VP, Salesforce Solutions

dentsu•USA - Remote - Connecticut, CT

2d•$163,000 - $250,000•Hybrid

About The Position

The VP, Salesforce Solutions is a senior pre-sale and solutioning leader within Merkle's Data Driven Marketing (DDM) business unit. This role leverages Merkle's Salesforce ecosystem (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Data Cloud, Agentforce, and emerging Salesforce innovations), along with Data Engineering and Merkury capabilities, to address client business challenges and drive measurable CX and commercial outcomes. The position connects platform expertise, business strategy, and client discovery to frame business challenges, inspiring compelling and credible solution architectures. The candidate will act as a trusted strategic partner to senior and C-level client stakeholders, leading internal multi-disciplinary pursuit teams to develop differentiated and winnable proposals. This is a strategic advisory role focused on winning work and ensuring recommended platform approaches and scope align with client objectives and Merkle's capabilities, not a delivery or implementation role.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university.
10+ years of experience in Salesforce platform strategy and solutioning roles, with demonstrated success shaping client strategy and winning complex, multi-stakeholder pursuits.
Deep, real-world Salesforce cloud and Data Cloud expertise, including hands-on advisory experience with Salesforce Cloud implementations.
Ability to speak credibly about multiple Salesforce clouds (Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Data Cloud) and their integration.
Demonstrated understanding of emerging Salesforce features and AI capabilities, with the ability to translate platform innovations into client-relevant use cases.
Proven pre-sales or solutioning track record, including experience presenting to C-suite audiences, shaping large-scope proposals, and influencing enterprise purchase decisions.
Deep fluency in first-party data strategy, including identity resolution, consent and privacy management, data clean rooms, and omnichannel activation, with the ability to translate these concepts into client-ready business narratives.
Excellent executive presence and communication skills, with the ability to translate Salesforce platform capabilities and strategic trade-offs into business-relevant language.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree or relevant certifications (Salesforce Architect, Consultant, or equivalent).
Prior experience at a consulting, systems integration, agency, or MarTech vendor environment.
Demonstrated ability to manage multiple client and pursuit contexts simultaneously.
Understanding of Salesforce partner ecosystem and complementary tools (Tableau, MuleSoft, Snowflake, Slack, Adobe, Tealium) and their integration with Salesforce.
Familiarity with Merkle's competitive landscape (Publicis Sapient / Epsilon, Accenture Song, IBM iX, and boutique Salesforce SI partners) with a point of view on where Merkle wins.
Experience working with or positioning a proprietary identity resolution platform (Merkury, Acxiom, LiveRamp, or equivalent) as infrastructure within a Salesforce or CDP architecture.
Demonstrated external thought leadership (speaking, writing, or recognized expertise within the Salesforce, CDP, or marketing data ecosystem).
Familiarity with AI agent deployment patterns, LLM integration in CX workflows, and the data prerequisites for agentic personalization at enterprise scale.

Responsibilities

Owning the solutioning process for Salesforce and Agentforce pursuits from initial discovery through final proposal, ensuring architecture recommendations align with client business outcomes, are commercially defensible, and responsive to client objectives.
Developing and maintaining Merkle's strategic and technical point of view on the Salesforce Cloud ecosystem, including integration strategies and Merkle's differentiation.
Serving as Merkle's senior technical authority in client-facing pursuit settings, translating Salesforce capabilities and trade-offs into business-relevant narratives, building confidence with VP and C-suite stakeholders, and establishing credibility for long-term advisory relationships.
Collaborating with Salesforce's partner and co-sell teams to position Merkle as the preferred SI for multi-cloud and Agentforce implementations, participating in joint GTM planning, maintaining best-practice currency, and representing Merkle in partner-facing forums.
Building and maintaining a library of repeatable pre-sales assets, including architecture frameworks, discovery playbooks, demo environments, RFP response modules, and proposal templates, to enhance the practice's ability to pursue and win Salesforce and Agentforce opportunities at scale.
Staying current on emerging Salesforce innovations (Agentforce, AI-driven features, new cloud capabilities) and advising clients on strategic applicability, adoption timing, prerequisites, and implementation sequencing.
Leveraging Merkle's Merkury identity platform and first-party data capabilities as inputs to Salesforce Data Cloud architectures, ensuring identity resolution, consent management, and audience activation are integrated into solution designs.
Defining Merkle's approach to Agentforce solutioning, including data readiness, identity resolution, and customer 360 infrastructure as prerequisites for AI agent deployment, and translating this framework into client-ready conversations and proposal narratives.
Contributing to DDM capability development by informing Salesforce-related hiring profiles, certification strategy, and delivery team enablement.
Generating external thought leadership through conference presence, written content, and LinkedIn to build Merkle's market credibility within the Salesforce ecosystem.