Sales Director - Financial Services

Purpose of role:

As we continue to deliver significant growth, we have an opportunity for a seasoned IT sales leader to take on a strategic leadership role – Sales Director for Financial Services.

This is an exciting opportunity for a proven, ambitious sales leader to build and manage a high-performing commercial team - growing Version 1’s reputation, relationships, and revenue across key target industries within the financial services (FSI) sector, including – Banking, Insurance & Capital Markets.

The role is best suited to a well established sales leader with the drive to lead the challenge of doubling the size of Version 1’s existing financial services business in the coming years, in line with Group growth ambitions.

The sales operation is rapidly growing and the Sales Director for Financial Services will ensure the organisational structure, sales processes and cadence are executed to high standards of excellence to ensure respective teams meet and exceed commercial targets and objectives against pipeline generation, contract closings and revenue growth.

The Sales Director for Financial Services will be part of the commercial leadership team, accountable for delivering the Revenue number for the financial services sector business, driving business growth and scaling the commercial organisation. The successful candidate will possess a proven ability to build relationships with senior customer stakeholders, understand their needs and to close large, complex deals encompassing AI, digital, data, cloud and managed services. Based on this experience through your own career, you will be able to lead and coach a team of sales professionals to drive commercial success and deliver on the Group business growth plans.

Job Responsibilities:

• Delivering the commercial outcomes for an 8-figure revenue stream the FSI business and driving double digit % growth Year on Year.
• Leading and coaching the financial services sales teams, focused on growing and protecting existing accounts and winning new business in target sub-sectors across UK & Ireland, and the US.
• Shaping the global sales strategy for financial services and driving its execution – tracking performance against targets, pivoting where necessary to capitalise on market opportunity, segmenting and expanding the customer base and embedding ways of working that focus on delivery excellence.
• Enabling the financial services sales team to develop competitive pricing/contracting strategies and shaping and signing off the commercial approach for qualified deals.
• Acting as executive sponsor for key deals and customer contracts to drive growth and maintain high levels of customer satisfaction across all financial services accounts.
• Challenging the team to introduce prospects and customers to new capabilities and innovation, shaped by our Office of the CTO (OCTO).• This will include driving the team to collaborate with Marketing, Pre-Sales and OCTO to pitch “proactive proposals” to customers to cross/up sell the breadth and depth of the Version 1 propositions portfolio to solve customer problems and secure long-term growth in strategic accounts.

• Championing a best practice approach to opportunity management – equipping the team to explore routes to market via Version 1 partners and driving excellence in sales execution and deal planning.
• Collaborating with business leaders across the Group to ensure Version 1 always presents “one voice” to the customer and that the team continuously identifies opportunities to cross/up sell the breadth and depth of our portfolio capabilities.
• Crucially, as a senior leader in Version 1, ensure the company’s Core Values and Leadership Principles are upheld and enhanced where possible.
• Ensuring all financial services contracts meet Version 1 standards and risk requirements, and awarded contracts are successfully executed in line with contractual commitments.
• Ensuring financial services sales team operate to an exemplary standard at all times – driving and presenting consistently accurate forecast sales data, maintaining high levels of data quality in CRM and bringing to bear sales process best practice.

Department: Commercial - Sales & Account Mgmt.
Function: Information Technology
Experience Level: Mid-Senior Level