Sales Director, SMB

At Braze, we have found our people. We’re a genuinely approachable, exceptionally kind, and intensely passionate crew. We seek to ignite that passion by setting high standards, championing teamwork, and creating work-life harmony as we collectively navigate rapid growth on a global scale while striving for greater equity and opportunity – inside and outside our organization. To flourish here, you must be prepared to set a high bar for yourself and those around you. There is always a way to contribute: Acting with autonomy, having accountability and being open to new perspectives are essential to our continued success. Our deep curiosity to learn and our eagerness to share diverse passions with others gives us balance and injects a one-of-a-kind vibrancy into our culture. If you are driven to solve exhilarating challenges and have a bias toward action in the face of change, you will be empowered to make a real impact here, with a sharp and passionate team at your back. If Braze sounds like a place where you can thrive, we can’t wait to meet you. We are seeking an experienced, entrepreneurial SaaS sales leader to build, scale, and lead our Braze For Startups (SMB) sales organization. This highly visible leadership role is for someone who has successfully built and scaled an SMB or velocity-sales business within a high-growth or enterprise-scale SaaS company. The ideal candidate combines hands-on sales leadership with the strategic and operational depth to build a repeatable growth engine. They will lead a team of SMB Account Executives and outbound prospecting professionals while defining the sales motion, coaching methodology, performance standards, hiring plan, and operating cadence necessary to scale efficiently. This leader will have a strong understanding of the SMB buyer journey and a demonstrated ability to create demand, convert pipeline, improve sales productivity, and drive predictable new-business revenue. They will be comfortable operating with meaningful autonomy, making informed decisions quickly, and partnering cross-functionally to build the systems and programs needed to grow the segment. The successful candidate will also bring experience developing external ecosystems that accelerate growth. This includes building relationships with venture capital firms and their portfolio companies, digital agencies, consultants, system integrators, technology partners, and other influential partners that can generate pipeline, improve customer adoption, and expand market reach. Experience selling marketing technology, customer engagement, marketing automation, CRM, email, mobile, analytics, or related SaaS solutions is strongly preferred. WHAT YOU'LL DO • Own the strategy, execution, and performance of the SMB sales segment, including revenue attainment, pipeline generation, conversion, sales productivity, and forecast accuracy • Build and lead a high-performing team of Account Executives • Create a clear and repeatable SMB sales motion across inbound, outbound, partner-led, and sales-assisted acquisition channels • Establish the business operating cadence, including pipeline reviews, forecast calls, deal inspection, performance management, quarterly planning, and executive business reviews • Recruit, onboard, coach, develop, and retain exceptional sales talent; build the management bench and career paths required to scale the organization • Develop sales playbooks, enablement programs, prospecting standards, qualification methodologies, discovery frameworks, and objection-handling tools that improve consistency and conversion • Partner with Sales Operations to design territory and account-assignment models, lead routing, pipeline definitions, capacity plans, compensation structures, dashboards, and forecasting processes • Work closely with Marketing to improve demand generation, campaign conversion, account targeting, lead quality, lifecycle programs, and attribution across the SMB funnel • Collaborate with Customer Success and Account Management to ensure smooth handoffs, strong customer activation, retention, adoption, and expansion opportunities • Build and operationalize relationships with venture capital firms, startup ecosystems, accelerators, agencies, consultants, system integrators, and technology partners • Develop partner-led and ecosystem-led growth motions, including referral, co-sell, implementation, marketplace, and portfolio-company programs • Represent the company with customers, partners, industry communities, and senior stakeholders; bring market, customer, and competitive insights back to the broader go-to-market organization • Identify opportunities to improve SMB packaging, pricing, onboarding, product adoption, and go-to-market efficiency through direct customer insight and data-driven analysis • Operate as a strategic business leader with the autonomy to prioritize investments, improve execution, and build the programs necessary to make SMB a durable growth engine WHO YOU ARE • 7+ years of progressive SaaS sales and go-to-market experience, ideally including SMB, commercial, velocity, growth, or emerging-business segments • At least 3+ years of direct people-management experience leading SMB sales teams, including Account Executives and preferably SDR, BDR, or outbound prospecting organizations • Demonstrated success building or materially scaling an SMB sales team, sales motion, or revenue segment within a high-growth or large-scale SaaS environment • A strong record of hiring, coaching, developing, and retaining quota-carrying sales talent and frontline sales managers • Experience owning meaningful revenue targets and consistently delivering against new-business, pipeline, productivity, and forecast goals • Deep knowledge of SaaS sales metrics and levers, including ARR, ACV, pipeline coverage, conversion rates, sales-cycle length, quota attainment, productivity, CAC efficiency, retention, and expansion • Experience creating an