Hybrid Commercial Sales Manager

at WRU - Welsh Rugby Union

• Job title: Commercial Sales Manager
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Mid level, Senior
• Salary: £40,000 per year
• Degree requirement: No Education Requirement
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Cardiff, United Kingdom

About the role

• Commercial Sales Manager at WRU responsible for building partnerships and sales. Focused on maximizing commercial growth across rugby ecosystem with emphasis on hospitality sales during peak events.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain a healthy and vibrant sales pipeline to convert sales leads into new business to ensure the agreed budgets and targets are met.
• Desktop research to identify potential sales leads.
• Support in the identification and documentation of a real time and up to date list of all available partnerships inventory so that it is clear what is available to be sold.
• Ensure the relevant system is kept up to date.
• Support in establishing a clear and agreed rate card for the available inventory.
• Support in the development of a commercial strategy as to how the inventory is to be packaged, taken to market and sold.
• Use data sources, desktop research and industry knowledge and networks to identify target lists of clients and drive a coordinated approach to selling to these clients, tracking and recording updates in the outreach process.
• Support in the process of ensuring the correct systems and processes are in place to track the sales pipeline and capture all contact details for sales targets (e.g. management of a B2B database for lead generation).
• Identify opportunities for creating bespoke commercial partnership proposals.
• Work with the commercial team on the creation and ongoing maintenance of a suite of templated sales materials that can be quickly and easily refined to apply to any sales opportunity (e.g. WRU intro deck, sales decks, rights package summaries, etc).
• Direct outreach to potential clients to setup sales meetings.
• Support in the preparation of sales materials for such meetings, with support from the wider team.
• Work with commercial agencies engaged by the WRU Group to support Partnership Sales, as relevant.
• Drive sales opportunities through to the signing of contracts.
• Ensure smooth and detailed handover of sold opportunities to the Partnerships team to enable them to deliver the contracted rights.
• Support the Partnerships team as required, especially as it relates to ensuring the partnerships team are fully briefed on the rights that have been sold to partners.
• Support the hospitality sales team to build and maintain a healthy and vibrant sales pipeline and to convert sales leads into new business particularly during peak hospitality sales periods throughout the year.
• Ensure all sales activities and pipeline opportunities are recorded centrally to maintain a full customer database that can support forecasting.

Requirements

• Demonstrated sales and business development experience, ideally in sport partnerships and/or hospitality.
• Direct sales / outreach experience.
• Demonstrable experience of developing relationships with key buying decision makers in local and national businesses.
• Understanding and experience of commercial / sponsorships rights.
• Experience of presenting at introductory and other meetings to a variety of stakeholders.
• Ability to balance competing demands and requirements to find mutually acceptable solutions.
• Experience of contract negotiation and contract management.
• Self-motivated, proactive and driven to achieve results.
• The ability to work on own initiative effectively, both as an individual and as part of a team.
• Excited by challenges and motivated to find solutions that work for all parties.
• Excellent attention to detail.
• Excellent IT skills, specifically Microsoft package.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills are essential.
• Strong interpersonal and relationship management.
• Ability to communicate and work through the medium of Welsh is desirable.

Benefits

• Salary Sacrifice Pension (5% employee contribution, matched by WRU)
• Life assurance scheme
• WRU Group Ticket Allocation (in line with ticketing policy)
• One additional paid day off (birthday leave)
• Employee assistance programme
• Team Tactics – hybrid working arrangements
• Free stadium parking and gym
• WRU Group store and tour discounts
• WRU Group partnership offers
• Eye Care Voucher Scheme
• Cycle to Work Scheme