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About the Role
Zendesk is seeking a Strategic Account Director, Retail New Business to create and close net-new business within large retail and consumer brands. This role involves building executive relationships, aligning customer priorities with Zendesk's service and AI solutions, and guiding complex sales cycles to expand our enterprise customer base.
Responsibilities
- Build and manage qualified pipeline through targeted prospecting, inbound opportunities, partner relationships, and territory planning.
- Lead complex sales from discovery and qualification through business case, proposal, negotiation, and close.
- Connect customer goals and service challenges to a credible Zendesk platform and AI solution, with measurable outcomes.
- Build relationships across executive, business, technical, finance, security, and procurement teams.
- Own pursuit strategy, deal progression, and commercial decisions within approved guidelines.
- Bring together Solution Engineers, Product Specialists, Marketing, SDR/BDR teams, partners, and leaders to advance opportunities.
- Maintain accurate CRM records and forecasts, surface risks early, and keep buyers aligned on next steps.
- Document customer goals, commitments, and success conditions to support a smooth handoff and share market insights with internal teams.
Requirements
- A strong new-business mindset and the discipline to create demand through thoughtful, consistent prospecting.
- A consultative approach to discovery that uncovers business problems, urgency, stakeholders, and measurable outcomes.
- The ability to earn trust and guide decisions across executive and cross-functional buying groups.
- Commercial judgment to build business cases, manage deal economics, negotiate, and qualify opportunities honestly.
- Strong operating habits: accurate forecasting, clear next steps, early risk visibility, and reliable follow-through.
- Clear communication that makes complex platform and AI value understandable to business and technical audiences.
- A collaborative approach to leading specialists and sharing customer and market insight across teams.
- Typically 12+ years of related experience, with demonstrated success in complex retail software sales.
- A record of owning new-business opportunities and delivering measurable commercial outcomes, such as quota attainment, new ARR, or equivalent growth results.
- Experience with prospecting, value-based discovery, executive engagement, and complex deal ownership.
- Ability to discuss AI, automation, and platform value credibly, and to involve specialists when deeper technical expertise is needed.
- Repeated success closing large, complex net-new enterprise deals.
- Experience creating demand and shaping account or market strategy for high-value prospects.
- Strength in ROI storytelling, competitive positioning, and guiding multi-stakeholder buying decisions.
- Experience partnering with channel or ecosystem partners and cross-functional sales teams.
- Familiarity with service operations, customer experience, or AI-enabled business transformation.
- AI literacy: comfortable discussing AI opportunities in terms of customer outcomes, adoption, security, governance, and implementation readiness.
Skills
- AI
- Automation
- Customer Experience
- Sales
- Prospecting
- Negotiation
- Forecasting
- CRM
Location
- Remote
Work Type
- Hybrid
- Full-time
Experience Level
- 12+ years of related experience
- Enterprise sales experience
Education Level
- Equivalent practical experience is welcome; no specific degree is required.
About the Company
- Zendesk software was built to bring a sense of calm to the chaotic world of customer service. Today we power billions of conversations with brands you know and love.
- Zendesk believes in offering our people a fulfilling and inclusive experience. 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.
Equal Opportunity
- Zendesk is an equal opportunity employer, and we’re proud of our ongoing efforts to foster global diversity, equity, & inclusion in the workplace. Individuals seeking employment and employees at Zendesk are considered without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, medical condition, ancestry, disability, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law. We are an AA/EEO/Veterans/Disabled employer. If you are based in the United States and would like more information about your EEO rights under the law, please click here.
- Zendesk endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to submit this application, complete any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participate in the employee selection process, please send an e-mail to peopleandplaces@zendesk.com with your specific accommodation request.