Sales & New Accounts Operations Manager

🎨 Who Are We?

Convelio is a licensed freight forwarding startup at the forefront of the intersection between Tech, Logistics, and the Art World. We specialize in the global shipping of high-end goods, including paintings, sculptures, and other valuable or bulky merchandise.

By leveraging our proprietary algorithm, we offer real-time shipping quotes and provide an end-to-end logistics service tailored to the unique needs of the art market. Our mission is to combine technology and tradition, making the shipping of bulky and valuable items as seamless and accessible as possible.

Our diverse customer base includes art galleries, antique dealers, auction houses, online platforms, and interior designers. With over 150 colleagues spread across Paris, London, and New York, Convelio embraces a startup and international culture. We take pride in solving complex logistics challenges for our clients, enabling both sellers and buyers in the art market. Backed by cutting-edge technology and prominent VC support, we have the global network and resources (including €30 million Series B funding in March 2022) to seize exciting market opportunities.

Visit our Career Page to learn more about joining our team! 💙

🎩 Your Role:

You will work inside our US team, reporting to the General Manager US and leading our US new customs acquisition team consisting of an expected 4-6 direct reports depending on the evolution of the business. The role is 50/50 between business development and operations. It is fundamentally about bringing in new clients who may have never heard of Convelio and giving them the very best experience of Convelio (from a support, onboarding, quoting, execution standpoint) until the point when they are effectively regular accounts and can be transferred to the logistics team.

The role requires both sales skills (even though you will have a team, you will also drive new clients personally, including cold calling and cold visits as part of the job) as well as operations skills (ensuring the first orders of these new high potential clients go as perfectly as possible).

This position is full-time and ideally based in NYC, as in-person interactions with the team and new clients are capital. Remote candidates with the ability to travel to NYC regularly will be considered. Our remote policy is 2 days in the office, but our managers are expected to go beyond this for in-person interactions with clients during the week.

We aim to put the new Ops team organisation in place for January, so we are looking for an individual who is available to start as soon as possible. The first 3 months of onboarding will happen 100% in the Operations team to fully understand operational work.

✏️ What you'll do:

(1) Lead the team

- Team management: Lead and motivate a team (including possibly hiring certain new members), ensuring that they are engaging in the right activities with our clients to meet their targets.

- Organisation structure: Shape the structure of your team, with a focus on recruitment of open roles and retention of core team members.

- Training and development: Organise trainings and feedback sessions to continuously upskill our team in both sales skills and operational knowledge. Ensure that all team members have an opportunity to learn and grow through regular professional development sessions with their manager.

(2) Drive high performance

- Targets: Be accountable for the team's targets, cascading them to individual members.

- Activities: Ensure that all priority clients are engaged appropriately.

- Outreach content: Continually improve the content necessary for the execution of prospecting efforts (pitches, email templates, scripts, tools).

- Specific operations processes appropriate to new accounts: Develop a specific understanding of each new account, create ad-hoc processes on their needs until new accounts can be transformed into regular clients and/or key accounts.

- Support your team's clients: Attend alongside your team any critical meetings to act as a senior representative of Convelio (and to provide the feedback your team will need to develop their sales skills).

- Handover to key account: Collaborate with the key account team in order to do precise handovers with no loss of information.

(3) Build the commercial strategy in the US

- Setting the strategy: Define the short-term and long-term strategy for crating new regular accounts in the US.

- Marketing and brand recognition: Take overall ownership of increasing our brand awareness in the US through partnerships, events and marketing initiatives, facilitating the acquisition of new clients.

🧑‍🎨 Your profile:

- Exceptional communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to interact effectively with customers, colleagues, and stakeholders at all levels.

- Industry / operational knowledge: Experience in the execution of international shipments for the art market is highly appreciated.

- Sales skills: Proven experience in working with highly demanding B2B clients, both in new business sales and account management.

- Team leadership and inspiration: Track record of training and mentoring teams of 1-2+ people, including team development and performance management, is highly valued. Experience in motivating a team on a daily basis, keeping energy levels high even when it’s busy, is desirable as well.

- Strategic thinking: Ability to define long-term strategies for your team, prioritise initiatives and know what’s important to focus on. Analytical mindset with the ability to take decisions based on data.

- Flexibility: You’ll need to be flexible and able to work in a dynamic and evolving environment, where new processes are constantly being developed.

🌍 What we offer:

- Play a key role in shaping the growth and the commercial strategy of the fast-developing US market at Convelio, taking ownership of both sales and operations.

- The opportunity to be part of an ambitious and innovative company aiming to transform and modernize the very traditional art logistics industry. We bring the best of both worlds, combining a tech environment with quality customer service ensuring long-term trust-based relationships.

- A supportive and dynamic work environment, where your ideas and initiatives are valued. Proactivity is the greatest asset you can bring.

- Flexible remote policy well above market standards.

- Continuous learning and development opportunities to enhance your professional growth in the art logistics domain.

⚙️ The hiring process:

- Video Interview with our Talent Acquisition team.

- In-person interview with Julien, General Manager US including an operational "quizz".

- Video Interview with Clément, co-founder and COO, and Katie, Sr Manager of Key account operations in the US.