Senior Manager, Deal Strategy & Operations - AMER Strategic
Okta’s Deal Strategy team is responsible for driving large, complex, and non-standard commercial contracts to closure by providing Sales teams with business process & policy insights as well as strategic and operational support. The team sits within the larger GTM Strategy & Operations organization, which supports strategic initiatives across Okta. As a leader within this team, you will have the opportunity to learn about and contribute to Okta's business from many angles, from our go-to-market strategy and launch of new products to the standardization of policies and systems to scale operations. In this role, you will be well-positioned as the “pulse” on the business and a strategic adviser to the Sales organization. You’ll also play a central role in structuring deals, driving decisions and approvals, and executing contracts with a focus on managing escalations, minimizing cycles, and optimizing annual recurring revenue.
The Senior Manager, Deal Strategy role is best suited for an experienced Deal Desk or Sales Operations professional with management experience who is knowledgeable about SaaS subscription models. The ideal candidate is interested in deeply understanding business problems while collaborating with others to make doing business with and within Okta as seamless as possible.
Job Duties & Responsibilities:
- Managing the day to day operations of the Strategic Deal Strategy and Operations team, including handling escalations and managing workload, as well as building relationships with segment Sales leadership.
- Collaborating with the Strategic Sector Sales leadership and Account Executives to develop pricing strategies, dynamic deal models, and contract terms sheets, as part of the proposal building process for Strategic Accounts.
- Owning and managing commercial contract negotiations in partnership with Sales, Contracts Managers, and Legal; communicating directly with customers as needed to position Okta’s positions and contract terms.
- Partnering with Accounting and Finance to review and address revenue recognition concerns for non-standard deal structures.
- Maintaining a holistic view of a deal during contract negotiations; driving internal stakeholder discussions and resolution on customer concerns or key business issues that arise during negotiation.
- Advising Account Executives on contract objection-handling techniques, alternative contract options, and value propositions to help close deals.
- Building reports and dashboards to give regional leadership visibility into their region’s deal and team performance and trends, while ensuring global reporting and analytics integrity; sharing deal intelligence to enable effective decision making.
- Partnering with the Field Enablement team to create training content for your region to ensure the field is informed on new products, best practices, quarterly updates on policy, and engagement models, etc.
- Developing tools that help the Sales team effectively price, structure, and quote deals while managing certain business metrics and requirements.
- Taking the lead and initiative to drive operational procedures and processes in your region while maintaining global integrity and consistency to support Okta’s field team at scale.
Required Skills & Qualifications:
- Direct experience managing and/or leading a team.
- 8+ years of experience structuring deals for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies.
- Strong working knowledge of SaaS subscription models, pricing, and revenue recognition.
- Experience working cross-functionally with Sales, Finance, Legal in executing contracts.
- Bachelor’s degree in Finance or Business preferred.
- Intermediate to advanced knowledge of Excel (e.g. Pivot Tables, vlookups, ability to create ad-hoc models and analysis, etc).
- Strong experience with Salesforce.com, CPQ and other sales related systems including data enrichment tools.
- Ability to work extended schedules during the month and quarter end cycles.
- Highly responsive, thrives in a fast-paced environment.
Okta’s Top 5 Core Leadership Competencies are part of the deeply ingrained principles that guide all of our company’s actions. They also align strongly to our cultural cornerstones, our Okta values: love our customers, empower our people, never stop innovating, act with integrity, and maintain transparency. It’s our expectation that our managers and leaders embody these core competencies:
- Builds Effective Teams: Building strong-identity teams that apply their diverse skills and perspectives to achieve common goals.
- Demonstrates Self-Awareness (EQ): Using a combination of feedback and reflection to gain productive insight into personal strengths and weaknesses.
- Develops Talent: Developing people to meet both their career goals and the organization’s goals.
- Drives Results: Consistently achieving results, even under tough circumstances.
- Strategic Mindset: Seeing ahead to future possibilities and translating them into breakthrough strategies.
((Colorado, New York and Washington only*) Minimum salary of $135,000/year + bonus, commission, or variable comp (depending on role) + equity + benefits)
Okta is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
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Okta is rethinking the traditional work environment, providing our employees with the flexibility to be their most creative and successful versions of themselves, no matter where they are located. We enable a flexible approach to work, meaning for roles where it makes sense, you can work from the office, or from home, regardless of where you live. Okta invests in the best technologies and provides flexible benefits and collaborative work environments/experiences, empowering employees to work productively in a setting that best and uniquely suits their needs. Find your place at Okta https://www.okta.com/company/careers/.
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