An artist's impression of Salesforce Tower Sydney
Salesforce is hedging its bets with the Australian and New Zealand channel as it scours the market for a new regional chief.
The customer relationship management (CRM) software giant is seeking to fill a newly-created role of A/NZ VP of alliances, partners and channels in an expansion of its current partner leadership team.
The new executive will report to Charles Woodall, Salesforce Asia Pacific VP for partner sales, industries and strategic alliances.
The appointment comes nearly six months after Salesforce appointed former Suncorp executive and Microsoft managing director Pip Marlow as CEO.
Under Marlow, a long-term advocate of the channel while at Microsoft, Salesforce’s partner leadership team looks set to grow, as indicated by the new job advertisement on LinkedIn.
“This executive will assume leadership of a growing partner organisation including regional vice presidents and partner sales and account management team members,” it said.
To fill this role, the Salesforce is seeking a highly motivated leader and team player” to design and execute a program for its global and local system integrator partners.
The new person will be responsible for developing “the core” of the CRM vendor’s global systems integrator (GSI) and systems integrator (SI) partner ecosystem across A/NZ.
“This is a key and strategic role that requires a balance of strategy with a strong roll-up your sleeves and ‘get it done’ mentality,” the ad read.
As well as being “highly motivated”, the new channel chief will have expertise working in a “fast-paced, cross-functional manner” and has the ability to “establish broad senior-level relationships”.
In addition, the successful person will make a “notable impact” within their first 90 days.
Key duties will include maintaining partner relationships and enabling them to expand customer bases, forecasting major deals with a partner point of view and manage the overall partner engagement process and maintain a quality ecosystem.
Salesforce has already signalled it plans to invest heavily in Australia over the next five years, after announcing it will build its own bespoke tower in Sydney’s Circular Quay, a move that could add 1,000 new local jobs.
