Director, Competitive Intelligence

Description

Sprout Social is looking to hire a Director, Competitive Intelligence to the Product Marketing team. This role will report to the Vice President, Product Marketing and will initially be equal parts strategy and execution. We are seeking a proactive and motivated individual who can evolve, scale and lead a high-performing competitive intelligence program to support driving new customer acquisition and strong net dollar retention.

Why join Sprout’s Marketing team?

As a member of Sprout’s Marketing department, you’re an integral part of empowering and inspiring our customers and driving the growth of our business. As a true partner to Sales and Success, we are accountable to—and responsible for—driving significant revenue across new business acquisition and customer growth. Together, we make up our revenue organization where we lead our go-to-market strategy and establish our goals as one unified team. We put our customers at the center, we’re driven by results and passionate about our impact on the overall strength and health of Sprout. As individuals, there’s no shortage of opportunities to learn and grow in your current role and beyond. Here, we just really want you to do your best work, be creative, take risks and make mistakes. You create your own path. 

What you’ll do

• You will build a deep understanding of our products, customers and competitors, across the social media business landscape, and stay knowledgeable about the latest technology and industry trends.
• You will work closely across the Product Marketing team to ensure our Revenue teams are enabled to tell the best possible stories to position our platform and solutions in a competitive marketplace. You will scale this messaging through team-wide training and in 1:1 deal support. 
• You will gather and distill insights to understand customer use cases and competitive differentiation in order to educate cross-functional partners.
• You will partner with Revenue and Product executive leadership to understand their business needs and help define the strategy based on the competitive landscape.
• You will own the management and development of our competitive enablement platform for the Revenue org.
• You will conduct win / loss analyses and quarterly reporting, presented to the executive team and board.
• You will set the strategy for our competitive intelligence program and how it will scale, and evolve the initiatives we execute such as competitive campaigns, sales collateral, ROI tools, competitor trainings, product launches, and more. 

What you’ll bring

Sprout Social is looking for a competitive intelligence leader with excellent communications skills with internal and external partners, a passion for learning product and competitive knowledge, and a desire to build new stories and strategies with us. You have experience working with senior executives to build and execute competitive strategies at scale. Your skills are part creative, part analytical and always centered around using qualitative and quantitative analysis to make data-informed decisions. You understand the challenges for sales and success teams, and want to help them drive impact. You are comfortable working with ambiguity and defining strategies in a high-growth environment. If you have a deep understanding of the social business marketplace, love keeping tabs on your favorite industry publications, and value competitive intelligence, we'd love to talk to you! 

The minimum qualifications for this role include:

• 10+ years of experience marketing, solution engineering or revenue-facing roles
• 7+ years of product marketing / competitive intelligence experience 
• 3+ years of people management experience
• Demonstrated success in building, scaling driving competitive initiatives, with strong project management skills in an agile environment
• Strong analytical and reporting skills, with Salesforce and Excel experience
• Experience working with competitive enablement platforms such as Klue etc
• Exceptional communications skills with cross-functional and external partners

Preferred qualifications for this role include:

• 3+ years of customer-facing experience with a sales, partner marketing or success background
• Experience running quantitative and qualitative win / loss programs
• Excellent market research skills preferably within B2B or software marketing
• Experience providing department-wide training and customer/industry-focused training  
• Experience with and/or knowledge of social platforms (X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok etc.) from a business use-case perspective 

How you’ll grow

Within 1 month, you’ll plant your roots, including:

• Experience Sprout’s in-depth onboarding, covering everything from our company mission and values, hearing directly from executives and founders, to deep training on our products and the value that Sprout delivers to our customers.
• Make a plan with your manager to set initial priorities, align on expectations for your role, plant goalposts for your career, and learn about Sprout’s approach to competitive insights.
• Conduct initial 1:1s with stakeholders across Product Marketing and other strategic partners throughout the company to identify what a successful relationship looks like and how you will work together.
• Attend our sales onboarding training to learn how we position our solution and value to customers
• Understand as much as you can about the culture, products, teams, and projects of Sprout to creatively support our award-winning culture.

Within 3 months, you’ll start hitting your stride by:

• Familiarize yourself with Product Marketing process and rituals (i.e. how we get work done)
• Become familiar with the social media management industry, and understand the competitive landscape. Go deep into customer data and research to familiarize yourself with various competitors and customer use cases 
• Start to engage in our competitive support channels and manage our competitive enablement platform
• Socialize your strategy for the evolution of the competitive intelligence program and securing alignment with key executive stakeholders
• Familiarize yourself with Sprout’s sales strategy, product strategy, marketing campaign framework and more
• Interact day-to-day with internal teams including sales, marketing, creative, account management, support and others to extract insights and spot opportunities

Within 6 months, you’ll be making a clear impact through:

• Participate in cross-functional meetings to develop competitive awareness and sales strategies and contribute to integrated product launches both tactically and in a project management capacity
• Continue to develop strong relationships across Sales and Marketing and better understand the full customer lifecycle so you can better align your work with Sales/Success needs. 

Within 12 months, you’ll make this role your own by:

• Develop processes to understand competitive differentiators, package those insights, and leverage them in a way that drives increased win and rates and retention rates
• Collaborate with Sales, Success and Revenue Enablement to build and socialize collateral that drives revenue.
• Develop unique strategies to help us increase our knowledge of competitive offerings and how we can use this to arm our company.
• Surprise us! Use your unique ideas and abilities to change our team and strategy efforts in beneficial ways that we haven’t even considered yet.

Of course what is outlined above is the ideal timeline, but things may shift based on business needs and other projects and tasks could be added at the discretion of your manager.

Our Benefits Program

We’re proud to regularly be recognized for our team, product and culture. Our benefits program includes:

• Insurance and benefit options that are built for both individuals and families
• Progressive policies to support work/life balance, like our flexible paid time off and parental leave program 
• High-quality and well-maintained equipment—your computer will never prevent you from doing your best
• Wellness initiatives to ensure both health and mental well-being of our team
• Ongoing education and development opportunities via our Grow@Sprout program and  employee-led diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
• Growing corporate social responsibility program that is driven by the involvement and passion of our team members
• Beautiful, convenient and state-of-the-art offices in Chicago’s Loop and downtown Seattle, for those who prefer an office setting

Whenever possible, Sprout wants to provide our team with the flexibility to work in the location that makes the most sense for them. Sprout maintains a remote workforce in many places in the United States. However, we are not set up in all states, so please look at the drop-down box in our application to see whether your state is listed. Few roles require an office setting. If your position requires a physical presence in a Sprout office, it will be evident in the job listing and your offer letter.

The base pay range for this role is $134,000.00-$204,000.00 USD annually. Individual base pay is based on various factors, including relevant experience and skills, the responsibility of the role, and job duties/requirements. In addition to base pay, some Sales and Success roles can earn sales incentives. 

Sprout’s compensation ranges are intentionally broad to allow for our team members' growth within their role. These ranges were determined by a market-based compensation approach; we used data from trusted third-party compensation sources to set equitable, consistent and competitive ranges. We also evaluate compensation bi-annually, identify any changes in the market and make adjustments to our ranges and existing employee compensation as needed.

Base pay is only one element of an employee's total compensation at Sprout. Every Sprout team member has an opportunity to receive restricted stock units (RSUs) under Sprout’s equity plan. Employees (and their dependents) are covered by medical, dental, vision, basic life, accidental death, and dismemberment insurance, and Modern Health (a wellness benefit).  Employees are able to enroll in Sprout’s company’s 401k plan, in which Sprout will match 50% of your contributions up to 6% with a maximum contribution. Sprout offers “Flexible Paid Time Off” and ten paid holidays. We have outlined the various components to an employee’s full compensation package here to help you to understand our total rewards package.

Sprout Social is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer and an Affirmative Action Employer. We do not discriminate based on identity- race, color, religion, national origin or ancestry, sex (including sexual identity), age, physical or mental disability, pregnancy, veteran or military status, unfavorable discharge from military service, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, order of protection status, citizenship status, arrest record or expunged or sealed convictions, or any other legally recognized protected basis under federal, state, or local law. Learn more about our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in our latest DEI Report.

If you need a reasonable accommodation for any part of the employment process, please contact us by email at accommodations@sproutsocial.com and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information. We'll do all we can to ensure you're set up for success during our interview process while upholding your privacy, including requests for accommodation. Please note that only inquiries concerning a request for reasonable accommodation will be responded to from this email address.

For more information about our commitment to equal employment opportunity, please click here (1) Equal Opportunity Employment Poster  (2) Sprout Social's Affirmative Action Statement (3) Pay Transparency Statement. 

When you apply for employment with Sprout Social, we will process your job applicant data, including your employment and education history, transcript, writing samples, and references as necessary to consider your job application for open positions. Your personal data will be shared with Greenhouse Software, Inc., and Crosschq, Inc., cloud services providers located in the United States of America and engaged by Sprout Social to help manage its recruitment and hiring process on Controller’s behalf. Accordingly, if you are located outside of the United States, by clicking “Submit Application” on this site, you consent to the transfer of your personal data to the United States. For more information about our privacy practices please visit our Privacy Policy. California residents have additional rights and should review the Additional Disclosures for California Residents section in our Privacy Policy.

Additionally, Sprout Social participates in the E-Verify program in certain locations, as required by law. 

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