Position Description: Synertel, Senior Business Development Consultant

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Opportunity Snapshot

Are you a true sales consultant with an eye for spotting opportunities to help businesses achieve their goals? This position offers you the chance to join an established but highly entrepreneurial company and take a broad portfolio to market. You'll work alongside talented, sharp people at the crossroads of convergence, making it much easier for you to find that entrée into a client. We offer everything from cabling to converged communications and collaboration solutions to managed services. While you will pursue national accounts as well as regional, your overnight travel will be minimal. Quick question for you - click here

To be a good fit, you will have a track record of success in outside business to business sales of telecom and/or IT -- ideally convergence solutions. We're looking for a professional with outstanding interpersonal skills, including the ability to cultivate trust-based client relationships. The convergence space is continually expanding, so you will need to be able to quickly learn and absorb new products, technologies, and disciplines -- and integrate that learning into your tactics and strategies. Quick question for you - click here

Synertel is a 22-year strong Bay Area firm that has been providing convergence solutions since before the term was even coined. Our footprint is large (over the last 24 months we installed in 26 US states and Japan), but our organization is small and agile. This environment is not for everyone. You'll need to be willing to "roll up your sleeves" to achieve your goals. Our compensation and benefits package rivals larger companies and includes all you would expect plus some pleasant surprises, such as multiple income streams and profit sharing.

What Else You'll Bring to the Table

In addition to the qualifications detailed above, you'll need:

Proven consultative sales skills, including the ability to listen well, read between the lines, probe for information, and synthesize what you learn into targeted solutions.
Aggressive self-motivation tempered by integrity, honesty, and a sincere desire to help clients do business better.
Experience creating urgencies and/or incentives to shorten sales cycles.
A successful track record of working in small or mid-sized organizations.
The ability to work solo and as a team member.
A demonstrated dedication to customer satisfaction.
Excellent verbal and written communications skills.

Preferred but not required:

A bachelor's degree.
Experience selling hosted VoIP solutions.
Experience with Toshiba, Allworx, NEC , or Star2Star telephony solutions, or SonicWall security solutions.
Completion of a formal sales process certification.
Manufacturer sales certification in the products you've sold.

Assuming you are achieving your goals, we'll be flexible about your working in the office or from home, and you can use web presence tools to make presentations, etc. At the same time, we'll expect you to spend a significant portion of your time out in the field calling on customers.

What's In It for You

Diverse verticals, multiple solutions -- there aren't a lot of limits on where you can take this role! We have clients in a wide variety of industries, including non-profit, healthcare, local government, education, software, web 2.0 providers, and law. We offer solutions, services and products in all aspects of telecommunications, IT and convergence.

Professional development -- everyone at Synertel relishes the opportunity to learn new technologies, business processes and skills. Employees have commented they learned more in a month at Synertel than they did in six months at their former job! Learning opportunities will include:

Coaching direct from the CEO, who is our top sales producer.
Ongoing formal training from carrier and vendor partners - both virtual and live-in-the-room.
On-the-job learning as you work with the deeply experienced Synertel team.

Great environment -- at Synertel you'll find a motivated, energetic group that takes pride in delivering an unparalleled level of expertise, commitment, and service. We're also flexible and creative in our approach; if you're more comfortable with a "cookie cutter" approach, this isn't the role for you.

Expertise and integrity -- we are proactive about investing in partnerships that advance our abilities to serve customers. For example, our CEO served on the 2008-2009 joint advisory board of PHONE+ magazine and Channel Partners Conference & Expo. He also is a member of InfraGard, an FBI public/private partnership providing special best-practices training in protecting public and private (physical and data) assets.

Excellent compensation -- in addition to a competitive base plus commission plan, you'll have opportunities to earn income from multiple streams, such as residual commissions and sales performance incentive funds (SPIFs). As part of a 50,000-member professional employer organization (PEO), we are able to offer comprehensive benefits, including health, dental and vision insurance; a 401(k) plan; profit sharing; and more.

More About Your Role

In a nutshell, your mission will be to assume ownership of the entire sales process, from sourcing leads to closing deals. Pivotal to your success will be your ability to establish yourself as a trusted advisor to clients. If you are a good fit for this opportunity, you know most of what is involved in consultative B2B sales. Here are some details about what is unique at Synertel.

A little more than half of our business is voice related, with the rest being IT, video, and convergence. Most of our clients are small to mid-sized companies, but we also do business with Fortune 1000 companies, including big name corporations. You'll focus the majority of your prospecting and marketing efforts in Northern California, although you certainly won't be constrained by geography. We have multiple lead sources, but we'll look to you to find even more on your own.

One very unusual aspect of sales at Synertel is that a large number of clients and potential clients are surprised to find out that they can get products and services for free, once we're run the numbers for them. We evaluate clients' entire operation to find ways they can improve business processes to enhance efficiencies and control costs. For example, a company might get a new VoIP system plus cost savings over a three year period by following our recommendations. In this way we have earned a reputation for being highly consultative.

The sales cycle can vary quite a bit in length, from a fast cabling project that needs to be done within days to a longer evaluation of legacy systems to determine whether it is more cost effective to repair or replace. Typically sales with a client are incremental -- once we have earned their trust (and often, freed up cash flow), we'll get more business.

Keys to Success

To excel in this role you will be "constructively nosy" with your clients, teasing out the information you need to suggest solutions -- like "My reps could do a lot more if the phone system was connected to our CRM," or "My people waste about 20 minutes a day sifting through spam." You also will need to be passionate about learning and proactive about picking things up quickly. In addition, in a smaller company everyone takes a hands-on approach to getting the job done; for example, you'll need to take care of things like binding proposals yourself. Quick question for you - click here

Who We Are

Synertel is a highly respected and trusted source of telecommunications, IT, and convergence expertise with a national service and support footprint. We provide traditional and cutting edge telephony, video, and VoIP systems, robust networks, hosted virtual systems, comprehensive data protection and security solutions, access control systems, and infrastructure like cabling, fiber, racks, and clean backup power.

We are an equal opportunity employer. EOE M/F/D/V