Director of Sales Operations

Position Summary:  The Director of Sales Operations & Performance is a hands-on sales leader accountable for running day-to-day sales execution engine across selected direct-to-insured (DTI) programs. This role actively participates in outbound prospecting and models high phone and email activity while enforcing scripting discipline, structured follow-up, pipeline integrity, and KPI accountability.

The Director owns pipeline phase definitions, forecasting rigor, and CRM hygiene while serving as the cross-functional “traffic controller” across Underwriting, Claims, Account Management, Program Management, Marketing, and Marketing Automation Engineering (MAE). This leader ensures clean handoffs, reduced cycle times, underwriting-ready submissions, accurate expectation-setting, and continuous funnel optimization to drive premium growth, productivity, and forecast accuracy.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

• Leads and manages Producers, Brokers, SDRs, BDRs, and Sales support personnel assigned to DTI programs.
• Oversee onboarding, script training, call coaching, and ongoing performance management.
• Enforces structured operating cadence, KPI reporting, and pipeline discipline.
• Conducts call reviews, coaching sessions, corrective action plans, and documented performance follow-through.

Essential Tasks:

Sales Execution & Performance Leadership

• Actively prospect and sell alongside the team, modeling high call volume, best-practice discovery, objection handling, and disciplined follow-up.
• Run weekly sales meetings, call blocks, and structured pipeline reviews.
• Set clear activity expectations and accountability to leading indicators (calls, connections, appointments, quotes).
• Own sales scripting and enablement: maintain talk tracks, email templates, script prompts, objection matrices, and call quality standards.
• Conduct monthly, quarterly, and annual performance reviews with defined targets and corrective plans.

Funnel Ownership, KPI Tracking & Forecasting

• Define and enforce pipeline stage definitions and exit criteria within CRM (Salesforce/Zoho).
• Ensure CRM hygiene, accurate stage progression, and timely activity logging.
• Publish KPI dashboards including stage conversion rates, stage velocity/aging, speed-to-lead, follow-up compliance, quote-to-bind ratios, and producer productivity.
• Lead weekly forecasting meetings with commit criteria, risk flags, and variance narratives.
• Improve forecast accuracy through structured review cadence and inspection discipline.
• Partner with MAE to optimize lead routing, scoring logic, automation workflows, and reporting integrity.

Underwriting Partnership & Submission Quality

• Establish recurring underwriting alignment touchpoints by program to review eligibility updates, appetite changes, turnaround times, and escalation paths.
• Own submission quality standards and underwriting-ready criteria.
• Coach team to reduce rework drivers, incomplete submissions, and cycle-time delays.
• Implement and manage quote triage rules (fast-lane vs. refer-to-UW criteria, priority queueing, SLA enforcement).
• Maintain win/loss feedback loops tied to underwriting decisions and pricing outcomes; refine qualification scripts accordingly.

Claims / Service / Account Management Integration

• Create structured feedback loops to capture claim trends, coverage misunderstandings, friction points, and onboarding issues impacting retention.
• Ensure accurate sales-to-service handoffs with clear expectation-setting around coverage, exclusions, endorsements, and claims processes.
• Coordinate rapid support for pre-bind claim-history questions and post-bind onboarding issues through escalation playbooks.
• Partner with Account Management on early-lifecycle retention initiatives and integrate insights into sales messaging.

Marketing & Program Management Collaboration

• Provide regular feedback to Marketing and Program Management on lead quality, conversion drivers, objections, and voice-of-customer insights.
• Collaborate on offer refinement, landing page optimization, messaging improvements, and outbound targeting strategies.
• Support event execution including pre-show prospecting, lead capture standards, and post-show follow-up SLAs.

Operating Cadence & Rituals

• Daily: Structured call blocks, SLA monitoring, real-time coaching, speed-to-lead review, issue triage.
• Weekly: Pipeline reviews, KPI dashboards, forecast inspection, funnel diagnostics with MAE and Marketing.
• Monthly: Performance reviews, cohort analysis, underwriting rework review, campaign tuning.
• Quarterly: Program-level performance reviews, quota adjustments, script refresh cycles, forecasting calibration.
• Annually: Program planning support, growth strategy alignment, productivity benchmarking.

Core Competencies:

• Phone-Centric Sales Leadership: Builds high-activity, script-disciplined outbound sales environments.
• Pipeline & Forecast Discipline: Strong command of stage management, commit criteria, variance analysis, and forecast accuracy improvement.
• Funnel Optimization: Analyzes stage conversion, velocity, and leakage to improve short-cycle consultative selling outcomes.
• Cross-Functional Alignment: Effectively integrates Sales with Underwriting, Claims, Service, Marketing, and Program Management.
• Coaching & Enablement: Conducts structured call reviews and drives continuous skill improvement.
• Operational Rigor: Enforces CRM hygiene, SLA discipline, submission completeness, and quote triage systems.
• KPI Management & Accountability: Develops dashboards, monitors leading/lagging indicators, and drives measurable performance improvement.

Experience and Education:

• 5+ years in sales leadership or sales operations with hands-on outbound ownership and forecasting responsibility.
• Proven success building phone-centric teams with script discipline and repeatable coaching systems.
• Strong CRM expertise (Salesforce or Zoho), telephony systems, dashboard reporting, and marketing automation collaboration.
• P&C insurance experience preferred (program/MGA environment a plus).
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, or related field (or equivalent experience).

Licensing and Credentials:

• Property & Casualty License preferred, or a willingness to obtain licensure with company support within 3 months.

Systems:

• CRM Platforms: Salesforce, Zoho – pipeline tracking, reporting, forecasting.
• Telephony/Dialer Systems – call tracking, recording, coaching analytics.
• Marketing Automation Platforms – routing, scoring, campaign performance feedback.
• Reporting & Dashboard Tools – KPI tracking, cohort analysis, forecast modeling.

Physical Requirements:

• Ability to lift twenty-five pounds
• Frequent use of sight to read documents and computer screens
• Frequent use of hearing and speech to communicate in person and by phone
• Repetitive hand movements, including keyboarding and mouse use
• Sitting, standing, walking, bending, and reaching as required
• On-call availability and occasional extended hours may be required
• Occasional travel may be required for conferences, client meetings, or industry events (~10-20%).

Notice to Recruiters and Staffing Agencies: To protect the interests of all parties, Higginbotham Insurance Agency, Inc., and our partners, will not accept unsolicited potential placements from any source other than directly from the candidate or a vendor partner under MSA with Higginbotham.  Please do not contact our team members or send unsolicited potential placements.