Job opening – Director of Sales Enablement at Brocade in San Jose

Old! Outdated!

Job Title: Director of Sales Enablement
Function: Sales Enablement OEM
Location: San Jose, California, USA
Travel Requirements: Up to 25%
Position Type: Employee
Position Level: Professional

Job Description: Are you looking for a career in a high-energy, professional work environment at a company whose cutting edge technology enables the flow of the world’s digital data and on whom the high-tech world depends every day? Are you looking for a company that values and rewards your contributions, challenges you to shape your own career path, and provides top-notch personal development? If so, Brocade is the place to begin and explore your career!

Brocade is an industry leader in data center networking solutions and services that enable organizations to manage their most vital information assets. It’s no wonder that Global 500 companies rely on Brocade technology to keep their businesses running around the clock. Brocade has pioneered the technologies that enable highly reliable and secure data center connectivity. Today most of the world’s data flows through Brocade equipment and data center networks built on Brocade technology.

Sales Enablement is a vital function within Brocade with the key measurement of increasing sales pipeline acceleration through improving overall sales productivity – both sales efficiency and effectiveness. This newly created Director role will be reporting to, and working closely with, the Vice President Sales Enablement and OEM Marketing and will be responsible for leading the Sales Enablement function in Brocade and managing third-party vendors to support and integrate specific content, sales playbook and our sales training initiatives. This will be accomplished by equipping Brocade’s Field Sales with the ability to successfully sell, deliver, and support Brocade’s products, technologies, and solutions. The function will act as an integrating role between various sales and marketing areas, including sales operations, sales development/training, product marketing, field marketing and HR. The core charter of Sales Enablement in Brocade is to ensure that when a Brocade salesperson interacts with a prospect/customer they have the skills, knowledge, tools and processes required to be successful. Sales Enablement’s ultimate goal is to assist reps in accelerating the deal cycles that exists in their pipelines. This position is responsible for leading the Sales Enablement initiatives for the Field Sales roles (named account reps, territory reps, sales specialists, inside sales and partner managers) to increase the sales productivity and support the sales force transformation.

Key responsibilities will include:
• Mapping Brocade’s sales process with our customer’s buying process to understand and enhance what skills, knowledge, process and tools are required by our sales force to increase velocity and conversion rates at each stage in those processes.
• Conduct an “inventory” of current skills, processes, knowledge and processes to and work with the sales leadership team to identify strengths and areas for development.
• Development and management of the 12-18 month Sales Enablement roadmap.
• Development, delivery and training of effective sales playbooks by field sales role in tight collaboration with field sales (especially first-line managers), sales operations, education and product marketing.
• Updating of playbooks as needed based on feedback from the field and shifting market demands.
• Help in the development of a first-line managers’ development program to ensure they have the skills, knowledge, processes and tools required to develop, mentor, coach and lead their sales teams effectively.
• Development and delivery of a comprehensive on-boarding program through direct and third-party resources in tight collaboration with HR and Education.
• Development of role-specific recurrent virtual and face-to-face global sales training initiatives in tight collaboration with sales leadership and education.
• Tight collaboration with the Technical Enablement Manager who owns the enablement of the technical pre-sales community
• Partner with sales leadership, HR and education to establish a sales competency and assessment framework to ensure individual sales representatives and first line sales manager’s training and sales enablement needs are met.
• Conduct analysis of sales productivity together with Sales Operations, establish metrics and objectives for sales enablement and make recommendations for increasing sales productivity in other relevant functions.
• Drive in a measurable way significant sales productivity increases for Brocade’s Field Sales roles.
• Utilize and leverage sales technology tools (e.g. pipeline analysis within CRM) for reporting and benchmarking.
• Help in the selection and deployment of technologies to be used by the field-force to increase efficiency and effectiveness.
• Regularly spend time in the field with managers and reps to understand the “field reality” and build sales enablement deliverables to meet their needs.
• Build a team to ultimately manage 5+ direct reports
Qualifications/Job Responsibilities: BS/BA Required. Masters or MBA degree preferred. Minimum of 10-15 years of sales/sales operations/sales enablement experience with global high tech B2B organizations.

Knowledge/Experience:

Direct Field Sales and Field Sales Management experience and proven track record required (quota carrying)
Experience implementing successful sales process/methodology/sales playbook initiatives.
Experience working cross-functionally and with third-party vendors to develop effective sales playbooks
Experience building effective field sales on-boarding and sales training programs.
Experience with Salesforce.com and sales enablement platforms (SAVO, Kadient, SANT)
Ability to create and track metrics which demonstrate constant increases in sales productivity

Skill Areas:

Strategic planning and thinking.
Creative problem solving skills.
Ability to break down complex problems in a simplified way.
Creative thinking and ability to innovate
A passion for the profession of sales.

Program Management:

Planning, coordinating and tracking a complex set of readiness initiatives and training initiatives (both introduction and on-going implementation).
Developing and managing simplified ways to run complex tasks

Third-Party Vendor Management:

Establish of a key set of portfolio providers, structuring of engagements, management of SOWs, etc

Budgeting and Financial Management:
Development and management of budgets for sales readiness activities. Conduct pipeline analytics to benchmark and measure the effectiveness of various programs.

Leadership Areas:

Business Leadership Skills: Strong, team-oriented leadership skills. Able to frame and confront issues and make tough decisions. Self-directed with ability to work autonomously.
Communication Skills: Exceptionally strong communicator equally adept at communications strategy and execution, with the ability to craft a full range of clear, high-impact communications. Ability to communicate in an open and authentic manner in all situations
Influencing and Interpersonal Skills: Able to establish and build close working relationships. Strong personal credibility and counseling skills. Team-oriented planner and decision-maker. Able to creatively drive consensus