Remote Sales Manager at Canonical - North America — Columbus

Open source software is the new default in the enterprise, and Canonical is the new challenger to major enterprise software vendors.

We are profitable and growing our global enterprise sales organisation. We are hiring a regional sales renewal team manager in North America to lead the renewals team in the region.

We deliver better open source from the data center to cloud and edge. Our Linux distribution Ubuntu is now the leading platform for public cloud compute, and the favorite platform for software engineers, data scientists and AI developers. Our mission is to accelerate the adoption and quality of open source globally, and our goal is to ship the most software on the planet by cores.

Our customers include Global 500 enterprises and startups. We are expanding our product range from the base operating system — Ubuntu — to full enterprise solutions in infrastructure and applications. We can deliver software defined storage, private cloud solutions, container runtime environments, as well as databases, message queues, identity, observability, analytics, machine learning and web publishing capabilities. Customers love the idea that they can get security compliance and support for everything open source from a single company.

Canonical provides licensed enterprise software products, commercial support, managed services, consulting and training services to customers deploying Ubuntu or open source applications on the cloud, in their data center, or to the connected device and IoT ecosystem. We are just over 1,000 colleagues in 70+ countries and over $250m in revenue, profitable, on a steady but relentless growth trajectory. We are almost entirely distributed, with leadership spread across many countries.

We hire carefully and deliberately; our selection process is long and requires substantial work from applicants. It will take successful applicants three to six months to secure an offer. This is not a place to apply if you are in a rush to find a position — it is a worthwhile place to apply if you are ambitious and long-term in your thinking about your career.

In building our sales team, we look for five things:

• Empathy for the customer — a real understanding of customer needs, industry-specific challenges, and a desire to help customers solve their business problems
• High intellect — the ability to learn quickly, understand very complex subjects, and communicate clearly to build trust and confidence
• Passion for technology — a fascination with the state of the art from brilliant people solving hard problems, and fierce competition for large prizes
• Teamwork — a willingness to help others, to collaborate well with people from different disciplines, and to balance personal and team ambitions
• Energy — the drive to motivate oneself and others to achieve the best result for the team and our customers

Ubuntu is already very widely adopted, which gives us a credible basis for conversations in the market. Nevertheless, it requires real work for sales professionals to build on that adoption to create trusted and profitable commercial relationships with enterprises in their territory. You will need judgement as to which industries and companies are ready to go deeper with open source and Canonical, and energy to develop relationships in advance of proven interest. We expect professional practice, territory and account planning, as well as clear, complete and continuous reporting on pipeline status and activity using standard professional tools.

The successful candidate will carry an annual team bookings quota within their territory. They should be able to travel regionally for client engagements or industry conferences, and internationally for company events twice a year. They will need to coach, mentor and lead by example. Their sales representatives are expected to prospect accounts for new business, maintain and develop existing relationships, and work with colleagues and partners on account strategy.

Location: We are expanding our sales organisation globally and have open sales team manager roles in every region.

What Your Day Will Look Like

• Build and execute a territory plan to prioritize outreach and prospecting
• Allocate portions of territory and accounts to sales representatives on your team
• Identify and prioritise new logo accounts in your territory for account-based marketing and prospecting
• Ensure that sales representatives have high quality account plans for existing accounts and priority prospects
• Monitor new pipeline development by your team, through outreach, prospecting, local marketing, and industry events
• Support contract closure to meet and exceed quarterly and annual bookings targets
• Be mindful and proactive in achieving tactical and strategic objectives
• Work with customer success to identify growth opportunities
• Ensure your team maintains accurate pipeline data and forecasts within Salesforce
• Represent the company, its solutions and software

What We Are Looking For in You

• Bachelor's level degree, preferably in engineering or computer science
• Leadership and management skill
• Experience of open source technology and solutions
• Detail oriented with effective planning, organisation and reporting skill
• Experience in enterprise software or technology sales planning and execution
• Track record of achievement in sales targets and new account wins
• Self-discipline and motivation to be successful in a distributed team
• Professional written and spoken English, as well as any language appropriate for your target market
• Ability to travel for customer engagements, industry events and company events

Additional Skills of Interest

• Specific vertical experience, in particular finance, telco, health, energy, public sector, tech
• Experience speaking at conferences or industry events

What We Offer You

We consider geographical location, experience, and performance when shaping compensation worldwide. We revisit compensation annually (and more often for graduates and associates) to ensure we recognise outstanding performance. In addition to base pay, we offer a performance-driven commission structure. We provide all team members with additional benefits which reflect our values and ideals.

• Distributed work environment with twice-yearly team meetings in person
• Personal learning and development budget of USD 2,000 per year
• Annual compensation review
• Recognition rewards
• Annual holiday leave
• Maternity and paternity leave
• Employee Assistance Program
• Opportunity to travel to new locations to meet colleagues
• Priority Pass, and travel upgrades for long haul company events

About Canonical

Canonical is a pioneering tech firm at the forefront of the global move to open source. As the company that publishes Ubuntu, one of the most important open source projects and the platform for AI, IoT and the cloud, we are changing the world on a daily basis. Canonical has been a fully distributed company since its inception in 2004. Working here is a step into the future, and will challenge you to think differently, work smarter, learn new skills, and raise your game.

Canonical Is an Equal Opportunity Employer

We are proud to foster a workplace free from discrimination. Diversity of experience, perspectives, and background create a better work environment and better products. Whatever your identity, we will give your application fair consideration.