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Lead a sales team at one of the PNW’s hottest tech companies
If you’re an obsessive reader of this newsletter (which you really should be, if you’re not already), you undoubtedly have at least an inkling of the world-beating dynamo that is Adaptiva, a Kirkland enterprise-IT company that helps Fortune 500 companies, the Pentagon, and other discerning customers manage their endpoint security.
Just to give you a slightly more specific sense of this company’s heft, over half of the top 20 banks in North America use Adaptiva software and services. That’s a pretty impressive book of business, I’d say.
We here at PSP have had the honor and the pleasure of placing multiple great individuals with Adaptiva, and we’re rarin’ to do it again. This time, the opening is for a Vice President/Senior Director, Technical Pre-Sales.
This role, which reports to the Chief Revenue Officer, is a senior position responsible for leading the worldwide Technical Pre-Sales and Solution Architect team – the group that stokes sales by demonstrating Adaptiva’s endpoint-management technologies to prospective customers.
This is a full-on team-management role, including hiring and on boarding new team members; the coaching and development of staff; regular one-on-one sessions; and process design and implementation. It requires close collaboration with other Adaptiva managers, notably the CRO, the Senior Director of Customer Success and the Director of Product Marketing to ensure that the team is aligned with broader sales priorities and that all internal systems for product demonstrations are functioning smoothly.
In addition, the individual in this position will need to be an expert practitioner in the team’s core function – the demonstration of Adaptiva solutions. This includes product presentations, both remotely and in person. Needless to say, this calls for superb communications and sales skills.
Other attributes the company is looking for multiple years of experience leading an international team, as well as five or more years of industry-specific background in systems management, device management, or configuration compliance. A firm grounding in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) is a must, and some experience with vulnerability-management software would be nice.
This is a hybrid position, in which one would be expected to work from home and from the Kirkland office, as needs and circumstances warrant, (potentially could be located on the east coast). There will also be some travel required, as COVID-19 restrictions continue to lift worldwide.
In all, this is a terrific opportunity for anyone who combines management skill, tech savvy, and serious sales chops. Let me know if that’s you!
PS From PSP: This announcement is yet another example of a smart company recognizing the value of keeping up work-from-home arrangements – even as the pandemic threat seems to be receding (knock on wood, cross fingers, burn sage.)
Any company tempted to do otherwise – that is, to insist that all of their people come back into the office, as if COVID had never happened – needs to bear in mind that such rigidity will have very real costs.
The true name of the game, as always, is the attraction and retention of those individuals who have the talent and the character and the work ethic to be truly valuable employees over an extended period of time. Those people are in high, high demand – and they know it.
If presented with a choice between two organizations that are evenly matched in all other respects, but one mandates that they come into the office while the other allows them to work from home much or all of the time if they so choose, which one do you think will get the nod? And over time, what does the accumulation of such individual choices mean for the respective talent profiles of these two organizations? I think the answer is pretty clear – what do you think? ###
