Sales Manager

Director of Alliance Sales

Reports to Vice President Revenue and Customer Experience

THE SHORT VERSION

We're a nationally recognized, industry award-winning managed security service provider. We are known for custom scope and service design innovation to ideally suit the needs of enterprise clients. We sell complex, ongoing security services, not a box or a license, and we sell exclusively through other people's brands: channel partners, resellers, manufacturers, and distributors. They put their name on it; we build and run it. Our reps win by getting so close to their counterpart rep at the partner that the partner sells us like it's theirs. The Director of Alliance Sales will need to bring a real sales operating model with them and drive the rhythm of it themselves, not inherit one and hope it holds.

That team has real talent but no operating rhythm right now. We need a player-coach who will build the discipline it's never had, while staying in the field on large deals as a teaching exercise, not managing from a distance.

What You'd Actually Be Doing

Running the team, day to day. You'll start with four to five alliance reps, with room to grow the team as demand dictates. You're setting their pipeline standards and teaching them how to actually work a channel relationship, not just have one on their contact list, with real urgency, because time kills all opportunity; part of the job is teaching them how to create and sustain momentum. You'll own the 1:1s and forecast reviews and give them the teeth they need. That cadence exists today, but it hasn't gotten the attention it deserves because it's been layered onto a leader already stretched across too much. You also won't be burdened with the broader add-on and expansion sales motion; that belongs to a separate growth team. The one exception to the rule is that add-on opportunities identified and planned during the first 12 months of a new customer's life cycle can be reserved for your reps, so long as they are mapped out and agreed upon at the original selling time. After that window, growth ownership shifts to the dedicated growth team.

Selling, yourself. This isn't a hide-behind-the-dashboard leadership job. Your number isn't a separate quota stacked on top of the team's; it's a slight override tied to the collective group's performance. Your personal selling time is concentrated on large deal pursuit, working the deal alongside your reps as a teaching exercise: how to build momentum, shape a complex deal, and get it to close, in the room, not from a distance.

Building the muscle that doesn't exist yet. You will build strategic account and channel plans for our priority partners, including joint planning that sets real, mutual targets instead of a handshake agreement. That kind of planning largely doesn't exist today, so you will be building it from close to zero.

Owning the partner relationship, hands-on. You are the main face of our organization to our channel. Partners come to you as the trusted, go-to leader who helps them execute and hit their own numbers, not just someone they call when something breaks. Your VP is responsible for the scouting of new strategic partners and manufacturer alliances. Your job starts at the handoff. You take a signed partner and turn it into a producing one. That means selling the channel itself every day, just as hard as you sell the service, so every partner rep walks away believing there's no better partner in the market to be aligned with. Our services are too complex for a partner rep to master and sell on their own. That's exactly why we call our sellers "alliance reps." Partner reps trust and depend on them to be right there in the room, doing the technical and consultative heavy lifting side by side through the sale. You make sure Marketing, Ops, Engineering, and the deal desk give your reps what they need to be that resource. One of our channel partners is a large, nationally recognized organization we've worked with for 20 years, and we've built that relationship on a reputation as a loyal, supportive outsourcing partner. Real engineering resourcing. Real incentives. Real marketing development funds. Not just a logo on a partner page. You're stewarding relationships like that one and building others to become successful.

Making the forecast trustworthy. Pipeline and forecasts live in Salesforce, accurately, every week. In a services business, this isn't just a reporting exercise: an accurate pipeline is what triggers operational headcount, so a sloppy forecast doesn't just skew a board deck, it under- or over-staffs the team that has to deliver the work.

What Makes This Genuinely Hard, and Interesting

You're not selling a product with a name on the box. You're selling a capability that disappears into someone else's brand. That requires reps who build trust fast with people they don't control, and it requires a leader who can teach that skill rather than just tell people to "build relationships." If you've only ever managed direct sellers, this will feel different. If you've sold or led through indirect channels before, you already know exactly what we mean.

You're also inheriting a team with real industry experience, including time at our competitors. What they need isn't more experience; it's an operating rhythm and a clear picture of what good looks like: urgency, bias to action, and real accountability, holding themselves to the commitments they made, with gusto, not pushing today's work to tomorrow, and always hunting for the shortest distance to yes. That's the standard you're setting, and it means the first 90 days of visible impact are almost entirely in your hands.

It's also a genuinely interesting moment to be doing it: some of our newest services are industry firsts, which means you and your team get to bring partners real news instead of a me-too pitch.

How We Win

We're not a formal, buttoned-up shop, and we don't win by running the prettiest process. We win "ugly" as often as we win pretty. This is humanized, entrepreneurial selling, where you and your reps co-create the solution with the prospect and the partner rather than executing a script. If you're most comfortable with a rigid, by-the-book process, this won't feel like home.

This Is a Services Leadership Role, Not a Product Leadership Role

This distinction matters and we screen hard for it. Selling a security product, a box, an appliance, a license renewal, is a fundamentally different motion than selling an ongoing, complex managed security service where the customer is trusting you with their SOC, their monitoring, their incident response, for years at a time. Product sales leaders are used to a transactional cycle: configure, quote, close, move on. Service sales leadership means understanding recurring revenue, service delivery handoffs, renewal and expansion economics, and how a customer's risk and trust compound or erode over the life of a contract.

We need someone who has led teams selling services, not product, ideally at an MSSP, MSP, security systems integrator, security professional services organization, or comparable complex managed-services environment. If your background is entirely product or point-solution sales leadership, this isn't the right seat, even with strong cyber credentials.

What You Bring

• 6 8 years selling cyber security or managed security services at the enterprise level, and a real track record of carrying and hitting your own number
• 3 5+ years leading a services sales team specifically, not product or point-solution sales, ideally at an MSSP, MSP, security systems integrator, security professional services organization, or comparable complex managed-services organization
• Deep, current knowledge of the cyber security landscape and the threats these services are built to address; you shouldn't need a glossary
• Fluency in services economics: recurring revenue, renewals, expansion, and how a long-term customer relationship is built and protected, not just a deal that closes once
• Fluency in channel operations, including MDF programs, incentive design, and engineering resourcing, and a real sense of what makes sellers want to work with a partner instead of just putting the partner on the shelf
• Experience selling through someone else: channel, alliance, private-label, or white-label motions where the end customer wasn't buying your brand
• Comfort with Salesforce as the operating system of the business, not an afterthought
• The instinct to build structure where none exists, rather than waiting to be handed a process
• Creativity, and a tolerance for, and genuine excitement about, complex solutions
• A desire to help create industry-first success in the latest AI and non-human identity arenas
• A high tolerance for ambiguity, not because you let things slide, but because you love the freedom it gives you to find the winning solution

How We'll Know It's Working

Within the first few months, this team should have a real cadence, real account plans on the priority partners, and a forecast you trust because you built the discipline behind it, while you're personally closing business alongside them.