Director, Carbon Buyer Partnerships, Market Development

Indigo improves grower profitability, environmental sustainability, and consumer health through the use of natural microbiology and digital technologies. Indigo works alongside its growers to apply natural approaches, conserve resources for future generations, and grow healthy food for all. Working across the supply chain, Indigo is forwarding its mission of harnessing nature to help farmers sustainably feed the planet. The company is headquartered in Boston, MA, with additional offices in Memphis, TN, Research Triangle Park, NC, Basel, Switzerland, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and São Paulo, Brazil. www.indigoag.com

The Director, Carbon Buyer Partnerships, is part of Indigo’s market development team at the ‘tip of the spear’ developing partnerships and securing carbon offset and corporate supply chain solution commitments in support of farmers and enabling agriculture’s potential as a natural climate solution. The person in this role will help establish Indigo as the preferred partner in the carbon credit buyer market and key service provider in meeting corporate and supply chain climate goals. He/or she will have a proven track record of developing and closing enterprise-level partnerships, and, ideally, in ecosystem services markets and/or sustainability. Finally, this right candidate for this role will be a strategic thinker and highly collaborative - contributing to Indigo Carbon’s go-to-market strategy and representing the voice of the customer in strategic decision making across Indigo Ag.

Responsibilities:

Indigo - The Preferred Partner

• Develop an understanding of Indigo technical capabilities, scientific rigor, and approach to quantification
• Establish Indigo as the preferred partner in the Carbon Credit Buyer market, worldwide and execute carbon credit sales 
  • For meaningful segment of carbon target, take pipeline companies from contact made through decision making phase, including:
  • Establishing champion, business validation, technical validation, contract negotiation, and final sale
• Develop customer specific value proposition, identify potential risks in a deal, and put in place mitigation plan to close a deal
• Support negotiations on multi-million dollar sales agreements with support from finance, legal, and other internal functions. 
• Close your first carbon credit sales contract within 4 months of starting to reach out to customers.
• For closed deals, maintain customer relationships to enable recurring sales, partner with offering and marketing teams to deliver business value

Carbon Credit Buyer Pipeline Development

• Build a pipeline of corporate Carbon Credit buyers and manage these partners through all segments of the sales process
  • Engaged in customer discovery to understand needs in this emerging space
  • Share and leverage those learnings to collaborate with the Offer Management team to refine the corporate carbon offering
• Assist with outreach to prospective partners by utilizing email, phone calls, LinkedIn tools, Salesforce, Salesloft, and other methods in order to build a healthy pipeline of opportunities
• Establish key relationships with global Executive leadership within target partners at the global and regional levels
• Use a  prioritization framework for prospective carbon credit buyers, aligning by: Mission alignment, opportunity size, ability to deliver, structure, and likelihood of closing
• Maintain and expand relationship with existing buyers to drive referrals and renewals
• Manage a book of business to hit annual sales target including:
  • Develop portfolio deals necessary in each stage of the sales process
  • Conduct Account Plan, including win-plans for key accounts and deals

Leadership

• Lead cross-functionally within Indigo’s matrixed environment to align goals and track progress against other offerings’ goals with an emphasis on Carbon Supply Partnerships, Market Development team including Agricultural Retailers, Farm Management Information Systems, etc. 
• Track key takeaways for both Indigo and prospective partners through the sales process to incorporate lessons learned in order to shorten time to close deals and increase win probability.

Understands and embodies our mission & core values 

• Excited by Indigo’s mission; believes that Indigo can fundamentally change the agriculture industry; can clearly articulate passion for our mission and values
• Optimistic and innovative; solution-oriented; shows no signs of cynicism
• Will be widely viewed as someone who personifies our core values, is committed to them, and leans on them when making decisions.  Specifically:
  • Demonstrates a track record of high integrity - doing the right thing, owning mistakes, conducting oneself honestly
  • Values, communicates and interacts with others with high levels of transparency and respect
  • Collaborates well across functions; creates an inspiring and collegial work environment

Key Competencies:

1. Ability to work with global companies at the Executive leadership level
2. Passion for business development/closing deals & strong account management and partnership skills & experience
3. Clear alignment with Indigo's environmental goals and overarching, long-term mission
4. Strategic thinker that can reduce complexity
5. Exceptional public speaker with strong leadership presence and capability of understanding & communicating technical carbon methodology nuances
6. Process oriented and working knowledge of how to leverage CRM systems in order to enhance pipeline management
7. Ability to work effectively in a matrixed environment
8. Ability to be seen as a strong Indigo Brand Ambassador and leader, compelling public speaker/influencer
9. Capable of consultative selling (and managing a team of consultative sellers) to align Indigo solutions w/ corporate sustainability goals
10. Collaborative - ability to work across Indigo organization to bring resources to support deals and be voice of market to Indigo strategic decision making - validating and supporting business in developing what is needed through market and customer engagement
11. Comfortable with ambiguity and teaming with product teams to develop customer-facing offerings
12. Having the ability to educate buyers on technical products is a key component of this sales motion

Key Qualifications:

1. Minimum of 8 years of experience, highly preferred with exposure to or passion for environmental products
2. Previous experience selling carbon credits / ecosystem services highly preferred
3. B2B business development experience with major Fortune 500 organizations across different industries highly preferred
4. Experience strategizing, running, and overseeing a successful sales funnel for enterprise sales opportunities with a track-record of success is highly preferred
5. Remote is ok (near major airport) - up to 30% travel (post-pandemic)
6. Demonstrated experience with other technically demanding products is required

Indigo is committed to living our values, specifically “creating a work environment where everyone feels respected, connected, and has opportunities to learn and grow.” As part of living our values, we strive to create a diverse and inclusive work environment where everyone feels they can be themselves and has an equal opportunity of succeeding.