Director of Sales and Guest Focus

What You’ll Do :

Backroads is seeking to hire a Director of Sales and Guest Experience to lead our Sales, Guest Services, Guest Focus, and Sales Operations teams.

The Director of Sales and Guest Experience will be a key member of our senior leadership team and collaborate heavily with Backroads’ Executive Team.

This person will report to the Executive Vice President and play an integral role in helping us hit our annual booking targets, and most importantly, drive quality experiences for our guests as they prepare to embark on their Backroads adventures, and in follow up to their trips when things don’t go as planned.

The department is comprised of four unique teams, and it will be your responsibility to drive high performance, synergy, and efficiency.

As the Director of Sales and Guest Experience, you’ll directly manage four key managers and the teams that roll up to them.

Your most critical responsibility is overseeing the maintenance and development of processes, systems, training, and messaging that benefit our guests, while also keeping in mind business limitations and priorities.

You’ll lead the team in maintaining several SLAs and KPIs, including call wait times, response times, average contact volume, and quality scores.

In addition to hitting these, you’ll be responsible for reporting on team performance, booking trends, incident reports, guest feedback themes, and escalations.

This is a highly cross-functional role and requires you to be collaborative. You’ll partner with all teams across Backroads, but primarily with Marketing, Demand Planning, Yield, Trip Development, and IT.

You’ll also work closely with Backroads executive leadership to drive quality experiences for our guests, and partner with the EVP and President to establish key positions, strategies, and voice for escalated events.

You’ll be the liaison between the Executive Team and the broader Sales department to communicate key decisions, initiatives, and priorities, and create alignment with company-wide goals.

You’ll support the managers on your team with their own personal development and career goals, and advocate on their behalf to resolve internal friction and roadblocks that may be preventing them from progressing on key initiatives.

You’ll do a lot of listening to your team, your direct reports, and to our guests.

What You’ll Need :

• 10+ years of experience in Sales / Customer Service, and a core service ethic
• 5+ years of proven experience building and managing high-performing, customer-facing teams
• Demonstrated experience leading, motivating, and inspiring confidence in managers
• Excellent written and verbal communication with a high EQ / strong interpersonal skills
• Demonstrated experience in establishing performance metrics, SLAs, and requirements for each team
• Demonstrated experience in implementing methods of reporting to document and assess team performance and guest / customer feedback, and share insights with Executive leadership
• Ability to think analytically, develop and improve processes, problem-solve, and delegate
• Proficient in Excel
• Experience with forecasting and budgeting
• Experience with Salesforce, Jira, and Confluence preferred, but not required
• Comfortable with learning new and complex systems
• Experience in the Travel or Hospitality industries preferred, but not required
• Experience with seasonal staffing and peak service periods preferred, but not required
• Bachelor’s degree required

Who You Are :

You have a guest-focused mindset, and also a strong business mindset. You use data as well as guest feedback to inform your decision-making, and are comfortable making hard decisions, quickly.

You are highly collaborative. You are an excellent communicator and are empathetic to guest needs as well as team needs.

You are wedded to the numbers and can easily interpret and identify trends or inaccuracies. You are solution-oriented, and don’t shy away from problem solving.

You are confident, and assertive when needed. You maintain composure when dealing with strong personalities and are comfortable having hard conversations.

You thrive in a fast-paced environment and maintain a positive attitude. You are comfortable with ambiguity and are agile in responding to fast-moving and changing business priorities.

You are gifted at delivering and receiving feedback gracefully. You are fair, balanced, patient, good-humored and unshakable.

About the Department :

The Director of Sales and Guest Experience will essentially be leading four unique teams within one department (Sales, Guest Services, Sales Operations, and Guest Focus), all with the same goal : to provide as many guests as possible with the absolute best customer service experience.

We are not a traditional sales organization and do mostly inbound work (aside from our Travel Agent / Agency relationships).

We are fortunate and grateful to have a strong fanbase amongst our guests, who are highly loyal. Often, our department is the first touchpoint a guest will have with Backroads, and it’s our job to make a great and lasting impression.

In the most simple terms, the Sales team is responsible for selling trips, the Guest Services team is responsible for answering guest questions and ensuring guests have what they need for a great trip, and the Sales Operations team is the machine behind it all to ensure things don’t fall through the cracks, and the Guest Focus team aims to drive quality and retention by understanding what happened when things don’t go as planned and turn disappointed guests into lifetime Backroads guests.

The department as a whole hovers around 45 people.

About Backroads :

At Backroads we’re passionate about connecting our guests with so many of the most beautiful places in the world. We use our four-plus decades of expertise to create exceptional biking, hiking, and multi-adventure trips in over 50 countries for people wanting a deeper and richer travel experience.

We travel on land as well as by small luxury ships on active river and ocean cruises. Our trips are for all ages including dedicated itineraries just for families.

We are known for our unwavering attention to quality. We have a dynamic work environment and a strong company culture.

Why Backroads :

At Backroads, we value every single member of our staff, and we’re proud to offer a dynamic work environment that enables growth.

Your colleagues will be some of the most dedicated, competent, active, and fun people you will ever meet. A job at Backroads is unlike any other job you will ever have you will be challenged, you will be inspired, and you will be gratified.

No matter what you do here, you will be part of something that makes us all proud delivering authentic, enriching, and often profoundly life-changing experiences.

On top of all that, we have some pretty great benefits and perks :

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance
• 401(k) with company match, flex plan, and parental leave
• Generous paid time off, 8 paid holidays, and additional time off to go on Backroads trips!
• Complimentary trips and trip discounts for employees, and trip discounts for employees’ friends and family!
• Outdoor industry discounts and deals
• Alternative commuter incentives for biking, walking, carpooling, or using public transportation to get to work
• Wellness programs and regular lunchtime bike rides and yoga

Backroads is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees.

Salary Ranges :

$150,000.00 - $225,000.00

Our office roles are onsite in our Berkeley headquarters, unless specifically noted as 'available for remote'. We do allow one work-from-home day a week, as well as one work-from-anywhere week per year.

This pay range is intended for in-person work in our Berkeley, CA headquarters. Pay ranges for remote-eligible roles will be subject to adjustment based on the geolocation of the employee.

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