Manager of Pre-Sales EMEA

The Manager of Pre-Sales EMEA will fully support the Global Minitab pre-sales strategy and program that improves the performance of the EMEA sales teams (indirect and direct) across the 3 geographic North, Central and South regions. The EMEA pre-sales team members will have strong cross solution capabilities in addition to industry and/or product specialties. These teams all play a significant role in how we scale up and achieve our revenue and customer success goals each month, quarter and annually. This role will help drive EMEA’s sales execution by scaling our growth through leveraging highly effective and well enabled pre-sales team members as we increase our upsell, cross-sell, new logo opportunities while driving increased average deal size. The Manager of Pre-Sales will be fully responsible for the recruitment, onboarding, training, and mentoring of new Solutions Engineers/Architects and support their on-going developmental needs. The Manager of Pre-Sales will also support sales teams (SMB, MM and Enterprise) through workshop training sessions to help sales teams better understand our solutions and their applications.

Overall Responsibilities

• Recruit, enable and lead a growing team of technical, solution oriented and industry knowledgeable pre-sales team members across EMEA to support both the direct and indirect channels across all of Minitab’s targeted personas.
• Continue to adapt and enable our pre-sales team and structure to optimize the necessary support of our multiple solutions across the small medium business, mid-market, and enterprise market segments
• Identify and optimize pre-sales discovery methods/approaches that actively support the Customer Engagement Lifecycle centred on Customer Value and increasing average deal size.
• Leverage global enablement programs for sales and pre-sales team members on new products, new messaging, competitive intelligence as well as on skill development such as storytelling, discovery, qualification, presentation, and meeting management    expertise.
• Ensure the successful delivery of Proof of Value (POV) deliverables that are tied to the customers’ success criteria, financial returns, and business initiatives
• Build scalable customer facing offerings to help automate the presales’ role across our low-touch SMB and mid-market segments
• Work closely and collaborate with EMEA sales leadership, Marketing, Customer Success, Sales Operations and Enablement, Human Resources and Recruiting teams to maximize the team’s ability to meet and exceed when possible both the Global Field    Operations OKRs and the EMEA Regional OKRs
• Support a seamless transition from presales motions to delivery and support motions including the detailed completion of necessary Solution documents.

Role Responsibilities

1. Team Leadership and Management

• Fully understand strengths and weaknesses of pre-sales team members and develop timely and appropriate onboarding and training paths
• Effective utilization of 15Five with timely check ins and weekly one on one sessions with all team members
• Gather feedback from sales teams/leaders on pre-sales performance and provide as appropriate constructive guidance to pre-sales team members
• Participate in pre-sales team members discovery calls/demonstrations/presentations during first 6 months of onboarding
• Provide as needed appropriate individual and group training workshop sessions based upon pre-sales team member’s needs
• Complete the quarterly Sales Performance Assessment forms on a timely basis and review them individually with pre-sales team members
• Collaborate with HR/Global Pre-Sales Director/Sales Leadership on effective recruitment, interviewing and personnel management of team members

2. Opportunity Management

• Support both the pre-sales and the sales team in proactive discovery, assessment and close of new opportunities through the successful execution of CEL
• Provide guidance on how to win new business within the account by developing, communicating, and supporting effective selling strategies that are based on well-defined customer-specific value propositions
• Routinely discuss and communicate Account and Opportunity plan sales strategy and appropriate action items with other members of the virtual account team
• Regularly participate in weekly EMEA Forecast & Pipeline calls to contribute insight and strategy to help progress opportunities through the sales stages

3. Account Team Leadership

• Understand what technical resources are required for strategic and enterprise opportunities to increase overall effectiveness of the sales and pre-sales team.
• Participate as needed in transition meetings within the account, to ensure proper and consistent communication with customer and virtual customer support and services team during deployment and optimization as defined in Minitab’s CEL
• Provide input to Product Management for product enhancements as driven by market needs and customer base requirements
• Provide input and assist with Marketing for appropriate messaging and positioning for Minitab solutions, including content for both marketing and field enablement material
• Proactively seek to contribute to Minitab’s growth objectives by providing mentoring and coaching as needed to other members of sales and technical teams, new members of your virtual account team, and any new employees

4. Personal Development

• Fully engage and absorb all Minitab provided field enablement content with the approach that you will never know everything you need to know
• Develop an Individual Business Plan that will include your business and personal goals and objectives for growth within Minitab and your overall career. Discuss, confirm, and review on a regular basis with your direct manager and indirect manager
• Continue to build and grow personal knowledge foundation as detailed below for success within Minitab’s market
• Seek out sources, content, knowledge outside of Minitab provided enablement regarding general business trends, career advice, etc. that will increase your overall business & technology acumen as a professional pre-sales manager

5. Administrative Management

• Become fully knowledgeable and comply with all published Minitab personnel, security, sales, and contract policies
• Ensure all information within CRM is updated accurately and timely by the pre-sales team in full compliance with Minitab’s CEL, pipeline and forecasting guidelines
• Accurately complete in a timely manner expense reports in compliance with Minitab’s documented travel and expense policy
• Complete all appropriate HR/personnel forms/documentation in a timely fashion

Required Experience

• Strategic capability to lead and innovate while thriving in a fast-moving environment, with an emphasis in leading change and process improvement
• 3-5 Years of experience leading a regional team of pre-sales professionals within the software industry
• Experience working with sales leadership in developing customer engagement strategies that apply to both large customer acquisition and low touch small customer acquisition
• Ability to “Connect the Dots” (Aligning how the technology drives value at the business level
• First line people management experience (across EMEA geographies/cultures) and a passion for creating a diverse and inclusive team environment that fosters trust and empowerment via a purposeful culture
• The ability to motivate and align a team to a vision and manage effectively through change
• A strong track record of growth and overachieving targets in a high velocity, high-growth business
• An innate ability to create a sense of loyalty, trust, and positive culture across all facets of the business.
• Ability to energize people and teams and establish cross-functional cooperation across the company
• Previous experience working in cloud-based SaaS software companies is advantageous
• Proficiency in public speaking at industry, company events and customer meetings
• Relationship Building at all levels, Executive, Technical and Business User
• Ability to travel both domestically and internationally. (+50%)
• College/University Degree Required (IT, Business, Engineering is a plus)
• Multi-lingual is a preference (English, German, Spanish, French)

Behavioral Attributes/Traits

• Accountable
• Sense of Urgency
• Collaborative
• Knowledge Driven
• Effective Listener
• Passion
• Goal & Results Oriented
• Highly Competitive
• Strong Work Ethic & Discipline

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