Sales Planning - Project Delivery SME

Overview

To act as the senior domain authority for Sales Planning across the engagement — owning the how it should work for quota setting, territory/module design and hierarchy management, guiding the analyst squads, and safeguarding accuracy, timeliness and governance across the annual planning cycle and in-year changes.

Responsibilities

• Quota management — own the end-to-end quota-setting and allocation process: translate finance/budget targets to account and seller level, run zero-sum and over-assignment logic, and issue target letters accurately and on time.
• Territory & module design — design, assign and rebalance territories/modules using opportunity, capacity and coverage inputs; protect seller continuity while improving balance and fairness.
• Hierarchy management — maintain the sales hierarchy (account-to-seller alignment, overlays, parent rollups) through joiners, leavers and reorganisations, keeping downstream systems consistent.
• Capacity & coverage modelling — analyse coverage, white space and account load vs capacity to inform planning decisions with data rather than intuition.
• In-year adjustments — govern mid-year quota modulations, relief requests and re-alignments through a disciplined, auditable change process.
• Planning cycle governance — run the planning calendar to plan; drive on-time quota finalisation and reduce post-lock change volume.
• Issue & ticket resolution — resolve escalated planning queries (missing sales, alignment, hierarchy) and drive down recurring demand through root-cause and prevention.
• Reporting & insight — produce attainment, coverage and forecast-to-actual reporting; ensure reporting accuracy, not just timeliness.
• SME guidance & knowledge — coach and unblock the analyst squads, author and maintain SOPs/runbooks and the exception library, and lead knowledge transfer during transition.
  
  

Requirements

• 8-12 years in Sales Planning, Sales Operations or Sales Performance Management (SPM), with deep hands-on quota and territory expertise.
• Strong command of quota-setting methodologies, territory/module design, hierarchy management and capacity/coverage modelling.
• Hands-on familiarity with SPM / planning tooling (e.g., Varicent, Anaplan, Xactly, SAP, or equivalent) and territory-optimisation tools.
• Advanced data skills — Excel to an expert level; comfort with large datasets, reconciliation and BI tools (e.g., Tableau, Power BI).
• Proven ability to standardise fragmented, manual processes into governed, repeatable operating procedures.
• Strong stakeholder management — able to work with Finance, Sales leadership and cross-functional partners, and to represent the function credibly to the client.
• Excellent analytical, documentation and communication skills; comfortable being the escalation point for complex planning questions.