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HARRY’S COMMENTS: We are working with GSI Commerce in their search for a Senior Director of Client Services. As many of my readers know, GSI is an eBay company specializing in creating, developing and running online shopping sites for brick and mortar retailers. The company also provides a variety of marketing, customer care, payment processing, fulfillment, and technology integration services.
It’s a huge organization that is extremely well positioned for future growth. GSI Commerce has over 500 clients and operates 26 offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. It provides services for companies such as Zales, Timberland, Ace Hardware, Sports Authority, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and RadioShack.
You can get a feel for the size of GSI’s infrastructure in the following clip from the CBS TV series “Undercover Boss,” in which GSI’s CEO, Michael Rubin, slips into several different line-level jobs within GSI, including assembling customer orders, loading trucks and answering customer calls during GSI’s busy season …
Did you watch the video? Note the culture of the organization. Mr. Rubin started GSI in 1999, and today GSI employs more than 4,500 people, rising to over 10,000 employees during the holiday shopping season. Everyone in the company shares the same enthusiasm for “getting it done.”
I spend my life on the phone with America’s top ecommerce executives, and it’s not uncommon for me to ask candidates “I realize you are currently speaking with several other companies. In your opinion, who are the top three companies you have spoken with, in terms of their raw talent and business acumen?”
Frequently, the answer comes back “GSI. They really know their stuff.”
Which is saying something, because when you consider how difficult it is to manage one ecommerce business (let alone 500!), you must be customer-driven and well-organized to be successful in this industry. You have to know which activities drive a given end result, and you MUST be able to execute.
And that’s exactly what GSI does.
All of this makes the Senior Director of Client Services a critical position within GSI. In many respects, you’ll be the face of GSI to your clients. To succeed in this role, you will need to be part hunter, part management consultant, and part diplomat. You’ll need to see your client’s business through their customers’ eyes and help your client leverage GSI’s solutions to grow their business in the most resource-friendly way.
Easy to say. Hard to do.
It’s an exciting role that, frankly, I’d enjoy doing myself. To apply, keep reading and follow the instructions at the bottom of this post.
Please Tweet this job, and you’ll be automatically entered into our monthly drawing. Just do it and see what happens: 2010 prizes included $100 Amazon gift certs, Dean & Deluca steaks, and Keurig coffee machines …
Responsibilities:
- Manage large, complex client relationships. Successfully manage all aspects of client relationship including managing and setting expectations, communicating status, building and developing key relationships.
- Plan and lead client projects focused on driving incremental online revenue through improved merchandising effectiveness.
- Conduct client business diagnostics to assess current performance relative to best practices, and identify and prioritize gaps in systems, processes, and organizational capabilities.
- Develop client feasibility studies, growth plans, and improvement roadmaps.
- Structure and present recommendations to senior client leadership, and facilitate approval.
- Analyze existing and develop new financial analyses (e.g., pro forma P&Ls, revenue/margin projections, ROI, etc.) to support improvement recommendations.
- Analyze existing and develop new merchandise plans (revenues, margins, SKUs) to support financial growth plans.
- Work with clients to make decisions to profitably and aggressively grow the business. Accelerate the growth of the client’s businesses significantly faster than they could have done it themselves.
- Strategically plan the ecommerce business including defining goals and objectives with client and associated tactics and initiatives to support goals.
Requirements:
The candidate will be a highly motivated, entrepreneurial person who has proven ecommerce and consumer experience with track record of strong business growth and success.
Applications for this position are being coordinated by Harry Joiner. To apply, CLICK HERE. Candidates, please be sure to ask for the packet of market research and company / competitive intel that will differentiate you in your candidacy. Due to the intensely competitive nature of this search, thorough preparation for these interviews with this proprietary material is strongly recommended.
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FOLLOW UP QUESTION FROM MY READERS:
QUESTION: Hi Harry – I’m curious. I wonder if someone with heavy results-driven ecommerce & retail experience (like me), but not a lot of “pure sales” experience could be a good fit for something like this?
ANSWER: Quite possibly. The thing to remember about this position is that it is a client-facing role with an awful lot of moving parts: customer acquisition, online merchandising, usability, analytics, logistics, reverse logistics, call center, and so forth. It’s not enough to be snow proofed in these areas.
You must be able to sit down with VP-level executives in every one of those functional areas to assess their problems, then explain how GSI can drive value. If you can do that, I would love for you to apply. If you don’t think this job is for you, that’s okay too: I will handle 150+ searches this year, and I’m sure we can work together on other things.
