Business Planning Director

Company Description

Guardant Health is a leading precision oncology company focused on guarding wellness and giving every person more time free from cancer. Founded in 2012, Guardant is transforming patient care and accelerating new cancer therapies by providing critical insights into what drives disease through its advanced blood and tissue tests, real-world data and AI analytics. Guardant tests help improve outcomes across all stages of care, including screening to find cancer early, monitoring for recurrence in early-stage cancer, and treatment selection for patients with advanced cancer. For more information, visit guardanthealth.com and follow the company on LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and Facebook.

Job Description

The primary purpose of the Director of Business Planning is to serve as an in-house consultant proactively assisting, informing, and advising the VP of Sales in all areas affecting operations, effectiveness, and performance of the sales force.  The Director of Business Planning will support the sales leadership team in managing alignment and communication with HQ-based functions such as training, analytics, sales operations, customer experience, marketing, HR, legal/compliance, medical affairs, etc.   The Director of Business Planning will assist with shaping and supporting execution of sales tactical plans, including operationalizing marketing and sales strategies, collaborating with key stakeholders across the commercial team, ensuring smooth operation of the day-to-day dynamics of the business. 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities 

• Key priorities
  • Serve as the cross-functional voice of sales leadership in ongoing initiatives across the division, including development, refinement, and rollout of strategies and tactical plans that drive effectiveness of the sales team.  Proactively identify and resolve roadblocks throughout these initiatives
  • Operationalize brand strategies through coordination with sales leadership  
  • Prepare and/or deliver presentations to leadership (sales trends, operational efficiencies, execution, resource use, budgets, etc.)
  • Obtain and synthesize feedback and input from multiple stakeholders along with primary and secondary data sources to drive strategic decision-making
• Secondary priorities
  • Develop staff meeting agendas  
  • Monitor total field sales spend and support sales leadership with staying within budget  
  • Manage all brand and operational communications to the sales force  
  • Support and collaborate on the design and execution of large internal meetings with the planning teams (National Sales Meeting, Area level meetings, etc.)  
• Managerial responsibilities
  • Act as sales liaison to all key internal stakeholders for day-to-day tactical execution  
  • Problem solve day-to-day issues/needs and be accountable for smooth operation of field sales team  
  • Support efforts to ensure field sales team understands and adheres to compliance guidelines through communication, training, reporting  

Qualifications

• 5+ years of experience in healthcare; prior experience with primary care physicians is highly desired
• Previous experience in either management consulting applied to pharma or biotech, or direct experience in the industry in an analytical role (e.g., Marketing Science & Forecasting, Sales Operations & Analytics, Financial Planning & Analytics)
• Previous experience working in, or directly interfacing with a commercial field force
• Demonstrated ability to leverage insights to build and refine strategies 
• Exceptional verbal, written, communication, and presentation skills  
• Ability to maintain and organize an outstanding level of market, customer, distribution, and product knowledge necessary to support field