Vice President, Auto

The Vice President, Auto Channel will be a strong commercial leader, responsible for driving significant bottom line growth to the Auto Channel P&L.  This bottom line growth will come from a combination of retaining and expanding existing relationships, restructuring the economics of existing relationships through both pricing and cost levers, introducing new and emerging products to the channel, and partnering internally to ensure service and operational excellence for our clients.

In order to achieve this, the VP, Auto will need to:

• Build deep and broad relationships at our clients, where s/he can  influence the scope, profitability and direction of our relationships, and are viewed as a trusted partner 
• Build and lead a team of A-players
• Build strong relationships across Agero and partner effectively in a highly matrixed organization with shared services leaders in operations, technology and support functions 
• Be an enterprise-first collaborator who consistently drives execution and helps the organization re-imagine the art of the possible. 

This role reports directly to the Chief Commercial Officer.  

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Drive significant contribution margin growth by:

• Developing a robust auto go-to-market strategy, including a competitive value proposition, a suite of compelling value-add solutions and a clear channel and marketing strategy
• Setting and managing to clear priorities, performance goals and metrics for the channel
• Building strong direct client relationships with the key stakeholders that are direct and indirect influencers of client sentiment and decisions. Structure economically attractive client solutions and contracts.
• Developing and executing key tactical programs to pursue annual operating plan and objectives
• Partnering with operations and technology to ensure consistent, timely, high quality execution
• Overseeing performance vis-à-vis contractual commitments and anticipate and manage client needs throughout the relationship
• Controlling budgets and optimizing expenses

Develop and leverage deep market expertise in order to:

• Stay abreast of industry and competitive developments in order to determine future-oriented threats and opportunities
• Ensure personal and organizational client intimacy in order to anticipate needs and solutions, and become a sought after thought leader to key client influencers and decision making
• Rapidly develop a deep understanding of our platform, products and ancillary capabilities and how they can be leveraged, with a keen eye to how technology can provide better client and end-consumer experiences and reducing Agero’s cost to serve
• Leverage loyalty-building end-consumer experiences to pull demand through the B2B2C channel, and motivate clients to partner with Agero to create a step-function expansion in usage

Build and lead a deep bench of A-player talent by:

• Assessing current organization, key individuals and relative strengths and weaknesses; augmenting and upgrading key talent as needed
• Recruiting and on-boarding superior talent into key positions and building strong team of leaders within channel
• Role modeling and building a highly collaborative organization that effectively balances enterprise collaboration with high degree of focus on success of own channel vertical; develop a strong culture consistent with Agero’s overall cultural aspiration
• Communicating and aligning the organization around the channel business strategy, and keep informed relative to priorities, performance, and other key context

Build strong relationships throughout the organization enabling direct as well as indirect leadership and influence by:

• Partnering effectively with key shared service organizations such as operations and technology to balance enterprise and channel needs, and developing shared, transparent expectations for both partners
• Driving channel performance through those strong partnerships in a highly matrixed structure
• Aligning and motivating broader organization to rally behind channel success
• Working with our Marketing organization to develop a robust set of go to market plans and messaging, particularly around competitive positioning

Become a strong and respected member of the extended Agero leadership group by:

• Being an active and productive voice in enterprise level discussions at the leadership group and board level, and providing channel perspective and expertise while remaining open to broader enterprise interests
• Providing a sought-after opinion on key strategic, organizational and operational issues facing the business, including three-year planning, annual planning, capital allocation and other strategic planning efforts

DESIRED OUTCOMES

• Building a world class client success team that drives meaningful partnerships with marquee brands
• Material bottom line growth of 50% over 3-5 years from pricing to value and relationship expansion
• Introduction of higher margin (> 50%) solutions into existing client base

IDEAL EXPERIENCE 

• Established Leader with 10-15 years of commercial leadership experience in a Tech enabled services business
• Track record of leading teams to build sustainable top and bottom line growth
• Strong track record of delivering B2B2C commercial results with complex customer relationships
• Experience leading effectively in a matrixed organization
• Experience with Product Strategy/Product Development is a plus
• OEM or Auto Experience
• Bachelor’s degree required, MBA or other relevant advanced degree, highly preferred

CRITICAL LEADERSHIP CAPABILITIES

Driving Results

• Enables higher performance by improving approaches based on calculated risks and benefits
• Benchmarks own performance against industry best practices
• Proactively seeks to improve processes and implement best in class solutions, raising quality and productivity in a calculated way
• Identifies new processes and/or systems to improve productivity and/or make the business more efficient

Collaborating and Influencing

• Negotiates with a genuine give-and-take approach, where both act as true peers and decisions are shared
• Spends time identifying all stakeholders necessary and meets or connects with all of them, neglecting no one to shape an informed decisionIdentifies opportunities to build relationships that will help others achieve their objectives and reaches out to those people or new people

Leading People

• Communicates long-term direction and collaborates with team on how to reach it
• Delegates strategic objectives to the whole team with clear and explicit intent; knows the precise level of challenge and how individual team members will handle it
• Sets up forums or practices to reinforce independent and open communication among the team members
• Holds people accountable for their commitments, providing clarity and outlining in advance implications of both successfully meeting or exceeding goals, as well as missing goals
• Builds an organizational model that provides growth opportunities for the team
• Aligns account relationship maps with various individuals within the channel and broader org

OTHER PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

• Excellent communication, negotiation and influencing skills
• A person of unquestionable integrity, moral character and ethics; trustworthy and sincere
• High personal standards and a competitive spirit; a winning attitude and drive for success; results-oriented
• A self-starter; ability to be self-motivated and self-directed while staying on course with overall company objectives
• An individual who demonstrates respect for all levels of employees