Overview

Responsibilities and Skills

• Extensive knowledge of and practical experience with successful sales process methodologies and tools (forecasting, quoting, CRM, etc).
• Strong business development and relationship building skills.
• Seasoned professional with proven network of professional contacts at the highest level.
• Ability to clearly articulate the future of rail distribution, from both the supply and distributions sides. Candidate will need to be able to sell a vision, as this is a new product & concept within the rail industry.
• Highly analytical – the ability to define the market size & opportunity, build pricing models, and build detailed projections.
• Politically astute, understands the context in which the industry exists; Familiar with EU workings and mandates; Familiar with Public-private institutions such as passenger rail operating companies.
• Ability and willingness to travel throughout Europe
• Excellent negotiation skills.

Background

• Experience working at and/or with a European high-speed passenger rail carrier in the reservation or distribution technology teams or the sales, distribution, web/internet or revenue management business units. Similar experience with Airlines also valuable.
• Background with a “next generation” travel business or travel technology business is a plus (ie ITA Software, Expedia etc). It’s important that the individual understand new business models.

Skills Required

• Extensive ecommerce experience – and familiarity with ecommerce / e-marketing metrics and their management – is highly desirable.
• Sales/Negotiation/Influencing skills – partner negotiation is a vital skill in the business to grow into new markets, sell in new functionality/features.
• People management / relationship / communication skills – the role is very client facing, involving client contact in negotiation and on-going partner contact
• Confident, driven and dynamic leader.
• Entrepreneurial mind-set with the ability to operate in a fast moving dynamic environment.
• Strong verbal/written communication skills including presentation abilities (development and delivery).
• Fluency in English and French required; other European languages a bonus, Spanish, Italian, German.

Competencies Required

• Self Driven – Demonstrated ability to work autonomously and manage a wide variety of projects simultaneously and under deadline.
• Inspiring Trust – Maintains high standards of personal integrity; behaves in accord with expressed beliefs and commitments; establishes open, candid, and trusting relationships; treats others fairly and consistently; collaborates as a team player; never undermines others for own gain.
• Driving Execution – Uses benchmarks and performance measures to track progress; tackles problems head-on and works to resolve them without delay; drives continuous improvement in all organisation processes and products.
• High Impact Communications and Influencing/Negotiating – Creates open channels of communication; keeps others well informed; listens carefully to input and feedback and encourages others to express contrary views; builds confidence and inspires support through a convincing communications style; promotes and sells ideas persuasively; shapes the opinion of key stakeholders; promotes and projects a positive image of the organisation; wins acceptance for proposed changes & new initiatives; works through conflicts to create win/win results; negotiates skillfully to get the best deal possible.