Account Executive - National Accounts - Confluent

At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients solve their most complex business challenges. Working across industries and geographies, you’ll partner with colleagues, clients, and partners to co-create solutions that drive digital transformation and lasting impact.Success in Global Sales is built on curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. You’ll connect technical understanding with strong people skills, building trusted relationships and shaping solutions that improve business and society. With world-class onboarding, continuous learning, and a supportive culture, IBM offers the tools and opportunities to grow your career. Join us and be part of a global team that’s passionate about driving innovation and making a difference. As a member of the Confluent Sales Team, (an IBM Company), the Enterprise Account Executive is responsible for selling Confluent solutions to our National Accounts segment. We expect you to use your prospecting, sales, negotiation, and leadership skills to effectively sell Confluent offerings to leading companies to meet and exceed your quarterly sales target. You must possess a "consumption/growth" mentality with a proven track record of success within a value-driven sales model. What You Will Do:

• Drive Revenue Growth: o Achieve and exceed quarterly and annual sales targets by driving net-new customer acquisition and expanding consumption within existing enterprise accounts.
• Strategic Sales Execution: o Own and manage the entire sales cycle, from prospecting and discovery to negotiation and closing complex deals, using structured sales methodologies like MEDDPICC or Challenger.
• Prospecting & Pipeline Management: o Proactively identify, qualify, and develop a robust sales pipeline, building strong relationships with C-level executives and senior stakeholders within GCCs.
• Consultative Selling: o Understand customer needs and business problems, developing and presenting compelling value propositions tailored to specific business outcomes leveraging Confluent's data streaming platform.
• Solution Design & Collaboration: o Partner closely with Solutions Engineers, Global Account Managers, Professional Services, and Customer Success teams to design effective technical solutions and ensure seamless customer experience.
• Market Expertise: o Become an in-depth subject matter expert (SME) on Confluent's offerings, the broader data infrastructure, DataStreaming, AI and Kafka landscape.
• Ecosystem Alignment: o Work with the partner ecosystem across AWS, GCP, Azure, GSIs and GCC focused Partners.
• Reporting & Forecasting: o Maintain accurate CRM records, provide regular sales reports, and forecast sales accurately.
• 5+ years of proven, quota-carrying sales experience in a competitive market.
• Demonstrated success in consultative, solution-selling environments within technology (SaaS, cloud, big data, open-source, or enterprise IT solutions).
• Experience with selling into GCC clients is a must
• Proven track record of meeting or exceeding sales quotas consistently.
• Technical Knowledge:
• Strong understanding of data, cloud technologies, open-source, and the business value of data streaming/Kafka (Confluent) solutions.
• Acquisition or Integration Knowledge: Experience with acquisition or integration agreements, including understanding of associated incentive plans and regulatory requirements, is beneficial for success in this role.
• Complex Incentive Plan Management: Experience managing and coordinating participation in complex incentive plans, ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements and organizational policies, is a plus.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Experience working with various stakeholders to drive program execution and resolve issues in a fast-paced environment is desirable. United States Sales Remote Professional Multiple Cities PARAMUS RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK Armonk No City Charlotte Raleigh Boston Irvine Bellevue Atlanta Columbus Philadelphia Denver Dallas Austin San Francisco Seattle WASHINGTON Chicago New York (0147) International Business Machines Corporation Apache Kafka Big Data Integration Management National Accounts Quotas Regulatory Requirements Sales Software as a Service Compliance Account Execution Technical Proficiency Information Technology Solutions Cross-functional Collaboration Confluent Technology