Role: Sales (Capture) Lead - Financial Services

Level: CL6

Location: London

Accenture is a leading global professional services company, providing a broad range of services in strategy and consulting, interactive, technology and operations, with digital capabilities across all of these services. With our thought leadership and culture of innovation, we apply industry expertise, diverse skill sets and next-generation technology to each business challenge.

We believe in inclusion and diversity and supporting the whole person. Our core values comprise of Stewardship, Best People, Client Value Creation, One Global Network, Respect for the Individual and Integrity. Year after year, Accenture is recognized worldwide not just for business performance but for inclusion and diversity too.

We seek a Senior Manager with experience of originating and leading large and complex (in excess of $15m) sales processes within the Financial Services Sector.

“Across the globe, one thing is universally true of the people of Accenture: We care deeply about what we do and the impact we have with our clients and with the communities in which we work and live. It is personal to all of us.” – Julie Sweet, Accenture CEO

As a team:

The UKI Sales Team is responsible for originating, selling, and closing complex contracts typically >$10m in value. It is a dynamic team made up of Sales Captures and Bid Managers who lead and support opportunities that often combine the full breadth of Accenture service offerings. We work with most of the major clients across the Financial Services Sector as well as working with new players in the industry.

You will play a senior role in leading and developing an exciting and vibrant team who bring to bear the best of sales at Accenture.

What responsibilities will you have?

• Originate, shape, and transact large and complex sales opportunities, aligning Accenture’s value proposition to the strategic ambitions of our FS clients leading deals over $15m.
• Manage sales across the full opportunity cycle, including origination, seeking qualification and funding approvals internally, creating value propositions and submitting proposals, shaping client pitches, participating in negotiations, and closing opportunities.
• Own, develop, and manage relationships with key buyers and decision makers at existing and / or new clients.
• Collaborate with Accenture ecosystem partners.
• Commercial shaping of large and complex opportunities. Analyse and understand the client’s financial position and key priorities to determine key commercial terms and pricing mechanism, whilst delivering a strong Accenture internal business case.
• Lead the planning and execution of client pitches.
• Articulate compelling value propositions through contributing to the authoring of executive summaries which emphasise and evidence Accenture’s differentiation.
• Author responses to strategically important RFP questions (for example in describing the commercial model).
• Manage Accenture approvals to build internal support for opportunities. This will include storyboarding, creating, and presenting written / visual content to senior internal stakeholders.
• Create and execute on winning sales strategies to ensure competitive advantage is built and maintained, including but not limited to developing:
  • Value proposition: How we plan to shape our commercial and technical solution, and which points we emphasise to differentiate ourselves from the competition.
  • Relationship strategy: Determine which interventions need to happen to build key relationships with our clients and ecosystem partners. Develop a plan that describes how, when and by whom these interventions will be completed.
  • Competitive analysis: What we see our competitors doing in the market relative to the opportunity we are working on, and what mitigations we can put in place to strengthen our approach / solution.
• Coordinate large, global, and diverse teams (e.g., >20 people) to deliver to often compressed client procurement timelines.
• Develop junior talent within the sales team through active coaching.
• Participate in and help to prepare for negotiations for MSAs and Statements of Work.
• Manage pipeline and CRM records for your allocated opportunities / portfolio.

What skills & experience are we looking for?

• Proven experience creating, and leading large, complex, strategic sales opportunities.
• Experience of selling into FS would be advantageous.
• Able to demonstrate knowledge of, and a passion for the FS Sector.
• Can articulate key trends and how technology and professional services firms can capitalise on these trends.
• Exposure to developing client relationships at a mid-management level. C-Suite exposure would be advantageous.
• Experience collaborating with industry ecosystem partners.
• Able to speak and write clearly, logically, and concisely. Candidate will be expected to contribute to the authoring of client deliverables and executive summaries.
• Experience in planning, structuring and critically evaluating client pitches.
• Able to demonstrate an understanding of commercial concepts and principles for large opportunities, for example (but not limited to), P&L, cash flow, pricing mechanisms, payment terms, inflation terms, revenue recognition, resale, and performance frameworks/regimes. Should be able to understand how key commercial terms can benefit the client and impact the Accenture internal business case. Will be able to point to exposure to different pricing mechanisms based on client buying priorities.
• Exposure to negotiating large contracts. Understands key legal concepts (e.g., warranties, liabilities etc.) and can evaluate the operational / commercial risk posed by what could be a broad array of potential terms that are under discission.
• Evidence ability to meet personal yearly sales targets
• Programme management and team management capabilities. Experience in coordinating and bringing together opportunity teams (multi-location) to deliver to client deadlines efficiently. Experience owning an opportunity plan and effectively managing and documenting actions, decisions, and dependencies to complete key deliverables on time and to a high level of quality.
• Able to be ‘hands on’ and complete deliverables (for example business case models, executive summaries, slides for client pitches). This will require a good level of proficiency using MS Word, MS PowerPoint, and MS Excel.

What academic qualifications do you need?

Degree educated or equivalent

What’s in it for you

All of our Sales professionals receive comprehensive training covering business acumen, technical and professional skills development. We offer a variety of formal and informal training programs at every level to help you acquire and build specialised skills faster. Learning takes place both on the job and through formal training conducted online, in the classroom/virtual, or in collaboration with others. The sheer variety of work we do, and the experience it offers, provide an unbeatable platform from which to build a career.

You'll learn, grow and advance in an innovative culture that thrives on shared success, diverse ways of thinking and enables boundaryless opportunities that can drive your career in new and exciting ways

If you’re looking for a challenging career working in a vibrant environment with access to training and a global network of experts, this could be the role for you. As part of our global team, you'll be working with cutting-edge technologies and will have the opportunity to develop a wide range of new skills on the job.

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About Accenture

Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent- and innovation-led company with approximately 791,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. Our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities.

Visit us at www.accenture.com 

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement     

We believe that no one should be discriminated against because of their differences. All employment decisions shall be made without regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, citizenship status or any other basis as protected by applicable law. Our rich diversity makes us more innovative, more competitive, and more creative, which helps us better serve our clients and our communities.