Are you ready to power the World’s connections?
If you don’t think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box - we’re looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.
About the role:
- Lead and mentor a fast-growing team of Commercial account executives.
- Work closely with the Vice President of Sales to drive Kong’s success by adding new sales opportunities to the pipeline and closing them.
- Develop and execute strategic sales plans to achieve sales targets and expand our customer base in the region.
-Lead and mentor the regional sales team, setting performance standards, and monitoring progress.
- Build and maintain strong, long-lasting customer relationships, understanding their unique needs and how Kong’s solutions can meet them.
- Partner closely with the marketing team to identify and target key accounts, and to craft compelling value propositions for Kong’s solutions.
- Collaborate with the product team to relay customer feedback and ensure our solutions are aligned with market demands.
- Negotiate contracts and close agreements to maximize profits while maintaining Kong’s standard of excellence.
- Understand the competitive market landscape and position Kong’s solutions effectively.
- Represent Kong at industry conferences, tradeshows, and networking events to enhance brand visibility and generate leads.
- Provide detailed and accurate sales forecasting, leveraging Kong’s CRM tools for sales reporting and pipeline management.
- Recruit, onboard and ramp up new hires effectively
- And any additional tasks required by the manager.
What you’ll bring to Kong:
- Minimum of 10 years of sales experience in the technology sector, with at least 2 years in a leadership role in a startup environment.
- Strong understanding of the API management space, cloud services, and the broader technology landscape.
- Experience building and leading high-performance sales teams at a high-growth SaaS company, selling a complex technical product and, ideally, experience selling inside of a consumption-based revenue model.
- Experience in successfully selling SaaS solutions in a field sales capacity.
- Experience accurately forecasting and managing pipelines. A history of scaling teams quickly, with knowledge of effectively recruiting, training and ramping new hires.
- The ability to work cross-functionally, partnering closely with marketing, enablement, operations and other organisations within the company.
- Outstanding verbal and written communication skills.
- Strong understanding of the API management space, cloud services, and the broader technology landscape.
About Kong:
Kong is THE cloud native API platform with the fastest, most adopted API gateway in the world (over 300m downloads!). Loved by developers and trusted with enterprises’ most critical traffic volumes, Kong helps startups and Fortune 500 companies build with confidence – allowing them to bring solutions to market faster with API and service connectivity that scales easily and securely.
83% of web traffic today is API calls! APIs are the connective tissue of the cloud and the underlying technology that allows software to talk and interact with one another. Therefore, we believe that APIs act as the nervous system of the cloud. Our audacious mission is to build the nervous system that will safely and reliably connect all of humankind!
For more information about Kong, please visit konghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter.
We are an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.