Account Manager

Alongside our partner-held accounts, we still have a number of direct customers, and over time they will move across to the partner model too. Looking after all of them, direct and partner-held, is what this role is about. Some of our customers have been with us for well over a decade, and we have never invested in a team that is close enough to the account to notice expansion opportunities or churn signals.

Two things make this a challenging role. The first is the partner model. Partners own the day-to-day relationship with most of our customers, which is right for the business, but it leaves us one step removed from what is going on inside an account. You will need to build relationships with customers through and alongside partners, without undermining them, and still know enough to spot both trouble and opportunities as early as possible.

The second is scale. Our customers are large oil and gas operators with procurement teams, legal teams, IT strategies and internal politics of their own. We are a small organisation. You may be dealing with several large enterprise teams per account, with little of the process or support that an account manager at a big software company would take for granted.

You will have the autonomy to build this yourself.

So, this is a job for a self-starter. You’ll get guidance, context and backing, reporting to the CEO initially and to the VP Business Development once in post, with direct access to the leadership team. You’ll be expected to take a problem, ask the right questions, and work out how to approach it. There is no playbook for this role yet.

If the idea of writing that playbook excites you, then this job is probably for you.

Retention comes first, and expansion is a close second. If you have run enterprise renewals with procurement teams and know how to get results through partners rather than around them, you will see the impact of your work here quickly.

• Own retention across the customer base. You’ll carry gross retention, net retention and renewal rate across every Energy Sys customer, direct and partner-held. Your job is to keep the base healthy and growing, with commission/bonus tied to renewals and expansion.
• Run direct renewals end to end. For our direct customers you own the whole renewal: the relationship, the negotiation, the pricing and the terms, including moving customers onto our new agreements. You’ll be working with procurement and legal teams at large enterprises, keeping the process moving over months, and bringing Finance in when you need them.
• Support partners on the accounts they hold. Where a partner owns the customer, you’re behind them: tracking renewal dates, understanding account health, and making sure the partner has what they need from Energy Sys to keep the customer happy.
• See churn coming and head it off. You’ll own identifying at-risk accounts and leading the plan to keep them. Our product is sticky and our retention is strong, but you need to get ahead of the build vs buy conversations happening within customers’ IT teams. You’ll know every account well enough to spot the early signs and act long before it reaches a renewal conversation.
• Find expansion and route it to partners. You’ll look for where customers can grow with us (new assets, new use cases, new regions) and where the wider market has openings for the applications our partners build. You’ll be working with the Partner Manager to get our partners knocking on the right doors at the right time.
• Open doors for Marketing. Marketing owns references and case studies, but you’ll have the relationships. You’ll line up the right customer contact at the right moment and make the ask easy to say yes to.
• Keep Salesforce the single source of truth. Eve…