Founding Account Executive

OVERVIEW

Blacklight is a marketing agency here in Charlotte. We handle marketing for small and medium sized businesses, mainly websites and paid advertising. Our clients are all over the map: trades and home services, auto, retail, restaurants, professional services.

We're building out the Charlotte sales floor and hiring our first three account executives. It's a founding seat, so you'd be helping shape how this office sells, and the accounts you bring in become the book we grow on.

Most of our business comes from relationships rather than cold lists. If people tend to like meeting you and you're good at staying in touch, you'll do well here.

One thing up front, because you should hear it now and not in the interview: this starts commission only, and converts to full time W2 with salary and benefits once you're producing. More on that below.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Meet business owners and start conversations. Networking groups, chambers, industry associations, events, referrals, and introductions. This is where most of your pipeline comes from.
• Build a referral network. Accountants, bankers, realtors, contractors, suppliers, other owners. People who already have trust with the folks you want to meet.
• Use the relationships you already have. If you know owners around Charlotte, that's a real head start.
• Run your own discovery calls and meetings. You'll be talking to owners and operators, so it's a real conversation about their business, not a procurement process.
• Work out what's actually holding their marketing back and what would fix it. That's most of the skill.
• Close the deal. You source it and you close it. Drew works deals with you and will jump on calls with you, especially early on.
• Look after your accounts. Check in, keep them happy, keep them around. You get paid on them every month, so it's time well spent.
• Keep your pipeline current in the CRM and go over your numbers with your manager each week.

And yes, you'll have a desk and you'll use it plenty. Calls, follow up, proposals, CRM, all of it. The difference here is that the pipeline starts with people, so getting out and meeting them is part of the week too.

SKILLS

• You're good with people, and you either know some business owners around Charlotte or you're the type who can meet them quickly.
• You're comfortable walking into a room where you don't know anyone.
• You can talk to an owner like a peer. Our clients built their businesses themselves, and they respond to people who are straight with them.
• You've sold something before where you had to go find the customer yourself. It doesn't have to be marketing.
• You already know your way around a CRM and can keep your own pipeline current without being chased.
• You can handle ninety days without a guaranteed paycheck.

If you're close on most of this but not all of it, apply anyway. How you work matters more to us than what's on the resume.

THE MONEY

Straight version: this starts commission only. No base, no draw.

What makes it worth it is how you get paid. You earn a percentage of the monthly recurring revenue on every client you bring in, and you keep earning it every month they stay with us. Bring in ten accounts that stick and you're getting paid on all ten, every month, on top of whatever you close next. There's no cap on it.

THE TRACK

Ninety days to show you can do this. Once you do, you convert to full time W2 with a salary, benefits, and commission on top.

You'll know exactly what the bar is. We put it in writing on day one and go over your numbers with you every week, so nothing about it is a surprise.

WHAT YOU GET ON DAY ONE

Training, our rate card, CRM access, a desk, and a manager who actually picks up the phone.

TO APPLY

Send your resume, and tell me in a few sentences about a time you kept going after something got hard. That answer tells me more than the resume does.

Happy to answer questions before you apply.

Pay: $60,000.00 - $180,000.00 per year

Benefits

• Flexible schedule

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Charlotte, NC 28216