About the role
At Zendesk, we're on a mission to power exceptional service for every person on the planet. Behind every customer interaction is an opportunity to make a genuine human connection. We're accelerating that vision with cutting-edge, AI-first products, and we're looking for a driven Account Executive to join our Commercial team across the UK & Ireland. If you're energised by opening new markets, creating opportunities from scratch, and helping businesses understand the value of AI-powered customer and employee experience solutions, we'd love to hear from you.
Responsibilities
•Build pipeline through structured outbound prospecting, account-based research, referrals, events, and targeted engagement with priority accounts.
•Drive revenue growth by acquiring new commercial customers and developing innovative strategies for account adoption of the entire platform.
•Own the entire sales cycle, from strategic new business prospecting through sophisticated negotiation and expertise closing.
•Act as a strategic advisor to C-Suite and VP executives, articulating the vision and transformative value of Zendesk's AI-powered platform and its impact on business objectives.
•Lead complex and competitive sales cycles utilizing strong communication skills and value selling to articulate compelling business cases.
•Proactively identify and pursue opportunities to cross sell additional products and services to existing customers to optimize account revenue and profitability.
•Leverage data insights, customer intents, and adoption history to effectively prospect new clients and enhance retention strategies, leading to improved conversion rates in new business pipeline and increased retention and expansion of existing clients.
Requirements
•At least 4 years of B2B sales or solution engineering experience, preferably in SaaS/AI, with a proven record of exceeding targets.
•Consistently deliver against new-business targets.
•Demonstrable expertise in end-to-end deal management and navigating complex, multi-month sales cycles in the UK/Irish market.
•Work closely with Solution Engineers, Marketing, Customer Success, partners, and sales leadership to create relevant account strategies and deliver excellent customer outcomes.
•Proven ability to engage and influence C-level and VP executives, supported by a strong foundational understanding of AI and Generative AI applications.
•Exceptional presentation, negotiation, and closing skills, along with experience using key sales tools (Salesforce, Clari, Gong).
•Strong foundational understanding of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) principles, with the confidence to discuss strategic AI roadmaps and Generative AI applications with executive stakeholders.
•Ability to travel as necessary to customer and company locations.
Working conditions
In this role, our hybrid experience is designed at the team level to give you a rich onsite experience packed with connection, collaboration, learning, and celebration - while also giving you flexibility to work remotely for part of the week and visiting customers. Our hybrid way of working enables us to purposefully come together in person, at one of our many Zendesk offices around the world, to connect, collaborate and learn whilst also giving our people the flexibility to work remotely for part of the week.
