Sales Representative

Overview

You're a full-cycle Account Executive selling Mews' cloud-native property management system to independent hotels and boutique hotel groups in the Eastern US. You'll be calling hotel GMs and owners, demoing the platform, competing against legacy systems like Opera and Cloudbeds, and closing deals that typically range from $15-40K in annual contract value. This is an outbound-heavy role—you're prospecting daily and managing 15-25 active opportunities at various stages.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Series D ($300M raised Jan 2025, $2.5B valuation)

Size: 1,489 employees globally

Growth: Expanding aggressively in North America after European success. 12,500+ properties worldwide. Recent product investments in AI and embedded payments. Named Best PMS by Hotel Tech Report 2024-2025.

Market Position: Challenger trying to displace entrenched legacy players (Opera, Cloudbeds) with modern cloud-native architecture. Strong momentum with independent hotels and boutique groups who are frustrated with old systems.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 70% Outbound - Cold calling hotel GMs and owners, LinkedIn outreach, targeted email sequences to properties with 20-200 rooms
• 20% Inbound - Some website leads and demo requests from marketing, but quality varies. Many are tire-kickers or students doing research
• 10% Referrals - Existing customers occasionally refer sister properties or contacts

SDR/AE Structure: Self-sourcing model. You own the full cycle from cold call to contract signature. There's enablement support and some shared resources, but you're responsible for keeping your own pipeline full.

SE Support: Sales Engineers are available for complex technical demos or when you're selling to larger groups, but you'll run most demos yourself. The product is fairly intuitive, so you're expected to be the technical expert for standard deals.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Opera (Oracle), Cloudbeds, Maestro PMS, smaller legacy systems

How They Differentiate: Cloud-native (vs on-premise), modern UX that hotel staff actually likes using, open API ecosystem for integrations, faster updates and innovation cycle, better mobile experience

Common Objections:

• "We've been using [legacy system] for 15 years and it works fine"
• "Migration sounds risky and disruptive to operations"
• "Your competitors are cheaper" (true for some legacy players)
• "We need to see it work with our specific POS/booking engine/door lock system"

Win Themes:

• Staff efficiency (less manual work, automation)
• Guest experience improvements (mobile check-in, better communication)
• Revenue opportunities (dynamic pricing, upsells, embedded payments)
• Future-proofing (cloud updates, no server maintenance)

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (35%) | Active Deals (40%) | Internal/Admin (25%)

Key Activities

• Cold Calling: 40-60 calls per day to hotel GMs, owners, and directors of operations. You're trying to get 15-20 minutes on their calendar to understand their pain points. Most calls go to voicemail. You'll talk to a lot of front desk staff before reaching decision-makers.

• Product Demos: 4-6 demos per week, typically 45-60 minutes. You're walking through the PMS interface, showing how check-in/check-out works, demonstrating reporting, explaining integrations. You need to know the product cold and adapt to what each property cares about.

• Deal Management: Following up with prospects who went dark after the demo, coordinating with their IT person to discuss implementation, sending pricing proposals, negotiating contract terms, chasing signatures. Deals stall frequently—budgets get delayed, priorities shift, decision-makers go on vacation.

• Internal Coordination: Weekly forecast calls with Chelsea (your manager), pipeline reviews, CRM hygiene in Salesforce, coordinating with implementation team on timing, Slack conversations with product team about feature requests prospects are asking for.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Change Aversion: Hotels are risk-averse. Switching a PMS is scary—it's the system that runs their entire operation. You'll lose deals to "we're just not ready to switch yet" even when they hate their current system.

• Long Decision Cycles: Even though these are smaller deals, you're often waiting on owners who are busy running properties, or hotel groups where multiple stakeholders need to weigh in. Your Q1 pipeline will slip to Q2 regularly.

• Integration Complexity: Every hotel has a different tech stack (POS, booking engines, channel managers, door locks, payment processors). You'll spend time figuring out if Mews integrates with their specific vendors, and sometimes the answer is "not yet."

• Price Pressure: You're often competing against cheaper legacy systems or smaller vendors. Hotels operate on thin margins and scrutinize every expense.

What Success Looks Like

• Closing 1.5-2 new customers per month ($25-35K average deal size)
• Maintaining 20+ active qualified opportunities in your pipeline
• 25-30% demo-to-close conversion rate over a quarter
• Building a referral network where closed customers introduce you to other properties

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• General Managers (independent hotels, 30-150 rooms)
• Hotel Owners (boutique properties, often directly involved in operations)
• Directors of Operations (small hotel groups with 3-10 properties)

What They Care About:

• Operational Efficiency: Can their staff do more with less? Will this reduce manual work?
• Guest Satisfaction: Will this improve the check-in experience and guest communications?
• Implementation Risk: How disruptive is the switch? What's the training timeline?
• Cost vs Value: Is this worth the investment compared to what they're paying now?
• Integration Compatibility: Will this work with everything else they use?

Requirements

• 2-4 years of B2B SaaS sales experience, preferably SMB or mid-market
• Proven track record of hitting quota in an outbound-driven environment
• Comfortable making 50+ calls per day and hearing "no" constantly
• Ability to run technical product demos without heavy SE support
• Hospitality industry interest or experience is a plus but not required
• Based in or willing to relocate to NYC (this is not a remote role)
• Coachable and hungry—Chelsea mentions this is a fast-paced, high-growth team where you need to be self-motivated and willing to learn