Director, Strategic Business Development

📋 Description

• • Own and evolve a multi-year ISV partner strategy that sits at the intersection of corporate strategy, product roadmap, and revenue acceleration. You will translate Freshworks’ vision for AI-driven, unified customer experience into a living ecosystem of best-of-breed technology partners across AI, automation, cloud infrastructure, collaboration, security, and vertical solutions.
• • Build and continuously refine a data-driven pipeline of high-impact ISV opportunities—ranked by revenue potential, product differentiation, and strategic fit—then shepherd each deal from first handshake to signed contract and successful launch. Expect to manage 15-20 active prospects at any given time while moving 5-7 deals per quarter through legal, security, and executive approvals.
• • Structure and negotiate complex commercial agreements including native integrations, co-sell motions, OEM/embedded licensing, joint solution bundles, and revenue-share models. You will balance legal risk, engineering cost, and go-to-market complexity to craft win-win terms that scale globally.
• • Create airtight business cases that quantify incremental ARR, attach-rate uplift, churn reduction, and product stickiness. You will own the financial model, sensitivity analysis, and board-level narrative that secures investment for each partnership.
• • Conduct rigorous market landscaping—competitive benchmarking, whitespace mapping, and TAM sizing—to spot emerging categories and next-generation partners before they hit the mainstream radar. Translate insights into quarterly ecosystem roadmaps that keep Freshworks two steps ahead of the market.
• • Orchestrate cross-functional launch squads spanning Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, Legal, and Security. You will set joint OKRs, define integration scope, craft co-marketing campaigns, and stand up enablement programs that turn signed contracts into pipeline within 90 days.
• • Design and operationalize scalable onboarding, certification, and performance-tracking playbooks so every new ISV partner ramps quickly and delivers measurable value. Build dashboards that surface real-time metrics—MQL generation, win-rate lift, usage telemetry, NPS impact—to executive leadership and the board.
• • Serve as the external face of Freshworks to C-level executives at venture-backed unicorns, public cloud hyperscalers, and category-defining SaaS companies. You will evangelize our platform story, negotiate multi-year strategic alliances, and secure keynote slots at partner conferences to amplify our thought-leadership.
• • Champion a culture of experimentation and continuous learning inside the ISV Partnerships org. Run quarterly retrospectives, A/B test new pricing models, and codify best practices into living wikis that accelerate every subsequent deal.
• • Influence Freshworks’ long-term corporate strategy by feeding market intelligence and partner feedback directly into product roadmap decisions, M&A scouting, and geographic expansion plans. Your insights will shape where we invest next and how we differentiate against the giants in our space.
• • Maintain a disciplined focus on customer outcomes: every partnership must demonstrably reduce time-to-value, expand use-case coverage, or improve ROI for our 65,000+ global customers. You will embed customer advisory boards and win-wire reviews into the partnership lifecycle to keep deals grounded in real-world impact.
• • Model inclusive leadership and mentorship for a growing team of BD managers and partner marketers. Provide coaching on deal structuring, executive storytelling, and cross-functional influence while fostering an environment where diverse perspectives drive breakthrough ideas.