Events Sales Manager

EVENTS SALES MANAGER

Position Summary

Reporting to the Director of Park Experience, the role of Events Sales Manager is a new position to support Friends of Waterfront Park's strategic earned revenue and park promotion efforts. This position will achieve company objectives by planning thoroughly, setting sales goals, analyzing performance data, and making forecasts. The Events Sales Manager will represent the company effectively with comprehensive knowledge of our offerings, research which ideal audience fits with our goals, proactively prospect clients and help devise strategies to target them. Additionally, this position will develop training, assist leading team members and ensure effective talking points and sales tactics are used to meet revenue objectives.

The ideal candidate will have sound experience with the entire sales process, excelling at lead generation, relationship building, and deal closing. We’re looking for a quick learner who has strong sales and negotiating skills — someone with a successful track record who can inspire the same performance in others. The role demands a leader who has savvy problem-solving skills, the ability to anticipate client and event needs, admin competencies and an ability to lead and motivate, while building and maintaining a high-performance standard.

About Friends of Waterfront Park

Friends of Waterfront Park (Friends) is a 501c3 non-profit. Through a public-private partnership with the City of Seattle, Friends is leading fundraising and programming, deepening public safety investments, and ensuring long-term stewardship of Waterfront Park now and for generations to come. The organization works closely with the City of Seattle, through Seattle Center, who provides park maintenance and public safety services. This model of a nonprofit managing and ensuring the success of a park is common across major U.S. cities, including Friends of the Highline and Brooklyn Bridge Parks Conservancy in New York, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy in San Francisco, and Friends of the Underline in Miami.

Nearly 15 years in the making, Waterfront Park project represents a grand community vision for reimagining Seattle’s waterfront in the footprint of the old viaduct, a 1950’s infrastructure; creating a new kind of civic and cultural space. Seattle is a city known for innovation and Waterfront Park represents that spirit – it is so much more than simply a park. Waterfront Park is creating 20-acres of green space, inviting locals and visitors to reconnect with the water, the mountains, and each other. It will run from Belltown to Pioneer Square, and has a large urban footprint for programming, activation, and other park uses. Opening in 2025, Waterfront Park will serve as a fresh cultural anchor for downtown, offering free public programming co-curated with communities from across the region.

Friends’ vision goes far beyond the park’s 20 acres. Alongside the City of Seattle, we envision a common space that is truly safe and welcoming to everyone; a space that is centered in equity. Friends has an opportunity and an inherent responsibility to disrupt patterns of exclusion and serve as a model for public spaces in Seattle and around the country. We have already made progress by working to establish strong community ties and trust and delivering BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) community led programs at Pier 62, the first piece of the park to open to the public.

Land Acknowledgement

Waterfront Park is situated on the land of the Coast Salish peoples, who have resided here since time immemorial and continue to thrive. With respect and humility, we acknowledge the history of the waterfront, the dispossession of land from the Coast Salish people, and, most importantly, the strength and resilience of Native people and their culture through this history and to the present.

Equity Commitment

Friends recognizes and acknowledges historic and existing systemic racism embedded in our city. We are committed to becoming an anti-racist organization by prioritizing racial equity within the organization and in the public spaces we operate.

Responsibilities

Facility Rental Client Interface

• Build relationships through development strategies with former or interested clients to foster return facility rental business.
• Serve as primary point of contact for all facility rental business from pre- to post-event.
• Responsible for negotiating and, in collaboration with the Operations and Administrative Coordinator, implementing and overseeing all contracts for facility rentals.
• Conducts friendly, knowledgeable facility tours with clients.
• Works directly with clients to coordinate the floorplan design and timeline of external rentals to ensure best guest flow, efficient internal communication, and that all rules and regulations for security and collection protection are properly followed.
• Serves as manager-on-duty when as appropriate on-site for facility rentals.

Strategy, Client Development and Stewardship

• Execute a strategic sales plan that expands our customer base and leads Friends towards future revenue potential.
• Meet with potential clients and grow long-lasting relationships that address their needs.
• Hands-on, proactive, creative, approach to prospecting potential rental clients.
• Responsible for meeting or exceeding annual revenue projections for facility rentals.
• Networking at business events, one-on-one outreach to business and individual clients, distribution of professionally prepared materials to potential clients, attending appropriate meetings and conferences to secure new clients, hosting open houses, offering facility tours.

Administration

• Ensures external listings for rentals are accurate and up to date.
• Identify knowledge gaps within the team and develop plans for filling them.
• Ensure that department and organizational goals are met by holding weekly check-ins with team to set objectives.
• Partner with finance team on the month-end and year-end financial reconciliation of sales.
• Coordinates with Event Production and Site Manager and Operations and Administrative Coordinator for event, rental and group sales assistance, including event set-up and take-down (tents, tables, chairs, decorations, signage, etc.).
• Conducts inter-department briefing and debriefing meetings for individual events; coordinates with colleagues across all departments on relevant event elements. During those meetings create a handoff to the Park Experience Team. Weekly meetings including internal staff stakeholders.
• Coordinate with development staff on all relationship management and cultivation efforts; identify potential sales targets from client lists.
• Works in coordination with the communications department for promotion of facility rentals– provides strategy, content for collateral materials.
• Coordinates with external vendors including but not limited to: florists, photographers, performers, sound and light technicians, and event planners.
• Ensures that all vendors and volunteers comply with the terms of executed contracts and with all rules and regulations guiding the use of event spaces.
• In coordination with Park Experience team members, produces internal event production schedules, floorplans, and sources event supplies.
• Administers complimentary rentals that are a component of sponsorship packages.
• Managing list of preferred or available vendors/caterers.

Vending Collaboration Assistance

• Awareness of vending program and understanding contracts as a whole.
• Assist with managing vendor relationships.
• Serve as backup/deputy to the Director of Park Experience on vending.
• Work to create consistency of systems and approach between vending/events.
• Assist with creating vending contracts as needed.

Collaboration, Values, and Culture

• Collaboration
  • Collaborate as a member of the Park Experience Team, providing thought partnership and support as needed.
  • Work collaboratively with and learn from the entire organization, and with external partners, stakeholders, and community.
• Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion (DEIA)
  • Contribute to an inclusive workplace culture and adhere to Friends’ Community Agreements.
  • Engage in regular conversations about race and equity through all-staff meetings, trainings.
  • Incorporate values of DEAI in all facets of this job and when collaborating across teams.
• Community
  • Incorporate the org-wide value/ethos of centering community throughout work (e.g., attend community events, seek out and listen to diverse communities and perspectives).
• Culture
  • Contribute to organizational culture by participating in team building activities to help build a fun, welcoming, and productive workplace.

Minimum Qualifications

• 3 or more years of experience in managing sales in a business setting.
• Proven record of success with the entire sales process, from planning to closing.
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and organizational skills.
• Superb leadership ability.
• Contract negotiation/administration.
• Cultural competency with underrepresented communities, including Black, Indigenous, Latine, disabled, and/or LGBTQ+ communities, and the ability to bring this lens to conversations about anti-racism, anti-oppression and embedding equity in all aspects of work.
• Ability to work collaboratively within a team, engaging cross-functional stakeholders in marketing, communications, and community relations.
• Strong verbal communication skills.

Desired Qualifications

• Public speaking experience.
• Prior proven success exceeding sales targets.

Other Requirements

• This position is contingent on passing a criminal background check.

Compensation and Benefits

This is a full-time exempt position with a salary range of $99,619-107,835. Friends has created a compensation philosophy and salary framework to set compensation organization-wide. The final salary offer is dependent on how the candidate’s skills, abilities, and experience align with Friends’ salary framework.

Benefits include (but are not limited to): Paid time off, health and dental coverage for employees and dependents, defined contribution retirement plan with 3% match and ORCA regional transit pass (does not include Washington State Ferries).

Working Conditions

This role is based in Seattle, WA. Friends has office space located at Pier 56. The job requires significant in-person, public engagement at Waterfront Park sites and with numerous partner organizations throughout the city.

• This position has flexible hours based upon event rental and vendor schedules.
• Weekend and evening work required depending on season and events; staff flex their work schedule to accommodate while maintaining a healthy work/life balance.
• Friends follows King County Public Health guidelines regarding COVID-19.

The physical requirements of this role listed below are representative of those that may need to be met by an employee in this role:

• Operating a computer and other office equipment.
• Strong verbal and written communication capabilities – ability to interact with customer through phone, in-person and email communications.
• Ability to work in an open office format with a fluctuating noise level – Friends' office is an open floor plan and teams often meet in person to collaborate. Noise levels can be low to moderate.
• Ability to lift up to 30 pounds; however, reasonable assistance with lifting or moving items can be provided.
• Ability to travel the length of the park, stand for long periods of time and interact with park visitors; reasonable accommodation can be provided.

How to Apply

Click the Apply link to submit your application. You will be asked to upload a resume and cover letter and answer the following questions as part of your application:

1. What is your sales process? (500 words or less)
2. What strategies do you use to connect with clients and drive sales?
3. How do you maintain persistence with challenging clients to achieve sales goals. (250 words or less)
4. Friends has committed to becoming an anti-racist organization by prioritizing racial equity within the organization and in the public spaces we operate. How would you describe journey to understand anti-racism and anti-oppression? (250 words or less)

Friends is committed to improving hiring practices to be more inclusive and anti-ableist. We have reviewed the job requirements and only include physical abilities when completely necessary. During the interview process, we email the panel questions ahead of time. We are also able to provide captioning and/or interpretation (e.g., ASL) if requested. If you need assistance and/or accommodations during the application or recruiting process due to a disability, please email our People & Culture team at dei@waterfrontparkseattle.org.

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Priority deadline: January 17, 2025