Alternative roles

The candidate will directly run a small team, initially of just one other person, but with the immediate sign off to recruit a partner (vendor) marketing manager and with the expectation that another member of the team would join within 12 months. 
 
Dependent on the candidate’s skill set, the candidate would be responsible for some or all of the following areas and activities:

- Positioning Softcat’s offering to existing customers, prospective customers and prospective employees, including development of how we present what the company does (based on what our customers need/where the market opportunity is), our core strengths, our brand proposition and company values.  Offerings will be presented at a company level down to specific areas of focus such as virtualisation, software asset management and managed services.  This will be communicated via:
o sales training and production of intranet based sales collateral (we see our 140 account managers as the most effective way of taking messages to our customer base)
o the company web site
o external telemarketing
o company customer facing presentation/storyboard and proposal material
o increasingly Web 2.0 techniques including blogs, social/professional media
o decreasingly paper based customer facing customer collateral
o case studies
o customer seminars, briefings and events
o targeted e-shots
o PR activities

- Working with our vendor partners to increase the effectiveness of each Softcat/vendor relationship including:
o development of joint business plans
o facilitating the relationship between vendor partners and the Softcat sales teams
o formulating and implementing joint campaigns to enhance Softcat’s value proposition and drive business opportunities for new and existing accounts
o management of associated co-op marketing funds and maximising the benefit of available funding
o representing Softcat at certain vendor partner advisory meetings and partner conferences
o marketing Softcat into our vendor partners’ organisations, particularly their sales teams
o be an active member of Softcat’s decision making process for new partner take on

- Working with sales people on specific large sales campaigns:
o Assisting sales people in formulation their customer proposition
o Assistance in responding to important tenders and the presentation materials required
o Being an available resource to sales people (along with the other senior managers of the company) to attend customer meetings and present Softcat

- Working with Softcat recruitment to ensure we are positioning Softcat effectively to prospective employees and maximising our recruitment media spend

- Management and development of Softcat customer satisfaction surveys and feedback mechanisms

- Working with the company’s managing director and other directors to constantly improve internal communications

- All matters relating to the Softcat brand and the production of all Softcat branded material (generally signage and stationary), promotional material and an active input to the marketing impact of our premises for customers and staff (existing and prospective)

- Customer hospitality and relationship building programmes

We believe that for the above to be most effective, far more could and should be done with data-mining, ranging from having excellent customer contact data, to being able to use previous spend data intelligence to far more accurately tailor marketing efforts to very specific audiences.  This is a large task but one where we wish to be industry leading and will fall under the remit of the Head of Marketing.

Given the range of activities covered above it is very likely that the candidate will be an experienced marketing manager. However we would consider applicants from other disciplines such as sales or business development management, should candidates be able to demonstrate the required skill set/experience, which will include many of the following attributes:

- Highly intelligent, probably educated to degree level with 2.1 or above

- Excellent communication skills both with outstanding writing skills and good oral skills

- High degree of business acumen with that innate sense of what will be commercially successful

- Strong people manager – managing the marketing team members, relationships with sales people/other departments, representatives from partner organisations

- Extremely hard working, committed and passionate

- Excels in a sales led environment, enjoys working with a large sales force and is happy to be in part a service provider to the sales teams

- (Not a pre-requisite but highly desirable) Has a very good understanding of the IT industry, has worked in a solutions led IT channel or services provider.  May not want to admit it, but actually quite likes and “gets” the technology (particularly around Microsoft technologies, security, infrastructure and associated services)

- Experience of developing outstanding web sites, intranets, collateral

- Ability to get things done, happy to lead by example and be very hands-on, pragmatic not fluffy

- Excels in a non-hierarchical structure which can be typified as organised chaos and where big company mentality, processes and structure are largely absent

We would like to hear from experienced, finished articles who have most of the attributes above already or up and coming stars who may not be there today, but aspire to get there and have the obvious talent to do so. 

Given this broad band of candidates we are willing to consider, we do not have a fixed package for this role but we loosely expect it to range from a minimum of £50K for the up and coming star to £100K for the experienced finished article.

The position is expected to report to the company’s Managing Director but should the person not have the understanding of the technology, we may at least initially prefer the position to report to our Solutions Director (Sam Routledge) who has strong marketing skills and interest himself and would be able to add the technology vision skills to this area should they be lacking with our preferred candidate.

Other duties will include responsibilty for the re-assessment of credit limits of existing customers based on the latest financial information and the historic payment performance of the customer. This will include monthly review meetings with the Finance Director and Credit Control Manager.

The ideal candidate will have strong experience in analysing financial reports and ideally also credit scoring. We are looking for somebody highly motivated who is able to work on their own initiative but also a good team player. Good communication skills are essential as you will be liasing with Account Managers on a daily basis.