The posting
The Opportunity:
We are seeking an experienced Sales Manager to manage, protect, and grow a broad portfolio of telecommunications operators and regulatory customers across the Middle East and Africa. The role will take commercial ownership of an established portfolio of accounts, with primary responsibility for renewal performance, customer retention, account development, and systematic cross-sell and upsell across Ookla's portfolio. The Sales Manager will establish strong relationships across customer organizations, develop strategic account plans, identify emerging customer priorities and translate them into opportunities for Ookla's connectivity intelligence, analytics, assurance, and professional services solutions. The role will work closely with the VP Sales MEA and regional Sales Directors, providing dedicated day-to-day commercial and relationship coverage.
Expectation for Success:
Account Management & Customer Growth
- Own the commercial relationship and development of an assigned portfolio of telecommunications operators and regulatory customers.
- Develop and execute strategic account plans aligned with the regional growth strategy and each customer's business, network, customer experience, and investment priorities.
- Build relationships across multiple levels of the customer organization, from operational and technical stakeholders to senior executives and decision-makers.
- Identify account whitespace and systematically develop cross-sell and upsell opportunities across Ookla's portfolio.
- Expand relationships beyond existing buying centers into adjacent functions, business units, operating companies, and use cases.
- Coordinate with Customer Success, technical and Product teams to ensure customers realize measurable value from Ookla solutions.
Renewals & Revenue Protection
- Own commercial renewal planning and execution across the assigned customer portfolio.
- Establish renewal strategies well ahead of contract expiration, identifying retention risks and required actions early.
- Monitor customer adoption, stakeholder engagement, satisfaction, competitive activity, and other indicators of account health.
- Develop mitigation plans for at-risk renewals and escalate material risks appropriately.
- Protect pricing and commercial value while managing customer procurement and negotiation processes.
- Maintain accurate visibility of renewal timing, probability, risks, and expected commercial outcomes.
Account Expansion & Solution Selling
- Identify customer challenges and strategic priorities that can be addressed through Ookla's data, analytics, network intelligence, customer experience, service assurance, and professional services capabilities.
- Lead consultative discovery to translate customer requirements into relevant use cases and commercial opportunities.
- Build compelling value propositions and business cases linked to measurable customer outcomes.
- Develop opportunities across network planning and optimization, competitive intelligence, customer experience, service assurance, investment prioritization, regulatory intelligence, and other relevant use cases.
- Lead opportunities from qualification through solution development, commercial negotiation, contracting, and closure.
Pipeline & Forecast Management
- Build and maintain a healthy expansion pipeline across the assigned portfolio.
- Maintain accurate opportunity, renewal, and account information within CRM systems.
- Provide disciplined and evidence-based revenue forecasts, including clear visibility of risks, dependencies, and next steps.
- Participate in regional sales forecast reviews, account reviews, and business planning processes.
- Maintain clear distinction between qualified opportunities, potential account whitespace, and committed commercial outcomes.
Strategic Account Planning
- Develop a clear understanding of each customer's strategic priorities, organizational structure, investment programs, competitive environment, and decision-making processes.
- Map key stakeholders, economic buyers, technical sponsors, influencers, procurement stakeholders, and potential executive sponsors.
- Identify opportunities to replicate successful use cases across operator groups and their operating companies.
- Provide customer and market intelligence to support regional commercial and product strategy.
Internal Collaboration
- Work closely with the VP Sales MEA and Sales Directors to align account priorities with the overall regional growth strategy.
- Coordinate with Customer Success Managers, product teams, and professional services throughout the customer lifecycle.
- Support Sales Directors on strategic opportunities and executive-level customer engagements where required.
Requirements:
Education
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Telecommunications, Engineering, Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related discipline.
- MBA or advanced business qualification is advantageous.
Experience
- 7–12 years of business-to-business sales/presales or strategic account management experience, preferably within telecommunications, network intelligence, analytics, software-as-a-service, network assurance, or related technology markets.
- Proven experience managing and expanding major telecommunications operator accounts.
- Demonstrated track record of successfully managing complex renewals and protecting recurring revenue.
- Strong evidence of growing existing customers through cross-sell, upsell, and development of new use cases.
- Experience managing complex enterprise sales cycles involving technical, commercial, procurement, legal, and executive stakeholders.
- Strong understanding of telecommunications operators, their organizational structures, network priorities, customer experience challenges, and investment cycles.
- Experience working across multiple Middle Eastern markets is strongly preferred.
Skills & Competencies
- Strong strategic and key-account management capabilities.
- Consultative and value-based selling skills.
- Ability to translate technical capabilities into customer business outcomes.
- Strong commercial negotiation and contract-management skills.
- Ability to identify account whitespace and convert customer priorities into qualified opportunities.
- Strong renewal and revenue-retention discipline.
- Executive stakeholder management and relationship-building skills.
- Accurate pipeline management and forecasting discipline.
- Ability to manage a broad account portfolio while maintaining focus on the highest-value opportunities and risks.
- Strong collaboration skills across sales, technical, customer success, product, and consulting teams.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English; Arabic or other regional languages are advantageous.
Success Measures Performance will be measured across:
- Gross and net revenue retention
- Renewal performance and reduction of avoidable churn
- Existing-account revenue growth
- Cross-sell and upsell bookings
- Qualified expansion pipeline
- Strategic account penetration and stakeholder coverage
- Forecast accuracy
- Customer relationship strength and long-term account development
About
Ookla, an Accenture company, is a global leader in connectivity intelligence that brings together the trusted expertise of Speedtest®, Downdetector®, Ekahau®, and RootMetrics® to deliver unmatched network and connectivity insights. By combining multi-source data with industry-leading expertise, we transform network performance metrics into strategic, actionable insights.
Our solutions empower service providers, enterprises, and governments with the critical data and insights needed to optimize networks, enhance digital experiences, and help close the digital divide. At the same time, we amplify the real-world experiences of individuals and businesses that rely on connectivity to work, learn, and communicate. From measuring and analyzing connectivity to driving industry innovation, Ookla helps the world stay connected.
About Accenture
Accenture helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed for organizations across industries. Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and lead in the safe, widespread adoption of AI, and to be the most client focused, AI-enabled, great place to work in the world. We bring together the talent of our approximately 799,000 people with proprietary assets and platforms, deep process and industry expertise, and leading ecosystem relationships to deliver end-to-end solutions and measurable outcomes at scale. Through our Reinvention Services, we offer broad expertise across Cybersecurity, Digital Core, Finance, Industry and Enterprise, Song, Supply Chain and Engineering, and Talent, with advanced capabilities in AI and Data, Industry and Process, and Technology. We serve approximately 9,000 clients and generated approximately $70 billion in FY25 revenue. Visit us at accenture.com.
Compensation Range
Ookla provides a range for the base pay. Factors that may be used to determine your actual pay may include your specific job related knowledge, skills, experience, and geographic location. The salary compensation for this role is 400,000 - 447,000 AED. Individual pay within the compensation range for this business unit specific role is determined based on a variety of factors including experience, scope of the role, capabilities to perform the role, education and training, as well as business and company performance.
