Senior Account Executive / Country Lead Italy

Country Lead Italy

Swan is looking for a Country Lead Italy. Based in our Milano office, this person will lead our new business sales motion in Italy while also supporting our retention efforts.

During your first 1-2 years in the role, your success will be measured by your ability to source and close strategic partnerships, but also grow these partnerships once signed, ensuring they deliver their full potential. As you help Swan expand in Italy, you should be comfortable transitioning toward a role with increasing focus on existing partners. We expect you to secure long-term relationships with our strategic clients, helping them grow and maximize the full potential of our platform.

Beyond your commercial responsibilities, you will be the face of Swan in the region. You'll publicly represent the company at events, on LinkedIn, and in the press. You will be Swan's Legal Representative and, together with our Italian MLRO (Money Laundering and Reporting Officer), you'll also manage our relationships with the local regulator. The last aspect of your job, will be to be Italy's advocate internally at Swan, pushing the product requirements and localization and being the voice our Italian partners and end-users.

Additionally, we expect you to collaborate with our Head of Sales based in Barcelona to lead the Milano office, which will consist in you only to begin with, with potential new hire in the coming years.

In summary, this is a hybrid role where you'll act as a thought leader for your region, requiring hands-on involvement. You need to enjoy being an individual contributor—actively hunting prospects, deeply engaging in closing new deals, and leading sales on our larger opportunities (with support from the rest of the team).

We're seeking someone with strong business acumen who's excited by sales challenges. We also need a strategic thinker who can understand customer needs and perform consultative sales while considering the broader context to ensure Swan's long-term success in Italy and the region.

We need a curious person who's eager to learn and comfortable with the technical aspects of our product. We're also looking for a team player who will collaborate with our product and compliance teams to ensure our roadmap addresses the key requirements of our top prospects and partners in your territories, and to continuously improve our onboarding processes.

Main tasks:

• Be accountable for new business revenue and new client acquisition in our enterprise segment. Develop a consultative and solution-based sales approach to answer our customers needs.
• Be the local representative of the Strategic Account Management team, making sure the partners are well taken care of, but also our product is fully localized.
• With the support of our sales and growth teams, develop outbound strategies to create and nurture opportunities.
• Be the internal and external point of contact for our marketing and PR activities in Italy.
• Build Swan's offer to tackle new verticals.
• Be the voice and face of Swan for the region (at events and in the press).
• Attend industry events to meet new prospects and spot new opportunities for Swan.
• Be in charge of relationships with local regulators to make sure Swan correctly meets its requirements.
• Effectively work cross-functionally across the organization to shape Swan's solutions to meet customer needs.

Preferred experience:

• 6+ years of sales experience, preferably selling a technical product in Fintech or Payments, with previous experience in an international or European environment.
• You are experienced and not afraid to do your own outbound prospecting.
• Passionate about startups and new technology businesses.
• Ability to understand and articulate technical concepts and translate them into industry- or business-relevant terms.
• Proven ability to sell and manage large accounts: you know how to navigate complex organizations and manage long sales cycles.
• Strong interpersonal skills, an excellent team player, and fun to work with.
• Bilingual in Italian with professional proficiency in English.
• Our ideal teammate: Empathetic. Skilled. Frank. We love to challenge each other, and we leave our egos at the door.

It's okay if you don't tick all the boxes — don't let imposter syndrome prevent you from applying!

Swan is committed to providing a caring work environment for all employees, regardless of age, sex, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion, or belief.

When it comes to recruitment, we're interested in your work experience, skills, and overall personality. Because diversity makes the workplace stronger and is necessary for Swan's success, we are intensifying efforts to incorporate concrete actions to help us improve in this area.

Our values:

• Simplicity: Making complex things simple is what we do.
• Long Term: We always play the long game.
• Excellence: We are a team of experts who consistently go all out to create pixel-perfect banking services and exceed our partners' expectations.
• Be Human: We believe in the power of kindness and the importance of acting with integrity. But embracing our humanity extends beyond interpersonal interactions, it means caring about greater issues that affect our planet.

Recruitment process:

• A 30-min video call with our Talent Acquisition Manager.
• An interview with Victor, our Head of International.
• A peer interview.
• An interview with Julio, our Head of Sales.
• Business case and last interview with Luka, our CRO.