The Sales Director, Public Sector position is based nominally in London, however candidates from across the UK will be welcome, the successful candidate will be responsible for leading, hiring, and mentoring a small but growing team of Public Sector (PS) sales account executives to exceed their sales annual recurring revenue (ARR) goals.

We are looking for a strong sales leader to report into our UK&I RVP and focus on building an extraordinary sales team. This leader will focus on coaching and developing the team to ensure their success through skill development, adherence to activity standards, providing inspiration, and building a highly empowered, diverse, constructive sales culture.

The PS team will focus on 4 main sales theatres, Central Government, Local Government, Higher Education and the NHS.  Our Account Executives are responsible for maintaining high activity standards; daily prospecting, pipeline growth, prospect qualification, and delivering assigned quarterly ARR targets.

Okta’s Top 5 Core Leadership Competencies are part of the deeply ingrained principles that guide all of our company’s actions. They also align strongly to our cultural cornerstones, our Okta values: love our customers, empower our people, never stop innovating, act with integrity, and maintain transparency. It’s our expectation that our managers and leaders embody these core competencies:

Builds Effective Teams: Building strong-identity teams that apply their diverse skills and perspectives to achieve common goals.
Demonstrates Self-Awareness (EQ): Using a combination of feedback and reflection to gain productive insight into personal strengths and weaknesses.
Develops Talent: Developing people to meet both their career goals and the organization’s goals.
Drives Results: Consistently achieving results, even under tough circumstances.
Strategic Mindset: Seeing ahead to future possibilities and translating them into breakthrough strategies.

As the Public Sector Sales Director at Okta you will:

• Lead the team of Senior Account Executives in achieving individual and team quota
• Support direct reports by participating and leading in client and prospect meetings or engaging other resources as required.
• Ongoing mentoring and development of a sales team which includes recruiting, hiring and mentoring new reps.
• Conduct weekly forecast meetings.
• You will be reporting on sales activity and forecast to senior sales management.
• Consistently monitoring the sales activity of the team, and tracking the results.
• Quote, negotiate, and assist sales reps in closing highly complex transactions through the development of executive-level relationships with key prospects.
• Manage daily and weekly activities, pipelines, forecasts and closed deals to ensure above-quota results based on successful pipeline management.
• Coordinate and lead weekly and monthly one-on-one and team-wide pipeline reviews, meetings and training sessions to ensure ongoing improvement.
• Work closely with an extended team of pre-sales, services, training, legal, renewals business partners.

You could be a great fit for this role if you have:

• 5 years sales leadership experience in the UK public sector space.
• Have achieved demonstrable success in leading a high-performing sales team within a SaaS sales environment.
• You must be an Influencer and Change Maker with the skills to adapt appropriately to a fast moving situation, whilst demonstrating a history of successfully building and maintaining trusting relationships with colleagues and customers.
• Experience of leading, coaching, and developing senior account executives.
• Previous experience of setting KPI’s, performance reviews and individual development plans.
• Successful track record in a high value sales environment.
• Excellent presentation and listening skills.
• Should be able to thrive in a very rapidly changing environment.
• Proven ability to successfully hire and train new sales representatives and coach lower performers through to success.
• Successful history of closing business, and over-achieving quota.
• Demonstrated ability to accurately and boldly forecast sales results.
• Ability to work in a fast-growing, exciting environment.
• You must demonstrate the ability to express ideas using strong listening and communication skills to influence and gain buy-in from your team, leadership, customers, and all your stakeholders.

• The ability to travel, including customer & partner sites, and visits to our EMEA HQ in London, and the US.

 It would be advantageous to have:

• Understanding of and experience with Identity & Access Management, Single Sign-on and API and CIAM based solutions. 
• BSc/BA degree or equivalent (preferred but not essential).

Why us?

Okta is a progressive company that values you as an individual. We are committed to career progression, employee wellbeing and making a positive impact in our local communities.

Okta is rethinking the traditional work environment, providing our employees with the flexibility to be their most creative and successful versions of themselves, no matter where they are located.  We enable a flexible approach to work, meaning for roles where it makes sense, you can work from the office, or from home, regardless of where you live.  Okta invests in the best technologies and provides flexible benefits and collaborative work environments/experiences, empowering employees to work productively in a setting that best and uniquely suits their needs.  Find your place at Okta https://www.okta.com/company/careers/.

Apply now to continue the conversation and speak with one of our recruiters.

Okta is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

#LI-VZ1