Sales Operations Analyst

Merlin International Inc•Mclean, VA

11h•Onsite

About The Position

The Sales Operations Analyst (SOA) owns and manages the end-to-end sales renewal process and supports the Sales Team development activities from capture through proposal submission. As a critical role within our Enterprise Deal Desk, our SOAs apply strong time management, attention to detail, and effective communication to provide the internal structure needed to seamlessly coordinate complex movements in response to our customers’ requests. Collaborating with every team, from Account Executives to Finance and Legal to our Leadership team, SOAs deliver high-quality, timely, compelling, and compliant offerings to our customers.

Requirements

Able to juggle concurrent activities and stakeholders: The SOA role is not for those who prefer to work in a serial environment. Supporting multiple Account Executives and a continually evolving partner ecosystem, the SOA must thrive in a dynamic setting and adapt to the creative approaches we infuse in our offerings.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills: The SOA's understanding of the components and deadlines for any given opportunity is necessary but not sufficient for success. The SOA represents Merlin in written and verbal communications with customers, partners, and internal stakeholders, and must provide a high-energy, crisp representation of Merlin in all interactions. Timely updates on activities in required systems are critical.
High level of Excel proficiency: The SOA spends well over 50% of its day in Excel. Experience and proficiency, including but not limited to the ability to understand and use formulas and pivot tables, are required for this role. Analytics is a key piece of our process.
Proactive thinking: The SOA anticipates each stakeholder's next needs and has them ready as soon as possible to accelerate our business.

Nice To Haves

Inside sales and/or account management experience a plus: Merlin welcomes a broad array of experiences to improve business execution, however, experience with Federal Government contracts as well as account management or inside sales is preferred.

Responsibilities

Manage activities across a portfolio of deals: Collaborating with the Account Executive, the SOA develops a schedule of milestones and required tasks for each opportunity in the portfolio. The SOA is accountable for tracking updates in real time and providing the status of all components of a deal during periodic reviews and ad hoc reports. Portfolios include unsolicited proposals, responses to official requests for quotes or information, market research, and other formal and informal artifacts used to advance a deal.
Organize inputs and key stakeholders: SOAs synthesize inputs from the Solution Architects, partners, OEMs, pricing teams, and other stakeholders who contribute critical insights to advance each opportunity and keep the team proactively informed and prepared to make well-reasoned responses. SOAs use a deep understanding of contract vehicles, market norms, and industry regulations to ensure the team gathers appropriate data well ahead of delivery deadlines.
Execute internal approval processes: To ensure high-quality, compliant offerings in accordance with our corporate governance structure, the SOA facilitates internal processes to ensure all components of offerings receive timely approvals from contracts, legal, finance, and executive leadership, in collaboration with the Account Executive.
Communicate seamlessly: From the engineering team to business development, and from the pre-award team to the post-award team, the SOA ensures complete, seamless communication. SOAs leverage templates, document repositories, and business information tools to communicate key details and lead our internal kickoff activities to set our delivery teams up for success upon award.
Work transparently and efficiently: The Enterprise Deal Desk leverages common sales tools and custom templates to drive consistency, quality, and transparency across the business. SOAs use these tools and templates while proactively contributing to their evolution and improvement. SOAs support Account Executives in keeping opportunity details up to date by leveraging our internal tools for quoting, our standard templates, our sales opportunity management tool, document management, and collaboration platform.
Move fast, be flexible: Our customers often have requirements we must meet within a very limited time. SOAs must thrive in fast-moving environments where new information drives frequent changes and the need to adapt in near real time. Precision and accuracy can never be sacrificed.
Other duties as assigned: Projects come up. The SOA may be assigned tasks by Leadership, Sales, or other stakeholders. Responsiveness and accuracy are expected, no matter the task.