Sales Specialist Manager, Global Strategic Accounts

Global Strategic Accounts (GSA) Sales Specialist Manager

The Global Strategic Accounts (GSA) Sales Specialist Manager is responsible for leading and developing a team of Sales Specialists who support complex commercial opportunities and strategic customer relationships. This role focuses on building a high-performing team through continuous training and professional development while ensuring adherence to sales excellence standards, governance processes, and commercial best practices.

The GSA Sales Specialist Manager acts as a key partner to Sales Leadership, enabling sales teams to operate efficiently and consistently by strengthening sales support capabilities, improving pipeline governance, and driving operational excellence. This role combines people leadership, process discipline, and commercial expertise to ensure accurate deal execution, strong customer support, and scalable sales support operations.

Team Leadership & Employee Development

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of GSA Sales Specialists to ensure consistent performance, strong commercial acumen, and professional growth.
• Establish clear performance expectations and development plans aligned with organizational goals.
• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous learning within the team.

Commercial Support & Deal Execution

• Oversee the team's support of complex sales opportunities including quotations, proposals, order entry, and commercial documentation.
• Ensure high standards for quote accuracy, completeness, and compliance with company policies.
• Partner with Global Account Directors and Sales Leadership to support deal strategy and execution.
• Act as an escalation point for complex commercial issues, ensuring timely resolution and alignment with business objectives.

Sales Excellence & Process Governance

• Ensure team adherence to sales excellence standards, including opportunity management, quote accuracy, and order entry discipline.
• Drive pipeline governance by ensuring CRM data accuracy, opportunity hygiene, and forecast alignment.
• Support continuous improvement initiatives that streamline workflows and enhance the effectiveness of sales support functions.
• Promote effective use of CRM, CPQ, and ERP systems to maintain data integrity and operational efficiency.

Key Outcomes

• Maintain high quote and order accuracy rates (e.g., ?98%), minimizing rework, errors, and downstream operational impact.
• Improve turnaround time for quotes and proposals while maintaining quality and compliance standards.
• Ensure timely and effective resolution of escalations, with minimal disruption to customer experience or deal progression.
• Achieve high CRM data integrity standards, including completeness and accuracy of opportunities and pipeline data (e.g., ?95% data quality compliance).
• Improve forecast accuracy through disciplined pipeline management and alignment with sales leadership.
• Lead and deliver measurable process improvement initiatives (e.g., reduced cycle times, increased efficiency, improved user adoption).
• Drive adoption and effective utilization of CRM, CPQ, and ERP systems across the team.
• Enable scalable support for strategic accounts by improving consistency, efficiency, and quality of sales support operations.

Qualifications

• 58 years of experience in sales operations, sales support, commercial execution, or a related customer-facing function.
• 2+ years of team management experience required.
• Demonstrated success developing employees and building high-performing teams.
• Strong understanding of sales processes including pipeline management, quoting, order management, and forecasting.
• Proven ability to implement structured processes and enforce operational discipline.
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills in a matrixed organization.
• Excellent communication, coaching, and stakeholder management abilities.
• Bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering, Operations, or a related field preferred.
• Experience with CRM, CPQ, and ERP platforms (e.g., Oracle Sales Cloud or similar systems) strongly preferred.
• Advanced proficiency with Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and data analysis tools.