Director - US Retail Merchants (Grocery and Pharmacy)

**Director - US Retail Merchants (Grocery and Pharmacy)**Sales & Business DevelopmentFull-timeDate: Job Number: REF36391H **Company Description**As the world's leader in digital payments technology, Visa's mission is to connect the world through the most creative, reliable and secure payment network - enabling individuals, businesses, and economies to thrive. Our advanced global processing network, VisaNet, provides secure and reliable payments around the world, and is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second. The company's dedication to innovation drives the rapid growth of connected commerce on any device, and fuels the dream of a cashless future for everyone, everywhere. As the world moves from analog to digital, Visa is applying our brand, products, people, network and scale to reshape the future of commerce.At Visa, your individuality fits right in. Working here gives you an opportunity to impact the world, invest in your career growth, and be part of an inclusive and diverse workplace. We are a global team of disruptors, trailblazers, innovators and risk-takers who are helping drive economic growth in even the most remote parts of the world, creatively moving the industry forward, and doing meaningful work that brings financial literacy and digital commerce to millions of unbanked and underserved consumers.**You're** an Individual. **We're** the team for you. **Together**, let's transform the way the world pays.**Job Description and Responsibilities**This role will report to the Vice-President, NA Retail and be a key member of the Grocery and Pharmacy team. The Director will work in partnership with the teams Vice-President and Senior Directors on the team, as well as work directly with partners from functions across Visa, such as Specialized Sales, Global Co-brand & Partnership Development, Product, Innovation, Finance, Legal, Marketing, CyberSource, and Customer Support teams. The Director will play a critical role in supporting Visas strategic merchant partnerships, helping to deliver on partnership commitments, grow relationships and sell Visa products and solutions. In this role, the Director will be responsible for supporting strategic account planning, project management and implementation of strategic initiatives, providing sales support, partnering with consulting and analytics to share key insights to clients, and resolving operational and processing issues. This position will also require an ability to balance competing priorities across multiple clients and internal partners and to balance urgent, short-term projects with longer-term strategic goals.The ideal candidate will have expertise and skill in retail, payments and technology, as well as consultative sales, client relationship management and / or consulting. This person will also need to work effectively with internal and external partners to bring solutions to merchant clients. We are looking for a determined self-starter who is a creative problem solver, deals with complex challenges and ambiguity effectively and is a proven sales and strategy professional. This sales role has direct accountability for results and activities with retail merchants. The Visa office location for this role is in San Francisco or New York.**Essential Functions:****Support strategic client relationships.** Engage directly with clients and manage various initiatives and opportunities with some of Visas largest clients. Establish credibility and relationships with clients by demonstrating retail and payments industry knowledge. This includes providing strategic value to customers, helping to solve complex business issues from strategy to execution, leveraging trends in customer industries to shape solutions and approaches, and developing strategies that position the business to shape and capitalize on emerging customer and market needs. Create and support business development opportunities, including development of sales proposals and analysis.**Client Management:** Lead the relationship and consultative sales efforts with several West-coast based merchant clients, managing the ongoing needs of your merchants and collaborating with internal teams to bring the best of Visa to your clients. Identify merchant partnership opportunities and solutions that will jointly benefit merchants and Visa, develop appropriate business cases and forecasts, and gain alignment and buy-in on initiatives.**Project Management and Client Delivery:** Lead the coordination and manage the end to end delivery of multiple projects in partnership with Visas consulting and analytics organization, innovation team and marketing organization.**Account Plan Support**: Help develop and execute customized account plans to increase sales volume, market share and relevance within the retail portfolio. This includes managing multiple projects and key initiatives as part of the account plans.**Resolve operational issues.** Retail clients frequently identify operational and processing issues that must be resolved quickly. The Director must be able to interpret inbound client communications, work with internal partners to perform root cause analysis, partner with acquiring, CSS, and issuing teams, and resolve issues quickly and efficiently.**Establishing strong internal partnerships.** In order to be effective in this role, the Director must establish fluency in all Visa merchant-facing solutions and work cross functionally within Visa to drive projects forward. The Director should be able to articulate merchant needs and influence product/capability road maps by leveraging merchant feedback.**Qualifications****Basic Qualifications:*** 10 years of work experience with a Bachelors Degree or at least 8 years of work experience with an Advanced Degree (e.g. Masters/ MBA/JD/MD) or at least 3 years of work experience with a PhD**Preferred Qualifications:*** Minimum 10 years business experience with sales and client management experience in the Retail and/or payments industry, and/or similar experience in consulting. The candidate should also have an in-depth knowledge of the current and emerging retail payment environment.Analytical skills with the ability to summarize and find insights from dataStrong project management, facilitation and delivery skills, ideally in a client-centric or consulting environmentExceptional communication and presentation skills, with an emphasis on translating insights, product information and data into client value. Skilled storyteller with data, and clearly communicating findings and your point of view.Adaptable to a variety of different work and projectsBachelors degree required; MBA preferred.Demonstrated experience working with clients, preferably merchants.Exceptional ability to establish and maintain effective relationships with clients/partners, inside and outside of Visa, and effectively represent Visa and its purpose. Strong ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams and influence people both internally and externally.Strong retail and/or payments industry knowledge.Proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.The Director must be an excellent collaborator and natural team player with superb influencing and interpersonal skills. The successful candidate will be extremely organized with strong attention to detail and able to work in a fluid, creative, and innovative environment. In terms of the performance, personal competencies, academic and other skills required for the position, we would highlight the following:Ability to communicate complex technical/financial concepts with subject-matter experts and convey those concepts to a variety of audiences, including internal partners, senior leaders, and clientsAbility to work independently, to work with urgency, and to work in collaboration with high level of success/achievementAbil