Senior Director, Sales Enablement

Here at Appian, our core values of Respect, Work to Impact, Ambition, and Constructive Dissent & Resolution define who we are. In short, this means we constantly seek to understand the best for our customers, we go beyond completion in our work, we strive for excellence with intensity, and we embrace candid communication. These values guide our actions and shape our culture every day.  When you join Appian, you'll be part of a passionate team that's dedicated to accomplishing hard things.

As the Head of Field Excellence Programs, you will play a pivotal role in driving the success of our customer-facing, revenue-generating teams by building and leading a team of Field Excellence Program Managers. The Head of Field Excellence Programs is expected to be a player coach and grow the team over time based on company needs and resources.

Your leadership will be instrumental in aligning and streamlining the end-to-end experiences of sellers and buyers profitably and at scale. Your success will be measured by both direct and scaled influence over growth and profitability metrics, such as pipeline added, revenue growth rate, win rate and sales efficiency.

Your responsibilities will encompass program planning and leadership; field enablement and deal support; buyer enablement in partnership with marketing and Sales Operations; cross-functional partnerships with marketing, product and other teams; and continuous improvement.

The Head of Field Excellence Programs must be able to work in a highly-cross functional, fast-paced environment, and have a passion for relationship building, with strong interpersonal and stakeholder management skills, including introducing and defending new ideas to senior stakeholders.  

This is a full-time position, based at Appian's Headquarters in McLean, VA, reporting to the SVP, Global Field Excellence.

Key Responsibilities:

• Leadership alignment: Work with Sales leadership and the field to identify and prioritize opportunities for growth and profitability by optimizing the end-to-end buyer and seller journeys.

• Key Sales Programs: Lead and operationalize programs that organize cross-functional teams around key organizational objectives.

• Operating model: Build a global framework that enables the Sales organization to drive a consistent narrative, methodology and process while creating opportunities for velocity and autonomy within regional teams.

• Journey management: Build and manage a roadmap of Field Excellence programs to roll out the operating model. Programs typically include (1) the development, piloting and refinement of go-to-market playbooks and best practices through “real-life” revenue-generation activities (including pressure testing with customers), and (2) field enablement at scale that drives high seller and buyer adoption, and measurable results.

• Team leadership: Hire and lead a high-performing team of agile Field Excellence Program Managers who will support specific functions (e.g., Direct Sales, Renewals and Presales).

• Team performance: Foster a team culture that includes results-focus, high accountability, buyer and seller-centricity, sense of urgency, high integrity, and an optimistic and positive environment.

• Field enablement planning: Build a field enablement plan that addresses the specific needs of revenue-generating, customer-facing teams, allows scaling with both regional and language coverage in mind, and drives the onboarding of new employees with efficient ramp-up times.

• Field enablement: Equip revenue-generating, customer-facing teams with the tools, content, and information necessary to sell more effectively and efficiently. This includes: standardized commercial messages and talking points, solution/ industry/ persona-specific sales plays, business value assessments (pre and post-sales), collaboration around RFP and proposals, customer-first QBRs, competitive intelligence and value-based customer success stories.

• Buyer enablement planning: Foster the development of buyer enablement plans, often in the form of cross-functional sales plays) that address the needs of specific Ideal Customer Profiles and is proactively shared with buyers by the field and through self-service mechanisms (e.g., website, portals, etc.).

• Deal support: Provide advice and support on complex sales situations for strategic accounts and high-value deals (both new logos and renewals), both through back-