Sales Director, UK

Xero is a beautiful, easy-to-use platform that helps small businesses and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors grow and thrive. 

At Xero, our purpose is to make life better for people in small business, their advisors, and communities around the world. This purpose sits at the centre of everything we do. We support our people to do the best work of their lives so that they can help small businesses succeed through better tools, information and connections. Because when they succeed they make a difference, and when millions of small businesses are making a difference, the world is a more beautiful place.

How you’ll make an impact

This is a key leadership role with overall responsibility for Xero sales and consulting in the UK, in the Accounting and Bookkeeping Sales Channel. The role is responsible for leading a large team to drive sales and deployment, and to grow and retain Xero’s market share and revenue in the UK. Your direct reports will typically be managers within Xero, responsible for teams of field or office based Xeros across our Partner Sales and Partner Consulting business. The role requires a leader that is passionate about building inclusive, world-class sales & consulting teams and fostering a culture where everyone can thrive.

This role sits on the UK leadership team and reports into the UK Country Manager. It works closely with the Directors and General Managers of other functions including Marketing, Strategic Partnerships, Operations, and Finance to engage and grow the network of accounting partners and customers. This role will also work closely with the Global Revenue teams.

What you’ll do

- Meet and exceed monthly, quarterly and annual targets - covering amongst other metrics, subscriber growth, revenue and ‘business quality’ (for example the use of promotional codes)

- Engage with and support the UK LT in the strategic development of the UK business, including the creation of plans and budgets

- Be a visible and inspirational leader within the UK business

- Manage, coach and mentor Managers in your team

- Play a lead role in the definition, evolution and execution of change across the sales organisation (e.g. sales motions) to meet the evolving needs of the business and Xero’s partners and customers

- Lead appropriate and consistent activities across your team, such as the development of territory planning and reviews

- Lead people and performance management of your team, including professional skills development, coaching and career progression 

- Deliver timely and accurate sales forecasts and associated reporting to the business, in close cooperation with the Operations and Finance Teams

- In liaison with the Marketing Director, aligning demand generation activity with sales capacity, and ensuring that acquisition costs are within budget

- Carefully monitor competition in the UK market and provide, timely and insightful input into competitive strategy

- Regularly engage with external audiences and media, and promote Xero as a thought leader via the creation of content. e.g. Blogs, social media, webinars, speaking at events, and media engagement.

- Working with key influential bodies and associations to ensure Xero is actively promoted within the membership base

Success looks like

Meeting and exceeding subscriber, revenue, growth and business quality targets for the UK Ensuring consistent sales performance through great planning and management of Forecasting and Pipeline Leading and cultivating a high performing sales team to support the success of our Partners and customers 

What you’ll bring with you

The role requires a dynamic and experienced sales leader who has meaningful experience operating at a larger scale, and who is adept at growing, developing and leading a diverse team in a very competitive and fast-growth market. We are looking for a leader who will embody the Xero brand, and become a visionary champion of our brand and our value proposition towards our various segments of customers, and in particular to our highly engaged accounting & bookkeeping community.

Critical Competencies:

- Driven, experienced sales leader with an inspiring, motivational and resilient approach

- Extensive knowledge of the UK market dynamics is essential

- Extensive knowledge of SaaS models, SaaS metrics and online sales models

- Outstanding communication and presentation skills

- Strong interpersonal and relationship building skills, with a track record of motivating and developing high performing sales teams

- Extensive industry knowledge, networks and contacts would be ideal

Experience

- Extensive experience in a sales leadership role with proven ability to grow and retain business

- Previous experience of running and cultivating a sales team at scale in a high growth SaaS business

- Experience of working with Partner/distribution channel sales

- Some experience of working in a global matrix organisation would be helpful

Why Xero?

Offering very generous paid leave to use however you’d like (plus statutory holidays!), dedicated paid leave to care for your physical and mental wellbeing as well as an Employee Assistance Program to access mental health care for you and your family, private medical insurance, gym passes, employee resource groups, 26 weeks of paid parental leave for primary caregivers, an Employee Share Plan, beautiful offices, flexible working, and many other benefits that reflect our human value, you’ll do the best work of your life at Xero.