Account Executive - Financial Services

About Electrum

Electrum is the next-generation payments technology company that provides cloud-native software to optimize the processing of financial transactions.

Since our inception, we have established ourselves as a respected payments technology partner through our deep expertise and track record in delivering trusted enterprise-grade payments solutions. We've built a reputation in providing solutions for high-volume, low-value payment schemes and services that enable our clients to deliver to their customers at scale.

We love that the projects we work on touch the lives of millions of South Africans daily, making a real difference. We hire the best of the best and we offer great opportunities for personal growth and career progression.

The Role

We are growing a world-class partnerships team to support the expansion of our enterprise SaaS offering, and we're looking for an Account Executive to join us to cultivate client relationships, articulate the return on their investment, and advance our strategic account footprint.

The ideal candidate must be able to effectively articulate and position Electrum in the minds of the CIO, ensuring our value proposition aligns with their strategic objectives. Having onboarded multiple new enterprise accounts in the last two years, coupled with the continuous expansion of our existing accounts, we are achieving significant growth.

In this role, you will navigate complex B2B sales cycles within the financial services landscape to strategically grow our Payments SaaS offering at tier-one banks and other financial services enterprises. Your responsibility will involve creating new revenue streams in payments by acquiring targeted new clients while also expanding our existing enterprise accounts.

Our head office is located in Cape Town, but this position will primarily serve clients, most of whom are banks based in Johannesburg.

You will be part of our expanding Sales and Marketing team, which offers local and international networking and travel opportunities.

Electrum has ambitious long-term goals, supported by training and mentorship to develop effective teams, paving the way for excellent career opportunities.

Minimum Requirements

1. Five to ten years of enterprise sales experience within the payments industry; or five to ten years working inside the payments landscape in a client-facing role, such as a business analyst or product manager.
2. Proven track record of closing or crafting complex deals and retiring targets in a software (or technology) field.
3. Experience dealing with enterprise clients, particularly within tier 1 bank and financial services environments.
4. An understanding of business practices backed by a relevant university degree.
5. Ability to position technical solutions in a business context.
6. Ability to navigate complex sales cycles.
7. Proven negotiation experience.
8. Going the extra mile for your clients while ensuring the sustainability of the partnership.
9. Collaboration with internal and external stakeholders, a clear sense of what it means to be part of a team, and a team of teams.

Advantageous for the role

1. Excellent communication and presentation skills.
2. Past experience working with or within a Tier 1 bank.
3. Ability to establish trust and rapport with client personas through active listening, empathy, integrity, and diplomacy.
4. Referencable experience partnering with banks and other financial services enterprises.

What your first six months would look like

1. Build and nurture key client relationships with a multitude of personas.
2. Create account and opportunity plans for the short, medium, and long-term cross-sell and upsell of products that will expand Electrum's partnership with customers, offering additional value for both parties.
3. Identify challenges and opportunities our clients and prospects are facing that can be solved with our products and solutions.
4. Work with the pre-sales team to help articulate and close the technical sale.
5. Work with marketing to identify account-based marketing campaigns to help influence deals through thought leadership content.
6. Sales management, including negotiating contracts and agreements, pipeline and database health.
7. Contribute to the sales tools that will help you through the buying and sales process, such as buyer journey mapping, personas, use cases, demos, business cases, etc.
8. Communicate month, quarter, annual, and longer-term objectives with Electrum's internal team and external clients.

What your longer-term business would look like

1. Continue your six-month plan and include the following:
2. Build and close a new business pipeline, by understanding your prospect's business objectives and Electrum's product fit while navigating the complexities of the enterprise buying and sales process.
3. Work with the account executive to research addressable markets and identify new growth opportunities by understanding market size, key target characteristics, persona pain points, and product propositions.
4. Work with the product team to define development opportunities for new products aligned to our core solutions.
5. Work with marketing to identify outbound campaigns, develop collateral, blogs, case studies, etc., to help advance sales, generate inbound leads, or influence deals.

We have created a high-performance culture where you can expect the following

1. Career growth - Delivering world-class financial services software products in a fast-paced company is not easy and takes a considerable amount of effort. But in return for your effort, you'll get hands-on experience working on products used by millions of people and a high-quality work experience that will accelerate your career faster than anywhere else.
2. Transparency - We openly discuss strategy, finances, salaries, and other major decisions.
3. Autonomy - We know you'll be able to make good decisions if you have good information, and we trust you.
4. Shared Vision - You'll be able to shape a vision you can believe in - on how to build the future of financial services.
5. Work-life balance - You know when your brain has switched off for the day, and you need to go for a hike or coffee shop with a view, but you also know when your team needs help to bring that strategic deliverable home.

At Electrum, you will be expected to know when you deserve that time out and when you need to knuckle down and get the work done. These are a few practical ways we practice the culture we are so proud of:

1. Flexible work hours.
2. Our Cape Town offices offer a fully-stocked kitchen with daily lunch provided.
3. Our Johannesburg-based staff have access to Workshop17 facilities.
4. Team socializing like hikes, getaways, and dinners.
5. A generous leave policy, starting at 20 days per year.

If this sounds like a role and place where you can spread your wings, please apply now. We have created a safe, transparent environment where:

1. We know mistakes happen, and that's okay.
2. We even have a three-step approach to dealing with them: Tell everyone about it. Fix the mistake. Tell everyone about the solution.
3. You are responsible for your actions – both the successes and the failures.
4. We talk openly about salaries and bonuses.

At Electrum, we believe it's evident why some people earn more and others a bit less. It's like being on a sports team where salaries are widely known.