SUMMARY: The Executive Director of Strategic Accounts is a senior sales leadership role within Worldwide that is responsible for driving long-term revenue growth by building and managing strategic accounts, long-term client relationships, and developing key business relationships. The role requires a strong focus on new business development with targeted accounts, in addition to closely managing and expanding existing strategic partnerships. In addition, the role will collaborate closely with the VP, Strategic Accounts and associated leadership team to achieve team goals that are aligned with the organization’s strategic objectives and help to support the team’s success/progress and ensures all objectives are being met or trending toward success on a regular basis. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record in building, growing, and managing strategic accounts in the clinical research or health sciences industries.

The individual must be able to navigate complex strategic accounts to understand broader procurement outsourcing processes and therapeutic alignment within each organization to drive results; develop detailed business plans for each targeted account to initiate new client relationships and drive growth in established ones; be a key partner to internal stakeholders across all business units and services areas to successfully manage the relationship; design and deliver powerful solution-driven capabilities and proposal defense presentations in collaboration with highly skilled clinical and operation personnel; co-lead the creation of and ultimately support governance responsibilities in close partnership with operations.

RESPONSIBILITIES:
Tasks may include but are not limited to:

• Collaborates closely with the VP, Strategic Accounts to support the team’s success/progress and ensures all objectives are being met or trending toward success on a regular basis through appropriate level of support in mentoring/coaching to achieve both individual and team goals.
• Achieve individual targets, inclusive of revenue and sales objectives, through proactive sales and marketing of Worldwide’s services to assigned clients.
• Drives strategic market development integrating deeper and broader within the assigned accounts to gather competitive intelligence and customer insights to better lead strategy discussions with our clients.
• Develop and implement tailored business plans that are specifically geared to the development, growth, and retention of each assigned strategic account
• Acts as the lead contact for the strategic account and partner closely with operations to support the development, growth, and governance requirements for each assigned client.
• Create and manage contact bridging and organizational charts, and lead relationship building initiatives
• Supporting the creation of appropriate governance structure and playing a key role in respective oversight meetings, i.e JOCs, EOCs, quarterly business reviews.
• Support the relationship between both Worldwide and strategic account to ensure lessons learned, best practices, and efficiencies are tracked across all Therapeutic Areas.
• Ability to Create, Lead and Manage key workstream and initiative programs to build Partnership collaboration and process improvement
• Actively engage senior management and critical internal stakeholders in all major business presentations and discussions related to these targeted, strategic accounts on Initial Entry Strategies, Requests For Information (RFI), Master Service Agreements (MSA), Preferred Provider Agreements (PPA), and Rate Card discussions.
• As it pertains to new business opportunities, the strategic account director is responsible for leading the strategy and implementation of each client meeting, inclusive of bid defenses, to drive new revenue for Worldwide.
• Responsible for aiding the development of project proposals including but not limited to communicating with clients, internal Project Directors and Project Managers and providing text and supporting study budget reviews..
• The strategic account director should have and maintain general intelligence on all aspects of their strategic account, including knowledge of their pipeline, press releases, corporate objectives and an understanding of Worldwide’s key competitors, their services, and pricing.
• Coordinates and attends trade shows including making exhibition arrangements, organizing meetings, and hospitality suite arrangements. Ensures that trade show activities run smoothly and are within budget.
• Make own travel as needed to pursue new business and maintain client relationships. Complies with the Worldwide travel policies.
• Provide daily updates to the Worldwide Sales Force Automation Client Contact and Mailing Database (CRM).
• Able and willing to travel throughout assigned geographical territory as well as nationally and internationally
• Requires independent judgment and understanding of corporate goals and policies.
• Perform other duties as assigned by management and as necessary to meet business challenges.

The duties and responsibilities listed above are representative of the nature and level of work assigned and are not necessarily all-inclusive.

OTHER SKILLS AND ABILITIES:

• Ability to work independently and under pressure without supervision
• Excellent communication skills with a high degree of professionalism
• Good organizational skills; ability to prioritize, delegate, and evaluate work.
• Strong, and effective presentation skills; ability to convincingly present features and benefits of service to clients
• Self-starter and proactive approach to meet/exceed target milestones
• Strong interpersonal skills creating and maintaining a positive dialogue with both clients and colleagues
• Excellent negotiating skills

REQUIREMENTS:

• BA/BS in business or life sciences
• MS or MBA preferred
• Minimum of twelve (12) years of sales or operational experience in CRO or health science industries
• Experience in managing large biotech/pharma accounts is preferred
• Experience in partnering with cross-functional teams and stakeholders to achieve corporate objectives
• Extensive knowledge in sales methods and practices
• Knowledgeable in the drug development process preferably gained within a CRO
• Fluent in English language - written and oral
• Familiarity with Microsoft Office and sales management software