Founding Account Executive
Clay
Sales & Business Development
Brooklyn, NY, USA
Posted on Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Hey there.
And welcome to Clay ✨ We’re building the best way for companies to find new customers. That means helping sales and marketing teams automate the process of sourcing companies, qualifying and scoring them with different criteria (like open jobs, keywords on a website and tech stack), and finding the right people at those companies. Then we use AI to craft a personalized message for each person and send that to your CRM or sequencing tool — all automated end-to-end! This helps companies build an outbound engine that scales and sends thousands of targeted, hyper-personalized messages without manual work.
If that gets you excited, keep reading. If you’re wondering “why are we not using this at my current company”, you can sign up for our waitlist at clay.com! Also, it might mean this is the role for you. You’ll get to work at one of the fastest-growing companies in tech with a team that loves to learn and build a category-defining product.
What you'll do at a high level:
While drawing on a strong track record of sales success, you’ll be asked to serve in a nimble, fluid role, doing everything from helping existing customers with Clay, building content on your creative workflows in Clay, and closing a (mostly inbound!) pipeline of complex sales opportunities to meet your revenue targets. We’re constantly testing new strategies, so we need this role to serve as a get-it-done team member that’s resourceful, agile, and a creative problem solver.
Through it all, you’ll develop into an elite sales operator who can fuse outbound sales development with enterprise-style sales process to create and close a healthy pipeline of deals with custom-built use cases that fuels our growth.
While reporting to the company’s head of operations, you’ll own a broad set of sales activities for our fast-growing enterprise portfolio. You’ll do this by managing prospects lists, identify leveraging outbound prospecting to find high-value prospects, build custom sales strategies and materials, and close your deal pipeline. In this sense, you can not only expect to find yourself at the center of our growth, but also, your own personal growth.
Clay’s grown with intense, inbound demand and a PLG motion to date. Now, we’re building on our engaged customer base and moving upmarket with a Founding AE role to blend a sales-led GTM motion that’s focused on larger enterprise prospects and use cases.
NOTE: Being based in New York (or willing to relocate) is necessary for this role.
Pipeline Building & Management Responsibilities
- Create a healthy top-of-funnel using Clay to reach out to target accounts (20% of pipeline building).
- Engage inbound leads to qualify new opportunities and further educate them about our value (80% of pipeline building).
- Lay the foundation for a high-performing sales funnel by meeting monthly targets for net-new, discounted pipeline created, and activities like the number of leads qualified and new discovery meetings booked.
- Leverage thoughtful leadership content to nurture your sales funnel at scale, and connect with partner prospects at the right time.
- Manage the full sales cycle from vetting, to pitching, and building custom account strategies.
- Manage all activity in our HubSpot database, reporting on performance goals like new pipeline qualified.
- Do whatever else is necessary—we’re a small, nimble, and fun team.
Other Non-Sales Responsibilities
- As an early hire on a fast-growing team, you’ll be expected to do a few things beyond the traditional scope of a sales hire, but will ultimately help you succeed. These include:
- Channeling insights from your sales conversations to the product and marketing teams
- Helping existing customers in our Slack community get the most value from Clay
- Making content to show the world (and future customers) the endless possibilities with Clay
Who you (ideally) are
- You have previous experience in an early sales role at a fast-growing startup
- You have previous experience maintaining a healthy pipeline by nurturing inbound leads while simultaneously being proactive about generating new leads through cold outreach, events, etc.
- You have previous experience of carrying quota and closing 6-figure deals with midmarket and enterprise deals.
- You “get” Clay. You’re someone who likes using technology to automate your workflows and give you superpowers. You know what an API is and how to call one. You’ve used webhooks before.
- You have previous experience (or extreme enthusiasm for!) bringing a first-of-its-kind product to market (which means creating new budget line items, educating buyers on a new category, etc.)
- You are a get-it-done person who’s willing to execute on the “small stuff.”
- You’re interested in learning new skills and are a naturally curious person.
- You find a way to weave the word “croissant” into your email (see below), showing your capacity to pick up on details.
- You care about people and want to be part of a unique team that supports one another.
- You have an above-average sense of humor.
How to apply:
Smash the "apply for this job" button below, but instead of a traditional cover letter in the "additional information" section, we ask that you answer the following questions concisely—as if you’re writing an email to a sales prospect:
What makes you unique in 200 characters or less?
Why do you want to work at Clay?
What’s the difference between an API and webhook, and give me an example of how you’ve used one of them in your workflow.
Unfortunately, candidates who don’t answer these questions won’t be considered for this role. And remember, treat this outreach like you’re engaging one of your prospects.
The interview process for this role will involve a phone screen with Varun, a roleplay exercise, a written assignment + presentation, and an interview with our CEO.