconnects.com