Client Group Lead: Communications, Media & Technology (CMT) and Financial Services (FS)

Shape the growth of mid-market clients. Lead at the intersection of business and technology.

IMPORTANT NOTE:  We may depending on seniority, industry experience and current role recruit separate client group leads for CMT and FS.  If you think you have what it takes to lead just one of these industries, please do get in touch.

At Avanade, we help organizations unlock the power of Microsoft technology to transform their business. We are looking for a Client Group Lead to take accountability for a portfolio of strategic clients, driving growth, shaping market strategy, and leading high-performing teams across sales and delivery in the CMT and FS industries.

This is a senior leadership role with full ownership of client success, revenue growth, and delivery excellence within an industry-aligned client group.

What you’ll do

Lead and grow a portfolio

• Own the end-to-end performance of your client group, including revenue, pipeline, and delivery outcomes
• Drive profitable growth, expanding existing accounts and winning new business
• Identify and capture strategic opportunities aligned to industry priorities

Drive sales excellence

• Build and execute a high-quality go-to-market strategy aligned to Avanade, Accenture and Microsoft
• Improve pipeline quality, win rates, and deal conversion through disciplined sales leadership
• Lead complex, high-value deals from origination through to close
• Lead a team of sales managers, business development executives, client account leads and other supporting roles to grow the business

Build trusted client relationships

• Operate as an executive sponsor across key accounts
• Develop strong C-suite relationships, shaping transformation agendas and long-term roadmaps
• Ensure an exceptional client experience, acting on feedback and continuously improving outcomes

Deliver with excellence

• Ensure strong alignment between sales and delivery teams
• Oversee delivery performance, managing risk and ensuring commitments are met
• Maintain commercial discipline across engagements, including margin and forecast accuracy

Lead and inspire teams

• Build and lead high-performing, multi-disciplinary teams across sales, industry, and delivery
• Develop senior talent and create a culture of accountability, collaboration, and excellence
• Allocate the right expertise to the right opportunities to maximise impact

Summary  

In this role, you will collaborate closely with our clients to deliver comprehensive, cross-capability solutions and services. By leveraging your technical expertise, business acumen, and industry insights, you will manage the entire post-sales delivery and support process, ensuring that the right resources are deployed at the right time to achieve optimal customer outcomes. A key aspect of your role will be driving innovation in the solutions we provide, continuously seeking new ways to enhance value and deliver cutting-edge results for our customers.

Key Responsibilities

Building and maintaining strong customer relationships will be at the heart of your role. You will act as a trusted advisor to our clients, understanding their business needs and objectives, and providing tailored solutions to help them achieve their goals. Your ability to foster and nurture these relationships will be crucial in driving customer satisfaction and long-term success.

Experience collaborating closely with development and testing teams in a continuous integration methodology to successfully bring additional service components into production and ensure their ongoing commercial success, is essential.
The ideal candidate will possess a passion for technology, a drive for customer value and strategic outcomes, and demonstrable experience in a customer-facing roles.
By joining the UK Delivery Centre, you will have a fantastic opportunity to operate at the forefront of technology, with access to the best clients across the world, working on challenging and exciting services & solutions.

We are a diverse team, and we are proud of our culture that welcomes every individual. In our teams you will find talented and passionate technologists, with a humble, collaborative, and positive attitude. We promise to invest in you and help give you the platform for continuous learning and development. Come Join Us.

1. Service Delivery Management:
· Take ownership for the effective delivery of commercially successful engagements within an ITIL and DevOps services framework.
· Oversee the end-to-end delivery of services to clients, ensuring that all service level agreements (SLAs) are met or exceeded.
· Coordinate with internal teams to ensure seamless service delivery and address any issues promptly.
· Develop and implement service improvement plans to enhance service quality and efficiency.
· Manage the release management cycle, planning, resourcing, and governance to successfully release new service components through to deployment.
· Lead the continued adoption of Agile practices to create a culture of continuous integration in a client-facing environment.
· Lead the UKDC team members delivering at the customer site, ensuring effective collaboration and performance.

2. Client Success Management:
· Build and maintain strong relationships with clients, acting as their primary point of contact.
· Understand clients' business needs and objectives, and provide tailored solutions to help them achieve their goals.
· Monitor client satisfaction and proactively address any concerns or issues.
· Conduct regular Reviews with clients to review their progress and address any needs or challenges.
· Identify opportunities for upselling and cross-selling additional services or products to clients.

3. Client Success Account Management:

· Manage a portfolio of UKDC client accounts, ensuring their ongoing success and satisfaction.
· Collaborate with clients to develop strategic plans that align with their business objectives.
· Provide client with regular service analysis and develop ideas for service improvements.
· Ensure effective communication with clients to manage expectations and demonstrate value.

4. Reporting and Analysis:
· Prepare and present regular reports on service delivery performance and customer satisfaction metrics.
· Analyse data to identify trends and areas for improvement, and implement corrective actions as needed.

5. Collaboration and Communication:
Collaborate with sales, marketing, and product teams to ensure a cohesive approach to customer success.
· Communicate effectively with clients and internal stakeholders to ensure alignment and transparency.

6. Team Support & Collaboration
Has experience working with and guiding peers or virtual teams. Promotes a collaborative and inclusive team culture, encourages knowledge sharing, and supports team alignment across functions. Acts as a point of contact for day-to-day guidance and helps foster a positive, productive working environment.

7.Enabling Change
Supports transformation efforts and helps drive adoption of new technologies or processes with customers and internal teams. Contributes to change initiatives by sharing feedback, identifying opportunities, and helping others navigate new ways of working.

Business Development Manager – Financial Services (FS)

In support of our continued growth journey, we need to capitalize our capabilities and have identified the need to further expand our sales team as priority area for growth. Our aim is to grow our net new customer acquisition and core business through increased sales focus, driving the growth strategy and delivering sales and revenue targets. As a Sales Lead, you will be instrumental in ensuring we achieve these objectives.

The FS sales role will be focused across all sectors for origination of new logos into the business.  Your focus will be on the mid-market – outside of the larger banks, investment houses and insurance brokers we have seen huge growth in the smaller enterprises and your role will be to target and expand this segment.

This is an important role with wide-ranging and often complex responsibilities, which call for a depth and breadth of business knowledge beyond the business development discipline. You will be capable of developing long-lasting customer relationships at a senior level and gaining referrals with new accounts. As a Sales Lead, you will have a deep understanding of the needs of the various sales channels and will leverage your experience to maximize return and drive value.

You will be responsible for working in our direct to market channel (working with Microsoft and our other partners) and have a demonstrable and proven track record in new business experience, in acquisition of white space accounts for the industry. With previous, solid consulting services sales experience and a flair for closing deals, you will thrive working with colleagues in a wider team using innovation and exciting customers with your enthusiasm. Your strong connections and your tenacity to be an assertive partner, along with your background in high value solutions across the full Microsoft stack services (from advisory services, system integration, to managed services) will attest to your credibility with senior partners and clients.

You will have the opportunity to be able to support, shape and grow our FS business within a global company; one who is also the Microsoft® #1 Partner globally.

Day to day, you will:

• Identify and engage with new clients to expand our client portfolio in the mid-market.
• Identify new sales opportunities across key channels to increase sales volume.
• Assist management in devising sales plans and strategies.
• Sell a portfolio of Avanade and/or third-party software products directly to end-user organizations.
• Specialize in the sale of one or more key technologies in the Microsoft stack including Apps & Infra; Modern Workplace; Data & AI and Security.
• Generate sales and drive revenue, typically in low-to-medium risk and return sales activities.
• Lead customer relationships for new accounts.
• Prospect, acquire, develop and expand business leads.
• Achieve short and long-term sales growth by increasing cross selling activities within existing and new accounts.
• Be accountable for an individual sales target.
• Be accountable and have solid experience managing the full sales life cycle from origination of opportunities through to contracting and closure.