Group Client Partner

Job Description:

A bit about us

Merkle, a dentsu company, powers the experience economy. For more than 35 years, we have put people at the heart of our approach to digital business transformation.

As the only integrated experience consultancy in the world with a heritage in data science and performance, Merkle delivers holistic, experiences that support growth, engagement, and loyalty.

Merkle's expertise has earned recognition as a "Leader" by top industry analyst firms, in categories such as digital transformation and commerce, experience design, engineering and technology integration, digital marketing, data science, CRM and loyalty, and customer data management.

With more than 16,000 employees, Merkle operates in 30+ countries throughout the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. For more information, visit www.merkle.com.

The Role

As part of our growth strategy, we are creating integrated teams and aligning clients around key verticals, including Automotive and Financial Services. We are looking for candidates to lead our teams under these verticals and own the responsibility for client retention and growth while ensuring we have high levels of client and staff satisfaction.

Candidates will have a executive level background in CRM and data, digital media, customer experience, commerce and marketing technologies (circa 10+ years' experience) with experience leading large teams to success against business targets and client requirements (both delivery and strategic). You must also have at least 10 years industry specific experience that allows them to act as an industry expert, with a clear view on the currents affecting our clients' businesses, and an ability to turn those insights into opportunities to support our growth internally and externally.

You will have themselves as individual contributors including a experience with pitch wins, but also in scaling that performance to create teams who deliver commercial value to clients and the business. The people leading these vertical portfolios will engage across our capabilities to create client solutions with quantifiable client Return on investment and profitable revenue growth for Merkle. An important part of developing the growth strategy will be a focus on cross-sell opportunities within existing clients for wider dentsu services. You will also lead pitch teams for complex multi-discipline teams working across sales, client services, strategy and solutions in delivering a client-focused outcome.

Working with the Growth Team on the growth strategy to identify new clients within their vertical and opportunities where support from the sales team is needed to create/close opportunities, they will work to shared KPI's on those identified clients. Other important metrics aligned to driving transformational growth will include revenue and GM performance, pipeline development (incl. cross-sell) and management, accuracy of revenue forecasting, staff retention and client satisfaction aligned to their vertical.

Life as a Group Client Partner

Within this role you will:

• Have passion for the customer and our services must be what gets you up in the morning. This is the cornerstone to deliver Customer Experience Marketing

Driving Client Service behaviours and outcomes is critical to the success of our business

• Be commercially responsible for growth and margin and see this as an integral part of your role. Profitability is critical and you must always be on top of your area of business

• Client satisfaction is an important metric as happy clients will trust your team with more work. You and your team will challenge the client and bring new opportunities to them as their partner

• Alongside the Client Service team, be an invaluable and extended part of the client's team. Our culture is to encourage the team to be at the client's offices to help build relationships and trust

• Be comfortable understanding the detail of solutions as part of an escalation or negotiation but also leading a pitch for a new opportunity

• Be excited by sales. This role is not about managing clients but growing clients and winning new business through new services and solutions that create outcomes for their business. This must be a craving, not a job to be done. Your KPIs are clear around revenue, margin contribution, growth and NPS. To deliver that, you must be a sales-oriented individual

• In addition to role KPIs, we expect leaders at this level to manage outcomes in our DEI initiatives and other strategic initiatives and programmes of work across the business

What we are looking for in you

• Strategic and operational experience (we anticipate circa 10+ years) working with CRM, Creative, AdTech and MarTech, databases, cloud-based solutions, data and digital, with at least 10 years of working with Automotive (FS) clients

• A collaborative, team player who puts the client needs first collaborating across the business to deliver revenue growth aligned to our clients business goals and challenges

• Evidence of personal contribution to client's growth and business growth on large accounts

• Additionally, evidence of scaling personal achievement in to leading large Client Service teams to success for clients and the business. This includes demonstrating a experience attracting and developing talent.

• Motivated by building client relationships based on value, trust and new ideas and scaling this through teams to deliver

• Prepared to be the point of escalation for operational, strategic and commercial issues across the team

• Accurate business forecasting is critical to the success of this role so experience balancing sales pipelines with business forecasting is key

• Commercial acumen and instincts across contract negotiation, pricing, risk and reward with experience creating and developing commercial partnerships

• Experience working across and through a matrix organisation to deliver outcomes and decisions quickly

• Motivated, need only apply. Merkle is a fast-paced and challenging organisation. You must not wait for solutions; the expectation is that you deliver them

• Proactivity and upselling is critical to this role. You are not managing a client book, you are building a strategic platform for your client portfolio and driving Merkle's and dentsu's value into the client's business

• Leaders are expected to embody and exhibit our brand values that create an open, inclusive business that drives outcome for clients and our business

• Natural curiosity and openness, with fun, is what will make you successful

A few of the benefits

• You'll have a great compensation package, private health & dental insurance, corporate discounts and career development through Dentsu University, and free access to LinkedIn learning

• 29+ days of annual leave (25 days of regular holidays, birthdays off and 3 additional wellness days)

• We also offer the opportunity to volunteer for up to 2 days per year and tend to close down the agency between Christmas and New Years

• You'll have a hybrid working schedule, with flexible start/end hours

Merkle does not discriminate against job applicants on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation. Experience stipulated in this job description serves as a guide only and all applications will be considered on their merits, irrespective of experience.

As part of our Diversity and Inclusion agenda, and as an Equal Opportunities employer, if you require reasonable adjustments during the selection process please engage directly with your Recruiter

#LI-Hybrid

Location:
London

Brand:
Merkle

Time Type:
Full time

Contract Type:
Permanent]]>