Account Director

Who We Are 

30,000 products are launched every year, and 90% of them fail. Highlight is the first and only end-to-end agile product testing platform, enabling the efficient collection of scaled product performance data. Brands like Nestle, P&G, and Estee Lauder rely on Highlight for competitive benchmarking, pre-launch formulation testing, in-market product renovation, and more, to optimize product success. Highlight, launched in 2021, has seen runaway growth and scale, having tested hundreds of products at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional analog methods, and becoming the dominant SaaS platform in the product testing space. Highlight is a woman-owned, minority-owned startup on a mission to create better products for people and the planet. We’re a diverse and collaborative team committed to fostering an environment of innovation, impact, and growth.

About the Account Director Role:

As the Account Director, you will lead our brand customer expansion organization. You’ll work closely with our strategic customers as a trusted advisor, further pioneering business transformation, expanding Highlight’s footprint and value. You will drive customer value realization, opportunity progression, and exceed Highlight customer expansion growth quotas with a key focus on positive recurring revenue trends. With the support of a highly specialized cross-functional team you’ll drive the strategy for expansion; ultimately helping customers gain incredible value from Highlight. This is an individual contributor role with an opportunity to hire and lead an organization as we scale.

What you’ll do & achieve:

• You will drive and lead customer expansion efforts to support our growth strategy, efficiently managing a wide array of initiatives and build strong relationships with internal and key external strategic client leaders
• You will design and implement Highlight’s Strategic account planning documents and process
• You will communicate with internal teams and strategic accounts with a focus on supporting the overall revenue, growth and success of the Highlight Expansion organization
• Monitor and analyze performance metrics of Expansion revenue with a keen eye on pipeline, conversions and overall revenue performance
• Accurately forecast Expansion sales outlook and provide detailed forecast with action plan to leadership on a weekly basis.
• Prioritize day to day activity that balances progress of expansion in existing strategic accounts whilst supporting both Customer Success and Account Executives to effectively expand non strategic accounts
• Collaborate with internal Engineering, Customer Success and Product teams to support strategic account development needs
• Collaborate with Marketing to develop guides and collateral to accelerate Highlight customer expansion growth
• Consistently educate agency partners on Highlight product value and market opportunities 
• Meet with strategic expansion accounts on a regular cadence in order to provide insights, guidance, training and education to their organization

What you’ll need to be successful

• 10+ years of Market Research experience with customer facing interaction
• Passion for building long term customer relationships
• Account management experience (5-10 years)
• Proven track record of meeting and exceeding sales goals
• Strong communication and presentation skills
• Proven success in building programs, influencing a range of stakeholders and innovating 
• Strong organization and project planning skills, including account planning development and implementation
• Experience leading teams, planning procedures and processes and reporting the results
• Strong interpersonal skills working with a range of customer profiles from Procurement to CEO to R&D and Consumer Insights
• The ability to develop strong rapport, and credibility both externally and internally across the organization
• Excellent proactive communication skills both written and verbal
• Highly collaborative, open to coaching teammates and able to influence. Should embrace, and encourage collaborative style among team members. Will achieve results with and through others

Benefits

• Health insurance (medical, dental, vision) with 100% premium covered
• Competitive equity grants
• Unlimited PTO
• Flexible remote WFH culture with 100% remote capability (And an amazing high-end office space located in Midtown Manhattan!)
• Generous paid parental leave
• 401K Program
• Learning and development stipend

You do not need to match every listed expectation to apply for this position. At Highlight, we know that diverse perspectives foster the innovation we need to be successful. We are committed to building a team that comes from a wide range of backgrounds - including but not limited to - race, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, national origin, religion, disability, and veteran status. If you’re someone who can think rigorously and isn’t afraid to challenge assumptions, join us.

We've built a world-class team with decades of experience in the space. We’ve encountered the problems we’re trying to solve first hand and care deeply about making better products. We’ve been fortunate to raise a seed round from First Round Capital as well as experienced angels and insiders to help us further our mission. We’re also a passionate, capable, and empathetic team who live by our Humans First value. We have fun, we care about one another, and we’re all in on tacos.