Head of Sales at Penfold

Hi, we’re Penfold

Penfold is building the pension of the future. We’re dragging the multi-trillion pound pension industry out of the dark ages. Think about how challenger banks have changed banking. We’re demystifying pensions, to make them universally accessible, engaging and exciting so we can help everyone save enough for later life.

We have over £15 million in funding and are backed by from some of the world’s most successful fintech investors & entrepreneurs.

We are an FCA regulated pension provider, offering tens of thousands of consumers a totally digital pension experience via our mobile app, helping hundreds of businesses run their workplace pension, and tracking down hundreds of millions of pounds in lost pension pots for all our customers.

The role

We launched Penfold's Workplace Pension just under six months ago. We go to small & medium sized businesses 50-1,000 staff) and show them how switching to the Penfold Pension scheme is the right thing to do for their employees financial wellbeing. The response has been overwhelming and we’ve grown much faster than we anticipated, as employers and their staff love what we’re selling.

Distributing Penfold via businesses is absolutely critical to our future strategy, and we expect our B2B channel to be the biggest driver of our growth and largest area of our business by the end of this year. We’re hiring an experienced Sales Leader to take Penfolds B2B business from £1m in revenue, to £10m and beyond.

This is unique opportunity to join a business when the product and sales process is proven, but not yet scaled or matured. As our new VP of sales, you’ll be responsible for growing our team of 4 sales execs to 10 over the next 6-12 months, and then taking it far beyond that in the coming years. You’ll own the entire Sales organisation; hiring, coaching and management of the team as well as putting in place the processes, guidelines, incentives, accountability, tools, reporting and collateral the team needs to succeed. You’ll report directly to the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of the business.

We’re a hyper-growth company: if you overachieve in your role as much as we’d love you to, there will be plenty of opportunities to grow as we grow.

You won’t be an individual contributor, this is a full time leadership role, but like your team, you’ll still have the opportunity to earn uncapped commission based on the performance of your team as a whole. You’ll be a core part of Penfold's executive leadership group, and be given significant ownership of the business via our EMI scheme.

We need some with not just the experience of building and growing a sales team, but the energy, passion and fresh ideas to take a very new (but high performing) sales team, and transform it into a mature, professional, rigorous, world class, target smashing sales function.

Here’s some of the stuff you’ll be doing:

⦁ Hiring and onboarding new members of the sales team
⦁ Training and coaching Account Execs and SDRs
⦁ Putting in place systems, tools, processes, guidelines and incentives to ensure the teams success
⦁ Developing the sales strategy, message, and process – i.e. helping the exec team define who we should be targeting with what message(s), and in what way
⦁ Maturing our sales function, bringing in new and more advanced reporting and forecasting and best practice
⦁ Supporting the team hands on when we need new materials, new collateral, or come across new buying challenges

Skills and experience:

⦁ Most importantly, you’ve been with a sales organisation through a similar journey as Penfolds (although not necessarily in a leadership role). E.G you were a very early member of a sales team and know the unique challenges of a new sales organisation in a new and fast growing business.
⦁ You’re experienced and talented as a sales person yourself – you can lead from the front
⦁ The closer your experience is to selling a proposition like Penfold's (£15k acv, 3 month buying cycles, to HR/Finance leads at SME’s), the better
⦁ You’ve got some experience leading and managing sales people – we’re open to different levels and types of experience here, but this is a full time management role so you need to have demonstrated this in some way
⦁ You can strike a perfect balance between being hands on (ready to document the process yourself, set up the new tool, produce the latest deck, or attend an urgent sales meeting), and being a leader that allows your team to grow and be their best selves, whilst you think strategically about how we make step change improvements over 3, 6, 9 months and a year.
⦁ You’re comfortable defining, setting, and holding a team to account on targets
⦁ You genuinely enjoy coaching others, and getting the best out of a team. This isn’t (just) about training and improving someone’s sales skills, you enjoy the deep work involved in helping people identify areas of improvement and work hard to make positive change.
⦁ You know what makes a good sales person and you’re comfortable interviewing and making hiring decisions.
⦁ You know what a great sales process and sales pitch looks like, and you know how much that needs to be tailored company to company, and your comfortable with the hard work of rolling out processes and making sure they work in practice.
⦁ You’re happy managing a team with different skillsets. Some AE’s who are selling at relatively high volume to SME’s, and some who are working over multiple quarters to make big sales to enterprise clients.
⦁ You’re energetic, passionate and full of new ideas to make the process o selling Penfold better and better every day. You want to try new pitches, new processes, new demographics, and you know the right time to experiment and the right time to double down (and not re-invent the wheel!)
⦁ You love working with founders, other execs, product, marketing and account management leadership in a collaborative way to make sure the customer experience is optimised from start to finish.

Ultimately, we’re looking for smart, hardworking & energetic people who get stuff done & are committed to contributing to a great team. So, if you’re excited about what we’re doing, get in touch – definitely don’t be put off if you don’t tick every box!

Benefits

We’re working hard to create a working environment where people feel empowered to do their very best work, make a big impact, and enjoy what they do.

Right now we’re still a small team, but we’re well funded and growing rapidly. As one of our first 50 employees you’ll not only have a huge say in defining our culture & what it’s like to work here, but you’ll have uncapped opportunities for progression, learning and exposure to different areas of the business.

Specifically, our benefits package includes:

⦁ A competitive salary – we proactively review salaries to make sure you get what you deserve (i.e., we’ll review more than once a year) 
⦁ Meaningful share options – you’ll own a part of Penfold and share in our success
⦁ A 10% Pension contribution each month that you don’t need to match (on top of your salary)
⦁ Medical insurance – through Vitality you get access to Private GPs, Physio, Counselling services and great discounts and offers (think 50% off PureGym memberships, free Apple Watches)
⦁ Unlimited holidays – we’re interested in your output, not how many holidays you go on!
⦁ Remote working – we get together once a month and have an awesome office you can use anytime but we are a remote-first company. You can work from anywhere in the UK. We trust you to get your work done in whatever environment suits you
⦁ Flexible working – we hire competent and capable people, we trust you to get the work done at a time that suits you
⦁ Great office space – plenty of people come into our wonderful private office space in Uncommon Borough a few days a week, come along as much as you’d like!
⦁ Free tea, coffee, soft drinks and craft beer
⦁ Free company lunch every week (e.g., Borough Market, Mercato Metropolitano)
⦁ Best-in-class MacBook and any WFH equipment you need 
⦁ The option to buy a bike tax free, and spread the cost over several months (cycle to work scheme)
⦁ Learning & Professional Development – we conduct regular 360 feedback and focus on role progression that suits each individual. We support everyone with courses, events and coaching to help everyone reach their goals
⦁ Quarterly company socials (and regular meetups throughout the year too)

Find out more about our benefits, our values and our ways of working on our Meet the Team page

Our Office

We’re a remote first business although we have a large private office at Uncommon Borough, a large co-working space full of other awesome tech startups and more plants than a garden centre.

Uncommon has their own exercise studio for free weekly Yoga and HIIT classes, a discounted office masseuse & beauty squad, monthly drinks & Tuesday teatime, bike racks, showers, an excellent café, and a whole bunch of communal spaces you can work from when you need a change (including a roof terrace).

We’re 6 minutes walk from London Bridge station & Borough Market (and 30 seconds walk from Borough station).

Our application process

We’ll have a very quick introductory call to properly introduce you to Penfold, find out more about your experience so far and career aspirations, and make sure you get a chance to ask any questions you might have.

Then they’ll be a take-home task / role-play exercise so we get a better feel for how you work. And finally, we’ll organise a session with one of our Co-Founders and a small group of people from around the business. 
 

We are 100% committed to building a diverse and representative team. Whatever your race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, or disability - we want to hear from you. If you have questions about the role or the company or the interview process, please let your recruiter know and we’re happy to answer these anonymously if that makes you feel more comfortable.