Overview
Faced with ever-growing security threats from terrorism and international crime, together with the escalated focus on pandemics and health risks, governments are investing in new digital ways of working to protect their borders whilst improving operational efficiency. At the same time, governments are looking at how they can open up their borders in a safe way to improve national prosperity by promoting trade and tourism in their country. Travelers are demanding a safe and seamless travel experience and we need to find new ways to enable the easy movement of goods worldwide. The border of the future will be seamless yet secure. It will be a highly effective and agile, digital and integrated border with decisions made well in advance of the border.
SITA’s Border Management business, SITA AT BORDERS, is a market leader in Border Management solutions, working with over 70 countries worldwide, with in-depth knowledge and expertise in both border operations and the international travel industry.
We are the world’s leading provider of Advance Passenger Processing (APP) / iAPI solutions, and together with API/PNR services our gateways are connected to over 600 airlines.
We uniquely have an end-to-end border management capability and today our solutions process more than 2 billion travelers each year. We differentiate ourselves through our industry expertise and relationships.
The role of Borders Sales Consultant – (Location: Dubai/ Flexible location) is a key role to grow Border’s business globally. The Borders Specialist will be accountable for engaging with customers in collaboration with the sales & business development team. The aim for this role is to achieve new business growth, customer retention, revenue targets and client satisfaction goals in relation to products/ solutions assigned.
The Borders Sales Specialist should become the business and technology subject matter expert to orchestrate customer engagements and build trust with borders agencies and SITA stakeholders to be able to position SITA’s value and execute Border’s Go-to-Market Model from market making/ shaping, going through opportunity creation, to sales/ bidding (qualification to close) and finally post-sales health checks.
What you will do
The key responsibilities of the individual will include:
Business growth: Work with Borders Product manager and local/ regional sales & business development team to achieve profitable business growth in the assigned products/ solutions. Generate new leads and identify opportunities within assigned products/ Solutions for new and existing Borders accounts globally.
Maintain a healthy pipeline of qualified, active opportunities and manage them closely with the Product and local/ regional sales & business development team to ensure the growth sales plan is executed as per the set strategy.
Market making, shaping, and relationships: maintain strong industry interaction, stay up to date with the latest market trends & technologies related to border management and focus on keeping close customer intimacy connecting with government influencers, decision-makers, business partners, and border management industry associations.
Drive early customer engagement and prospecting efforts with local/ regional sales & business development team to build a strong pipeline, contribute to customer opportunity reviews, lead workshops, participate in an industry event, represent SITA as a speaker and be a team player in developing complex borders solutions to meet customer needs.
Pipeline qualification and set deal strategy: Lead the collaboration with the local/ regional sales & business development team to increase in the number and value of qualified Borders opportunities through strong customer interactions, suggest tactics, pricing, competitive positioning, and ideas to incorporate into the selling strategies.
Work with the local/ regional sales & business development team to stay focused on annual sales plans, active opportunities from creation to close. Make sure the local/ regional Sales & business development team can always keep accurate information and report all aspects of account and opportunity information within a Sales Force automation, to accurately report on forecast/pipeline.
Assist the local/ regional sales & business development team with active opportunities, ensuring that the appropriate business solution is included in the proposal and engage the right Borders resources at the right time. Respond to requests for information and requests for proposal. Guide the local/ regional Sales & Business Development team to current collateral, references guides, value statements and presentations.
Competitive intelligence: Gather market intelligence and share the knowledge with related product, the local/ regional sales & business development team and leverage SITA existing communications and collaboration platform/ tools to spread the know-how. Contribute to Borders Monthly Newsletter.
Understand customer pain points: Active listening, capture and communicate customer objections and outline the ideal responses to frequently asked customer questions. Help in reducing unproductive engagements, strengthen field marketing outbound messages and influence product development to create future offerings. Provide input from the field of potential additions to product features and customer experiences.
Customer success stories: In collaboration with marketing, product management and the local/ regional sales & business development team, develop and communicate customer case studies or other success stories by showing where and how SITA’s Border management solutions was implemented and the value SITA brought to the customer making travel easy, seamless and secure.
Ability to create highly targeted and measurable demand of activities for the products, solutions and markets assigned within SITA to raise prospect awareness and consideration through face-to-face and online interactions.
Qualifications
Who you are
The individual should ideally have the following professional competency and experience:
Minimum of 5 years’ experience in consultative selling, business development and managing large complex deal.
Good understanding of Border Control solutions, Standard Entry/ Exit Border Control, Automated Border Control (ABC) Gates/ Kiosks, Digital Travel and seamless corridors for air, land and sea borders.
Good understanding of Border Management, seamless traveler journey, digital pre-clearance, borders dynamics, integrated borders, identity management, advance risk assessment are desired
Good understanding of end-to-end passenger journey and solutions related to border crossing, Travel Authorization (eVisa, ETA), Biometrics (fingerprints, face, iris), API, PNR, iAPI, Border Control (front/end/ backend), ABC Gates/ Kiosks, Risk assessment engines, watchlists systems, name matching and biometrics matching engines.
Knowledge of industry stakeholder’s role such as ICAO, IATA, United Nations, Interpol, US CBP, IOM, OSCE, EU Directives, IBMATA, etc.
Educational Background in Engineering, IT, telecom, finance, or equivalent business experience
Experience in selling to governments is essential
Willingness to travel
Selling to multiple countries and dealing with multicultures
Very strong stakeholder engagement skills.
Track record of achieving business growth.
English fluent and other languages are plus
Strong communications skills and ability to interact with C-Level executives (internal & external) to clearly articulate and negotiate complex and high value business propositions.
Understand financial acumen, link and articulate T&Cs impacts to financial results and vice versa
Strong presentation skills.
Experience of working in a matrix environment, liaising with different teams to drive overall business success.
Leadership skills to motivate and drive our strategic objectives.