Sales Manager, North America

LRQA’s mission is to be the leading digitally enabled assurance provider, helping our clients navigate a changing risk landscape. We will achieve this by being the leading assurance provider in key sectors such as food, energy, cybersecurity and ESG, making it easier for clients to do business with us through our digital transformation, and ultimately delivering a portfolio of services which make the world a cleaner, more sustainable and safer place.

Our Business Assurance and Inspections Business Units are recognized, world-leading professional assurance services and inspections organizations. We specialize in management systems compliance, inspections & expert advice across a broad spectrum of standards, schemes & business improvement services, including customized training & assurance programs.

Reporting into the Region Sales Director, Americas, the purpose of the Sales Manager, North America is to:

• Develop and lead a high performing sales team, including the hiring of new resources in line with role expectations
• Coach the team to drive best practices and learning/implementation from TIC and other industries
• Achieve team sales targets and specific strategic objectives, through effective planning, setting of individual goals and the analysis of performance data to implement corrective actions where needed
• Continuously develop personal leadership, hiring, and training skills while ensuring the team is using effective sales tactics and tools to meet revenue objectives
• Contribute to the team sales targets through the generation of leads, building and nurturing of client relationships – uncover new opportunities, lead strategic target account selection, upsell/cross-sell leadership
• Set KPI’s and provide reporting to leadership – weekly forecasting, pipeline management, sales reports, etc.
• Ensure proper discipline of CRM tool use including data entry, pipeline and forecasting is critical to success
• Develop presentations to promote services through RFP’s and other client presentations
• Meet face to face with clients to support team members building relationships, including monthly and quarterly business reviews, events and conferences, and at other times to promote the LRQA brand and show regional leadership support
• Contribute to the overall growth of LRQA through sharing experiences that will improve processes across the business by interacting with Marketing, HR, Service Delivery and other functional areas

Key Responsibilities:

Results driven delivery

You will lead a team of sales professionals who will be expected to deliver to target or better, in each financial year. Your targets will be agreed each year in advance and will range from £15-20M ($20-26M USD) per year, depending on team location, strategy and focus. You will be responsible for creating and delivering the plans to achieve and exceed the targets set, with your team.

Analytical and process-driven

You will be dealing with information from many sources and will be required to analyse the information in a detailed way to gain insight into performance challenges and should be able to use the insight to decide on appropriate actions to ensure your team members achieve their KPI’s, sales forecast and work plans. This will include agreeing actions with other relevant departments to close any gaps and maximize any sales and revenue opportunities.

Pipeline management skills

You will manage your team’s pipeline to ensure that it is sufficient to meet the relevant targets, is moving at the right pace and is accurate in terms of sales stage, dates of actions and likely closure. Where the pipeline is not in the right shape, you will take action to correct this and ensure it gets back on track in a timely manner. Your pipeline will be an accurate reflection of your sales forecast at any given time.

Coaching adaptability

You understand that there is a diverse range of selling styles by which salespeople can achieve success and will be responsible for adapting your development and coaching styles to suit each individual team member. You will be responsible for following individual coaching and development plans to ensure your team are able to deliver the right results and to motivate your team members to continually improve and strive for better results.

Following Company processes

At all stages of the sales journey, from lead to contract, there are clearly documented processes, to ensure global consistency in how we do business with our clients. You are responsible for ensuring these are followed by every member of your team, including the correct use of CRM systems, proposal documents and the tools and systems provided to enable your team to operate effectively.

Proactive lead generation and management

You will be responsible for ensuring the right quality and volume of lead generation is delivered by your team, to support the marketing leads being provided, to drive the right level of pipeline at each stage, sales value and new logo wins for your area of responsibility, through close liaison with the marketing team and outbound sales activity of you and your team members.

Preparation and delivery of account plans

You will ensure that any strategic account under the management of your team, has an up to date, viable account plan, which is driving the strategic growth initiatives for the account and which can be clearly articulated by the relevant sales person, at any time. You will use account plans to prioritise opportunities, marketing support and team efforts to drive the growth you are tasked with delivering each financial period.

Performance Management

Ongoing monitoring of KPI’s, pipeline progression and sales rep activity, may result in the need for corrective actions and support from you, ultimately resulting in performance management from time to time. You will be responsible for managing performance though clear development plans & PIP’s, including documented meetings and agreed outcomes, with firm and decisive actions being taken to address poor performance in any team member.

Key Health & Safety Responsibilities:

Eliminate or minimise employee's exposure to risks by reviewing, regularly, the health and safety risk register, applying appropriate controls, communicating results of risk assessment and ensuring health and safety is considered in the planning and execution of all LR activities.

Manage your own and your team's compliance with health and safety rules, instructions, systems and legal requirements, ensuring employees are suitably trained and adequate resources are available to work safely.

Role Dimensions:

Number of direct reports:

~15 - all US and/or Canada based

Geographic area of impact:

North America

Typical Budget Size & Expectation:

$20-26M USD; X% YoY growth from account portfolio as determined by the business and executive sales leadership; Targets and KPI’s will be determined and agreed in the normal budgeting and planning cycle

Key stakeholders:

Chief Commercial Officer & Regional Sales Director

Other Sales Leaders (peer group) – Cyber, Advisory

Commercial Bid Manager, Americas & Global Account Managers

Marketing, HR, Service Delivery and Service Delivery Support

Technical / Professional Qualifications / Requirements:

Essential – Demonstrable experience of achieving annual sales targets, selling products and services in a comparable role in a B2B environment, with at least 2 years’ experience

Essential – Management of 10-15 direct reports across varying business sectors (leading a large team and understanding more than one approach to procurement processes and sales cycles)

Essential – proven experience of working with large strategic organizations to develop sales solutions underpinned by insights, to solve business challenges

Essential – demonstrable experience of developing contract values with large accounts through year on year double digit growth

Essential – ability to communicate fluently in English (Native or Business Fluent)

Essential – experience in preparing and delivering proposal presentations to senior level audience

Essential – Demonstrable experience in managing quotations, bids and proposals, including knowledge of pricing strategies to achieve required margin

Essential - Demonstrable experience in working proactively and collaboratively across teams including marketing to achieve growth strategies and targets

Essential - Knowledge of standard IT programs, Salesforce/Microsoft Dynamics and comfortable in using proprietary software for business processes

Essential - Knowledge of the business assurance and inspections sectors

Essential – Bachelor Degree or Equivalent Experience required

Our Values:

Vision

We believe in our ability to make a difference in the world.

We include all our stakeholders in our vision for success.

We work towards our strategic goals.

Integrity

We speak truthfully and work transparently.

What we promise, we deliver.

We build open and honest relationships.

Togetherness

We respect and embrace our differences; they make us stronger.

We collaborate without barriers because we achieve more together.

We listen without judgement. We encourage and accept different opinions.

Ambition

We challenge ourselves to make our clients better.

We support curiosity, initiative, and creative thinking.

We never accept the status quo, to move beyond the tried and tested.

Expertise

We value and invest in our people; they are our greatest asset.

We embrace new technology and tools, to grow our expertise.

We openly share our knowledge, in order to benefit our clients and each other.

Behavioural Competencies (BCs): Level 3

Sales forecasting: You identify and respond to factors and barriers that could have a short-term or long-term impact on the sales pipeline. You guide others to collect and analyse their client insights and sales trends to provide accurate and reliable sales forecasts.

You encourage others to share their own experiences and insights to build commercial acumen across the wider team and enable other teams to build this into their activities.

Sales & Account plan Analysis: You coach others on how to critically evaluate their sales actions to prioritise and plan next steps. You share feedback with the Sales team to identify factors leading to wins and losses and work across the team to improve the client experience, taking action to drive performance when required.

Prioritising workloads:  You make final decisions about priorities, timing and resources on the Sales team workload. You have a high-level view of individual tasks and take decisive action if timelines are being missed in order to realign and meet personal and team sales targets as well as achieve business growth objectives.