Your role:

With the vision and leadership of the Director, the Sales Enablement team will quickly become the bedrock of Cars.com’s National Sales team. The National Sales Enablement Team’s (NSET) mission is to make sure the National Sales team runs efficiently and smoothly and ensure its and its clients’ success. The NSET will help the sales team generate more incremental sales while simultaneously making sure what was sold is executed flawlessly and makes our clients happy. In addition, the NSET will act as the official voice of National Sales and our clients to the rest of the organization. It will partner closely with Product Marketing, Revenue Management, the Product Teams and Research and Analytics teams (among other teams) to anticipate what our clients need and want and develop a roadmap to create and execute it. In short, NSET will partner with and support the National Sales team on pre-sale activity and post-sale optimization to improve overall productivity, client satisfaction and revenue growth. They exist to do everything needed to enable sales.

The Director position is a critical role that will develop, fine tune and lead the entire NSET team who, collectively, are instrumental in maintaining and growing a book of business of over $100M. This is an entrepreneurial role that is also broad in scope as it spans pre-sale and post-sale support, product strategy, communications, events, sales training, sales systems, sales processes, client analytics and reporting - for both direct and programmatically sold campaigns. The core of this role is to create a team of superstars and gurus who can help our sales team reach its full potential. It’s a big responsibility and professional challenge requiring a multi-talented leader who has both sales and operations leadership experience.

Primary responsibilities include the following:

• Responsible for managing and maintaining all Cars.com national committed revenue, currently north of $100M.
• Own National products, processes, training, reporting, sales communications, and sales systems. Identify opportunities for efficiency and continuous improvement.
• Interface with National Sales leadership and leadership of other partner teams regularly and act as the voice of National Sales and its clients in those interactions.
• Deep understanding of the automotive advertiser needsd, sales process with the ability to engage senior level executives in strategic meetings to ensure top down alignment regarding key performance goals, campaign strategy, competitive restraints and marketing objectives.
• Superior recruiting, hiring, training, mentoring and coaching of a high-performing, dynamic and diverse team of Sales Development, a National Sales Operations Manager, and Client Success Managers with variety of experience and skill levels. Provide strategic guidance across team.
• Consult team on pre-sale positioning and client/product match-making to help the team unlock incremental ad spend and increase revenue growth.
• Consult team on all aspects of the clients’ media campaigns after the sale, including strategic targeting, flawless implementation, optimization, and reporting to ensure client objectives are met.
• Be a resilient and confident leader who can coach the team on building new relationships, growing existing relationships and successfully maintaining (and assist in growth of) committed revenue.
• Coach team on providing best-in-class client experience and by proactively identifying and solving problems.
• Lead effort in identifying areas where Cars.com can provide more value to our clients through current campaign expansion and by leveraging data and analytics to build a case for upsell opportunities. Partner with Sales leadership counterparts to make recommendations.
• Lead and oversee collaboration of cross-functional leaders in cases of escalation to ensure client needs are met and success is achieved as quickly as possible.
• Manage and deliver National Sales’ committed revenue by ensuring forecasting accuracy, meeting client KPIs and achievement of clients’ goals. Conduct regular meetings with team to review plans and achievements against goals.
• Maintain a high level of communication and transparency with sales leadership counterparts and cross-functional leadership. Be the voice of our clients and the National Sales team to senior leadership. Socialize successes and challenges. Focus on best practices, cross-learning and project sharing.
• Lead upfront sales planning process.
• Leverage knowledge of online media, superior communication and relationship building skills, and analytical abilities to provide consultative solutions to help shape and grow our clients’ business.

REQUIRED SKILLS:

• Outstanding track record of success in sales and sales operations. Only the best of the best need apply.
• Superior mentoring, coaching and development of direct reports to enhance and expand skillsets and performance. Track record of retaining top talent.
• Organized and detail oriented. Fantastic project manager.
• Creative and resourceful visionary for products, processes and systems.
• A nimble leader who is comfortable managing multiple clients and projects concurrently, while ensuring team’s flawless campaign execution and partner operations.
• Ability to effectively manage time, prioritize tasks and work within deadlines in a fast paced, ever-changing environment. Delegate and meet deadlines.

• Ability to collaborate within a team, and alongside key stakeholders from various internal groups.

• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills, relationship building skills, analytical skills and knowledge of the automotive industry. Confident and professional, especially while interacting with clients.

• Ability to build and maintain excellent internal and external client relationships.

• Possess an understanding of the digital industry's challenges, implications, key players and offerings.
• Passionate student of online media best practices, trends, tactics, tracking and ad tech.
• High integrity, intellectual curiosity, dependable, reliable, self-motivated and a winning attitude.
• Familiarity with Salesforce and other CRM and sales systems.
• Occasional travel.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office suite.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• A Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in advertising, communications, marketing, or a related discipline is preferred, though candidates with relevant experience who hold other degrees will be considered. Top academic achievement.
• MBA from a top program a strong plus.

• Proven success in managing successful sales teams, client relationships and providing extraordinary client service at a very high level, with multi-million dollar (or billion dollar) clients. SaaS client success experience a plus.

• 10-20 years in digital advertising, digital sales, sales operations, agency media planning and/or account management

Cars.com companies are Equal Opportunity Employers