Wanted: Sales Director

(Credit is given where credit is due. Our VP, Carrier Relations wrote this description.)

//Billy

The Company:

mywaves is revolutionizing the world of user generated content and mobile entertainment by mobilizing all video on the web. We are adding an insane number of users from around the world every day, and there are already tens of thousands of channels of content in our system…streaming out to mobile phones everywhere.

We have a killer team. Backed by a top-tier VC, mywaves is a small group of super-smart, fun-loving peeps from places like Danger, Napster, PayPal, Tivo and Yahoo. We are serial entrepreneurs who have been successful many times. We know this is a marathon, not a sprint. And we are building a company, not just a product … so we are keen to continue hiring great people who want to have a serious impact and love getting things done.

The Position:

Title: Sales Director

You’re a gadget freak. You’ve probably played with every cool new phone, game console or computer to come out in the last ten years. You send pictures from your phone and know how to program a DVR.

You’re a one-person social register. You have a zillion contacts on your IM, Myspace, Facebook and Linkedin accounts. You know the first name of every admin of every executive you deal with. You remember the kids’ names of your best customer and the birthday of the cleaning lady in your office. You hang out with CEOs, professional surfers, software hackers and reggae-band musicians. If you don’t know a specific person, you always know somebody who will.

You’re a skilled juggler. No, not little rubber balls or bowling pins, but activities: contract negotiations, conference calls, business trips, customer proposals, implementation plans, pricing schedules, and your own personal life. You’re great at all of these things.

You’re a seasoned traveler. You know the area code for Toronto, the shortcut to the taxi line at Paddington Station, the country code for Japan, the best bar in Rome. You can order a beer in five different languages, and airlines have lost your luggage on at least three different continents.

Most importantly, you’re a closer, whether in your professional or your personal life. You know what you want, and you know how work with others to help you achieve your goals. You can identify new business and create significant deals that benefit your own company as well as your customers’. You instinctively know how to build a relationships with everyone in your target organization. You don’t just sell – people buy from you.

Responsibilities:

As the mywaves carrier Sales Director, you will develop new business for mywaves within wireless operators, aggregators and resellers. You will carry an annual sales target based on recognized revenue.

You will initiate new contacts with potential customers, understand their business requirements, and create business propositions to show how mywaves can meet their needs. You will manage the sales process through complex technical organizations – from business analysis and technical evaluation through contract negotiations and launch. Post-launch, you will manage your accounts to drive revenues and new product introductions.

You will develop and maintain account targets and account plans, and manage your activities according to a standard sales pipeline methodology. (Hey, even fun companies need good processes.)

Within mywaves, you will work with our brilliant technical and operations team to understand the product and its features. You will learn the deployment cycle and technical capabilities of the infrastructure. You will also feed customer requirements back into our product management gurus so that mywaves continues to have the coolest product in the market.

You may travel from 30 to 50% of your time. Some of this travel will be international, which you probably love to do. Some of this travel may be to trade shows, which you probably do not love as much.

You will report into the VP, Carrier Relations, who is a pretty decent guy.

Qualifications:

You need to have a degree from a four-year college. A business or technical degree is desired but not essential. If you went on to graduate, business or law school, that’s even better.

You need to know about the outside world. You should be have spent extensive time outside the United States, either living, working or studying. Fluency in a major European or Asian foreign language is a big plus.

You should to be able to demonstrate outstanding verbal, analytic and written communication skills. You need to know how to use MS Office to generate your own presentations, reports and proposals. You should be a highly capable spreadsheet jockey.

Since you’ll be selling into wireless operators, it is absolutely essential that you have a fundamental understanding of their business models. You know what things like ARPU and post-paid churn mean, and what goes into cost-per-gross-add calculations. You should be able to analyze an operator’s income statement and discover what that reveals about their business.

You also need to know a few technical things about the wireless business – maybe not as an engineer, but you need to know what they are and how they’re used. In particular, you need to be familiar with consumer-facing wireless data technologies and features such as WAP, BREW, Java, Symbian, SMS and MMS.

Experience Required:

Still reading? Good. Now on to the really tough stuff. You need to have eight or more years of progressive experience in sales or business development. (Marketing or consulting experience in the wireless sector can offset up to half of that time.)

You need to have a consistent and demonstrable record of meeting and exceeding your assigned sales quota targets. You should be able to show a referenceable success in closing significant business with at least one top-tier wireless operator in the past 3 years.

You need to have extensive experience negotiating a variety of contracts. You can draft them when necessary, analyze legal and financial terms, negotiate key points with customers, and occasionally work with outside counsel.

You should also have worked in a startup – just so you know what you’re getting yourself into here at mywaves.

Desired:

OK, want to know what our perfect person looks like? Here goes…

In addition to all of the virtues listed above, you have experience working in the Qualcomm/BREW environment. You know who the major BREW operators are worldwide and how they buy mobile entertainment and games, and you still have existing and relevant contacts within these carriers.

Not perfect? It’s OK, we’re not all BREW – we do WAP and Java and Symbian and a few other things as well.

Personal Attributes:

Congratulations, wonderboy or wondergirl – you’ve made it this far. If you have met all the requirements outlined above, this part should be easy. These are the things you need to succeed in a sales role at mywaves – or practically any startup, for that matter.

You like to work in a rapidly changing environment with goals that sometimes conflict. You don’t get overwhelmed when your workload piles up – you just prioritize and get on with it. You are an independent self-starter who can take initiative and figure things out on your own when necessary. Sometimes you work extended off hours and you’re OK with that, because you always find a way to balance your work life and your personal life.

You get as excited about Monday mornings as you do about Friday nights.

Ready to jump in? Send your resume and introductory e-mail to Brian MacDonald, VP, Carrier Relations, at: jobs[at-nospam]mywaves.com

But before you do, make sure you sign up for an account at:

posted by mywaves @ 2:53 PM