About Us
Shorthand exists to empower creative teams to produce and publish beautiful transformative content radically faster. We’ve begun our journey by creating an easy-to-use platform for one of the most creatively and technically demanding use cases on the web — immersive feature stories — and we’re proud to count many of the world’s best known and most discerning publishers, brands, not-for-profits, and universities as loyal customers.
Shorthand is a growing, investor-backed company with customers on every continent (except Antarctica!), and there’s never been a more exciting time to join our band of geeks with art and heart.
We are looking for an entrepreneurial, outbound-oriented Enterprise Account Executive to lead sales for Shorthand’s new WordPress-integrated publishing solution across the North American market.
We're looking for a talented Senior Accounts Executive to join our Sales team to be based in North America (East Coast preferred but not essential) on a fully remote basis.
What you’ll be doing
The mission of Shorthand is to create a beautifully informed world. In order to do that, we need to ship a platform that makes it easy to create immersive reading experiences for the web, because it will otherwise be unaffordable and painfully cumbersome for organisations to produce such content.
Our Accounts Executives are a big part of the Shorthand magic. This role is responsible for building pipeline, opening new enterprise relationships, and driving complex consultative sales cycles with organisations that use WordPress as a strategic publishing platform.
You will engage both business and technical stakeholders — including marketing, content, editorial, digital experience and web platform teams — and operate autonomously across the full sales cycle, from prospecting through close. This is an ideal role for someone who thrives in early-stage product commercialisation and enjoys creating structure, messaging and momentum in a new market category.
You’ll know you’ve been successful in this role when we continually achieve greater than 10x base in new ARR.
The successful candidate will join our Sales function, and report to the Vice President of Sales.
In this role you’ll:
- Build and manage a disciplined outbound pipeline targeting enterprise organisations using WordPress.
- Prospect into marketing, content, communications, digital experience and web platform teams within medium and large enterprises.
- Develop multi-threaded relationships across both business and technical buying groups.
- Create and execute strategic account plans for named target accounts.
- Consult on personalized best practices across various channels, leveraging strategies and playbooks for each channel and each vertical
- Work collaboratively with Shorthand’s Customer Success, Sales, Channel Partner, Growth, Marketing, Product and Engineering teams to ensure successful sales outcomes leading to happy clients
- Build long-term, strategic plans in collaboration with internal business partners to maximize clients' success with the Shorthand platform while driving revenue for Shorthand; understand C-level initiatives at strategic clients and how Shorthand’s solutions map to those objectives
- Forecast pipeline accurately, including expected close date, projected deal size, and projected deal probability
- Selling products or services to clients to increase sales volume or profits for the company
- Monitoring client satisfaction with current products or services to determine if adjustments are needed
- Identifying new business opportunities with existing clients or potential clients
- Developing long-term relationships with key clients to increase sales and broaden the company’s reach within the industry
- Negotiating prices and terms of sale with clients on behalf of the company
- Contacting clients regularly to ensure they are satisfied with their purchase experience
- Developing proposals and presentations to meet clients’ needs
- Coordinating with other departments within the company to deliver high quality products and services to clients
- Following up with clients after the sale to ensure they are satisfied with their purchase
We are looking for someone who:
- Has a proven track record of building outbound pipeline and closing enterprise SaaS deals in complex buying environments.
- Is comfortable prospecting into medium and large enterprises and engaging multiple stakeholder groups across marketing, content, communications, editorial, digital and web platform teams.
- Can demonstrate success growing strategic accounts through a combination of new business acquisition, expansion and executive relationship building.
- Has experience selling CMS, digital publishing, martech, DXP or related technology solutions into enterprise organisations.
- Is commercially driven, highly autonomous, and comfortable operating in a fast-moving environment with limited structure and high ownership.
- Is technically credible and confident discussing WordPress ecosystems, CMS workflows, integrations and implementation considerations with customer web and platform teams.
- Can independently run discovery, product demonstrations and commercial conversations without relying heavily on presales or solution engineering support.
- Has strong consultative selling skills and can connect Shorthand’s platform capabilities to strategic customer objectives around content, storytelling, engagement and digital experience.
- Communicates exceptionally well in both written and verbal formats, and can simplify complex concepts for both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Learns quickly, prioritises effectively, and maintains high attention to detail while managing multiple enterprise sales cycles simultaneously.
- Thrives working remotely and collaboratively across distributed teams and time zones.
- Brings curiosity, resilience and initiative, and enjoys helping shape go-to-market strategy for emerging products and categories.
Experience and Qualifications:
- Significant experience of successfully selling enterprise marketing solutions to CEOs, CMOs, VPs and Directors of Marketing, Content, Communications, Editorial, etc.
- Experience selling into organisations using WordPress, Adobe Experience Manager, Sitecore, Contentful, Optimizely, Drupal or similar CMS/DXP platforms.
- Familiarity with the WordPress ecosystem, including plugins, publishing workflows, governance and enterprise web operations.
- Experience navigating technical validation processes with digital, engineering or web platform teams.
- Ability to independently deliver product demonstrations and manage technical discovery conversations without dedicated presales support.
- Experience introducing new products to market.
- Proven track record of closing large, strategic and high quality deals.
- Proven track record in direct and partner-fulfilled sales.
- Technical aptitude and/or background in technology preferred.
- A consultative sales style and strong experience selling solutions in a fast-paced environment
- Proven ability to sell collaboratively with multiple internal stakeholders and teams.
Personality Attributes:
- You are a proactive self-starter who does not need to be told what to do and will be resourceful to find solutions to any challenge.
- You are not afraid to get your hands dirty, but you’re also collaborative and consultative
- You thrive in a fast-paced and demanding environment, and possess a high level of curiosity.
- You are an agile, goal-oriented personality, driven to succeed and always up for a challenge!
- You are a supportive and proactive team player
- You love working remotely.
- You are tech savvy and will (and will want to) become an expert in the use of the Shorthand platform
Why work for us
We offer:
- Options for working your way: fully remote working, flexible hours, and an allowance for a co-working space if you prefer.
- True autonomy, with freedom to own and grow the role you occupy.
- The opportunity to work in a growing SaaS company that is still small enough that you can make a real impact.
- An allowance for setting up your home office, a laptop, and any peripherals you need to do your job.
- An Employee Option Plan for all team members.
- A Health and Wellness fund to support your healthy lifestyle, as well as access to coaching and counselling services.
- 401k and a 100% contribution to your healthcare for US-based team members.
- Paid parental leave if you are growing your tribe.
- A proudly a carbon neutral organisation, taking climate action with Trace as part of a broader sustainability strategy
- The base salary range for this position is $110,000 - $125,000 USD. Base salary ranges are determined by multiple factors unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skills, experience and local market benchmarks.
Shorthand’s interview process
We value direct communication here at Shorthand and want to be transparent on how we hire. Our process involves:
- An initial Zoom screen: You’ll have an informal Zoom meeting with the hiring manager to discuss your background, the role, and what led you to apply.
- A work task: We’ll ask you to complete a take-home task, similar to the work you’ll be doing in the role, using our software platform. This should take approximately 2-4 hours. This helps you to develop familiarity with our platform ahead of meeting with the hiring panel and helps us to verify that you’d be a great fit for the role.
- Interviews: You’ll have interviews with the hiring panel over Zoom. This means you’ll typically get to meet another 3 people from Shorthand, including our CEO.
- Final checks: The successful candidate will undergo a reference and police check prior to us sending the final employment agreement.
Our workplace is 100% distributed and all interviews are conducted virtually. Please let us know of any reasonable accommodations you may need during the interview process.
