Sales Manager

Overview

You're leading the Account Management team that manages Bushbalm's professional channel (salons, spas, estheticians). You're hiring AMs, building the playbooks and processes they follow, and figuring out how to scale account management as the channel grows. This is part player-coach - you'll probably have your own book of key accounts while managing a small team.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Growth stage (post-Dragon's Den investment, 57 employees)

Size: 57 employees

Growth: Hiring 6 roles including this one - professional channel is scaling fast

Market Position: Category creator in bikini line skincare, using consumer brand strength to drive B2B channel

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• Your team inherits accounts from Sales Account Coordinators after first purchase
• You're designing the handoff process and account segmentation

SDR/AE Structure: Sales Coordinators qualify/onboard, your AMs take over for lifecycle

SE Support: No SE - your team handles all product training and support

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Other professional skincare brands competing for salon shelf space, generic alternatives

How They Differentiate: Consumer brand awareness creates pull-through demand for salons

Common Objections: Shelf space constraints, price point, inventory risk for small businesses

Win Themes: Strong consumer brand, specialized product category, merchandising support

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Team Management (35%) | Process/Program Design (25%) | Key Account Ownership (20%) | Strategic Planning (20%)

Key Activities

• Hiring and onboarding: Building the AM team from scratch or near-scratch. Writing job descriptions, interviewing candidates, onboarding new hires, getting them ramped on product and process
• Coaching and performance: 1-on-1s with AMs, pipeline reviews, call coaching, helping them with stuck accounts or escalations. You're teaching them how to be consultative with small business owners
• Building the playbook: Creating the AM motion - account segmentation (high-touch vs low-touch), outreach cadences, reorder triggers, expansion plays, success metrics. This doesn't exist in polished form yet
• Key account management: Owning relationships with their biggest or most strategic accounts (top spas, regional chains, accounts with high growth potential)
• Cross-functional alignment: Working with Sales Coordinators on handoff process, with product team on professional channel feedback, with ops on fulfillment/logistics issues

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're building this from early stages - limited existing process or historical data to work from
• Managing AMs who work with small businesses is different than enterprise - churn can spike from factors outside your control (salons close, ownership changes)
• Balancing player vs coach - you'll have your own accounts but also need to build systems for the team
• Professional channel might be lower priority than DTC (their consumer site is the core business) - you'll compete for resources and attention
• Proving ROI on the channel when DTC is likely more profitable per dollar
• AMs get frustrated when accounts churn or go dark - you need to keep morale up while hitting aggressive retention/growth targets

What Success Looks Like

• Building a team that scales to 5-10 AMs over 12-18 months
• 80%+ retention rate across the account base (accounts reordering consistently)
• Increasing average account value 20-30% year-over-year through expansion
• Clean handoff process from Sales Coordinators to AMs (no deals falling through cracks)
• Repeatable playbooks that new AMs can execute from day one

Who You're Managing/Supporting

Your Team:

• Account Managers (starting with 2-3, growing to 5-10)
• Mix of experience levels - some career AMs, some coming from retail/beauty

Their Customers:

• Small business owners (waxing salons, spas, independent estheticians)
• Typically 1-10 person operations
• Care about inventory turns, margins, ease of selling

Requirements

• 4-6 years in sales with 2+ years managing account management or inside sales teams
• Experience building processes/playbooks for a scaling team (not just managing existing structure)
• Comfortable in player-coach role - managing your own book while leading others
• Background in B2B sales to small businesses or retail/salon channel preferred
• Track record of hitting retention and expansion targets with a team
• Analytical - you'll need to track account health metrics, team performance, identify patterns
• Hands-on mentality - this isn't a role where you just review dashboards, you're in the weeds early on