Client Manager

A Client Manager is a quota-bearing sales persona and the primary purpose of the role is to take full ownership of named client accounts, retain these clients and find new business. The Client Manager is assigned a range of development and maintenance accounts and held accountable for the performance achievement of those accounts in terms of revenue retention, profitability management, and growth.

The Client Manager will work directly with clients at a variety of levels as well as internal sales teams such as Sales Specialists and pre-sales architects and post the sale; the delivery teams. They manage the delivery teams understanding of the clients solution requirements, and initiate improvement programs ensuring that the client remains committed to our solutions which leads to more sales opportunities.

Building and developing excellent stakeholder relationships with new and existing clients, fully understanding the client and the industry in which they operate will be a core focus of this role. A substantial amount of time will be spent on client engagement and engaged selling, but also liaising with internal teams to make sure the clients needs are attended to.

Duties and responsibilities:

• Client ownership and relationship builder
• Take primary responsibility for the client and act as internal client owner within assigned accounts
• Manage and grow relationships to drive expansion and renewals across all solutions and services
• Responsible for client solution penetration and education, account monitoring and portfolio reporting, and issue resolution ownership
• Lead the business conversations at C-level
• Become the reliable point of contact to further strengthen relationships
• Client and industry expert
• Gain insights into clients most urgent business problems or business opportunities while linking how our solutions and services offerings can add client business value
• Maintain a high level of the relevant industry, product, and service knowledge to have meaningful conversations and generally stay ahead of trends
• Collect and analyze data to learn more about the client and the industry in which they operate
• Collaboratively work with extended sales teams, especially Sales Specialists, pre-sales architects, and commercial architects to successfully position the solution and/or service and see the opportunity through to closure
• Partner with internal teams to ensure the scope of work and proposals are tracked, managed, and delivered on time
• Work closely with other in territory counterparts and matrix teams to achieve the shared goal of growth; yet are held accountable for own targets
• Use NTT company sales methodologies and tools such as target plans, opportunity plans and account plans to support the sales process and data-driven insights
• Develop and implement an opportunity plan, to provide regular check-ins with the primary point of contact and have an established process for getting buy-in from all stakeholders
• Maintain a pipeline of leads on Salesforce.com
• Deal structuring
• Create comprehensive client business plans and engage in complex deal negotiation to build a stable, growing pipeline of current and future business opportunities.
• Engage in complex deal structuring and negotiation efforts designed to protect existing business and win new deals.
• Lead business negotiations for contracts ensuring deals are risk-free and profitable
• Client retention and expansion
• Minimize churn and maximize retention in assigned accounts
• Land, adopt, expand, renew Identify client business needs with a view to help shape solution development by the wider pursuit teams
• Actively search for expansion opportunities

Qualifications and experience:

• You will need to demonstrate an impressive track record of selling solutions and managing enterprise accounts; especially Managed Services type accounts across multiple technology domains. These typically involve selling complex solutions and services to the C-suite in large enterprise accounts.
• Proof of structuring large, multi-year profitable contracts
• Demonstrate the ability to build strong relationships with clients across all levels
• Strong experience in networking with senior internal and external people in the specialist area of expertise
• Experience in managing the entire sales process, contracting process, and legal implications of a deal
• A post-graduate type degree such as an MBA or similar would be advantageous.

Knowledge, skills and attributes:

• Good knowledge of Managed Services across domains such as Networking, Collaboration, Data Centres, Security and so on
• Client-centricity coupled with problem-solving
• Strong business acumen and negotiation skills to craft solutions that are beneficial to company and the client
• Ability to pro-actively and independently identify and qualify opportunities; an entrepreneurial mindset is key
• Natural team player ability to coordinate and liaise with delivery teams across multiple business areas
• Quick learner to understand any new solutions that are ready to take to market
• Customer value management and understanding profitability and ratios of clients
• A strategic future thinker who anticipates and considers external and internal factors with the ability to develop long-term plans
• Ability to ask the right questions and tell great stories and have empathy with the clients challenges. Superior communication skills are a given.