Head of Sales - Birmingham, United Kingdom - Midlands Arts Centre

Midlands Arts Centre

Verified Company

Birmingham, United Kingdom

1 week ago

Posted by:

Tom O´Connor

beBee Recruiter

Description

Location:
Birmingham B12 9QH

Contract Type:
Permanent

Hours:
Full Time, 37.5 per week

Salary:
£34,663 per annum plus benefits

Benefits:
Company pension with employer contributions, generous annual leave allowance, staff development and training programmes, staff discounts, complimentary tickets.

Principal Purpose of Post:

The Head of Sales & Events manages and leads the MAC's Sales & Events and Welcome teams. Their main purpose is to drive income generation from Events hire e.g. conferencing, room hire and special events across MAC's varied spaces.

The role also oversees The Welcome Team whose purpose is to liaise directly with customers enquiries in relation to ticket sales for arts activities and retail.

Open daily MAC is a large-scale venue with a wide-range of flexible and creative spaces e.g. theatres, meeting rooms, studios, cinema, café
- available for hire and is attractively located in the beautiful surroundings of Cannon Hill Park. MAC is a registered Charity with a Trading subsidiary, the profits from Trading return well-needed income to the Charity.

Key Responsibilities
Business and Financial Planning

To be commercially and entrepreneurially minded, always seeking new event sales opportunities, whilst being sensitive to the primary needs of MAC and the content of its arts programme.
To keep under constant review, MAC's offer and pricing in comparison to other venues in Birmingham and develop packages and pricing which reflect venue hire trends, our position in the local market and our uniqueness as a venue.
To lead on the budget setting and review processes for Sales & Events and work with Catering Management to jointly set event catering targets and manage the team to deliver against these.
Attend meetings of the Trading Board providing written, financial and verbal updates on activity and developments as required.

Events Hires

To manage the Sales & Events Team responsible for generating and converting enquiries and liaising with customers to confirm event details in order to accurately hand over to the delivery teams. This team works across 7days to reflect the 7day nature of the hires business at MAC.
To lead on largescale, high profile bookings or "nonstandard" bookings, act as the main point of contact with the customer to understand their needs and budgets, negotiate prices and coordinate MAC Sales & Events and Delivery Teams to deliver.
To champion excellent customer service and exceed customer expectations by providing the link between the Sales & Events and Event Delivery teams ensuring events are delivered as planned and are operationally and financially successful.
To have the confidence to say "no", able to recognise that not all enquiries are financially worthwhile or deliverable with the resources available across the organisation.
To work with the Marketing and Comms team to develop marketing plans to attract new opportunities supported by high quality photographic and digital assets.

Welcome Desk and Retail

To oversee MAC's retail offer (online and onsite), providing line management to the member of Sales & Events with responsibility for retail product ordering, stock control and merchandising.
To work with the Marketing team to develop amongst the Sales & Events team, processes to actively seek customer feedback and use as measure of success and opportunity to learn and improve.
To work with the Fundraising and Development team to train and work closely with the Welcome team to ask customers at point of sale for charity donations.

Staff Management

To support and facilitate the twoway communication within the wider team, nurturing a culture of inclusion, dignity and respect.
To work with staff in direct line management to develop and implement departmental plans which ensure the attainment of the organisation's overall goals.
To supervise the appointment and direct the work of all staff responsible; undertake regular appraisal of their work; and ensure their proper training and development.

Hours of work will include weekend and evening work.

Requirements:

Essential

Strong and demonstrable experience in sales and a business development role(s).
Strong and demonstrable experience of successful sales account management and client relationship management.
Strong and demonstrable experience of event management and operational delivery.
Strong understanding of event catering delivery.
Handson experience of venue management software.
Strong communication, influencing and negotiation skills; a people person who understands how to get the best out of colleagues, including those not in their team.
Confident and outgoing with the selfmotivation to succeed in event sales.
Customer and sales focused, whilst also understanding of the need to balance venue sales with the needs of MAC's primary purpose as an arts venue.
Experience of managing event sales and delivery teams.
Experience of setting and delivering income and expenditure budgets.
Highly organised and ability to multitask.
Computer literate experienced across Microsoft packages and a range of event specific software.
Excellent knowledge and sales experience in the venue industry, or exhibition and conferencing centres.
Experience of dealing with agents and agencies for booking events.

Desirable

Network and connections to local organisations/venue hire customers.
Hands on experience of using Yesplan or resource booking / planning software.
Knowledge of the arts sector, and of working in an arts centre.
An interest in the arts.

Deadline

Short-listing

Interviews

You may have experience of the following: Head of Sales & Events, Business Development Manager, Sales and Events Manager, Head of Business Development, Sales Manager, New Business Development, Sales and Events Operations Manager, Senior Events Coordinator, Senior Event Planner, Marketing, Events Management, Operations Manager, etc.

REF-205802