Head of Vendor Relationships

Description

At iwoca we believe finance should make life easier, not harder, for small businesses. When small businesses go to traditional lenders they are forced to deal with long waits, absurdly rigid criteria, and impersonal bureaucracies. We believe small businesses deserve a financing service that strips out the hassle; that gets to know each customer’s needs; that generates opportunities instead of problems. iwoca is finance, custom-built to expand possibilities for small business. Since 2012, we've made finance available to over 50,000 businesses across Europe and lent over £1 billion. Our customers include everything from cafés to car dealers, salons to solicitors.

As part of our next stage of growth, we are launching iwocaPay, a new product which provides finance to SMEs at the point of invoice and the point of sale. We’re looking for a Head of Vendor Relationships to join a new and growing cross-functional team. We’re busy building a solution for small and medium sized partners and we also want to target large / enterprise-sized vendors and partners whose SME customers could benefit from iwocaPay.

You’ll start by building our pipeline of large vendors (£10m+ turnover) as well as owning the relationships with existing large vendors. This is an opportunity to be part of a growing team building an entirely new business. You’ll help us deliver one of our key strategic priorities and one of the public commitments underpinning our £10m BCR grant. The Head of Vendor Relationships will play a pivotal role in developing our iwocaPay team and help steer the direction of the business.

What you’ll do:

• Lead the development of iwocaPay’s strategic partnerships, beginning with large vendors (£10m+ turnover), to build traction for a new product
• Review the market for potential partnerships and evaluate opportunities that align with the team’s roadmap and growth ambitions
• Initiate new partnership discussions and find your way to the key decision-makers in the target partner’s business
• Create commercial proposals and define a value proposition that will deliver significant ROI for iwoca and the partners
  • Negotiate and agree contracts with new vendors

Requirements

What you’ll bring:

• A proven track record of defining a strategy and executing it to achieve revenue targets. This will involve identifying, evaluating and negotiating commercial partnerships, and taking them from concept through to market roll out.
• Experience in B2B sales, financial services and familiarity with a B2B sales environment
• Strong record of performance management

• Strong commercial and contract negotiation experience
• Experience of working cross-functionally in a collaborative environment

Benefits

What’s life like as an iwocan?

We all enjoy:

• A lovely office in central London, right by Tottenham Court Road
• Two company retreats a year (in places like the French Alps or Spanish seaside)
• Pool, ping pong, foosball tables and tournaments as well as yoga
• An ever-growing number of clubs including climbing, chess, football and boxing
• Plenty of drinks and snacks in our office kitchen
• A paid volunteering day each year, for you to support your chosen charity

Just for you:

• Medical insurance from Vitality, including discounted gym membership
• Stock options
• Enhanced maternity and shared parental leave
• A workplace nursery tax benefit scheme
• 25 days holiday per year and an extra day off on your birthday
• Extra leave if you want to travel or study
• Special celebrations for anniversaries and long service including sabbatical
• Flexible working
• Cycle-to-work scheme

And to make sure we all keep learning, we offer:

• Tickets to tech conferences across Europe
• Company-wide talks with internal and external speakers
• A calendar of meetups we host at our office
• Access to learning platforms like Treehouse if you want to learn to code.

We take the coronavirus threat very seriously, so our team is working remotely, meaning that all our interviews will be conducted by video. We’re still actively hiring for this position and plan to set new employees up for success by being onboarded and also working remotely.

We work hard to make iwoca a place where everyone feels welcome, where you can confidently be yourself. We understand that diversity isn't an optional add-on, it's the core ingredient of what makes us great.