Chief Commercial Officer - Solution Sales - AI
Description
Chief Commercial Officer – Solution Sales - AI
Location: Greater Seattle or San Francisco Bay areas
Compensation: $150k to $200K + equity
Our client is on a mission to transform how professional organizations, industry associations, and expert communities solve problems, deliver value, and engage their members. They believe that with the right blend of innovation, leadership, and technology, these communities can play an even more powerful role in shaping industries and society.
They are building intelligent, human-centered solutions that help these organizations thrive—combining the promise of AI with a deep understanding of how people and communities work. Founded by experienced leaders in technology, product strategy, and go-to-market execution, they are ready to scale.
The Chief Commercial Officer is responsible for ensuring that their customers experience deep, lasting success from the moment they engage with them in the sales cycle, through their onboarding and through ongoing use, impact, and renewal. This position reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer.
This leader will work closely with each early customer, embedding themselves within the customer environment to understand their unique context, challenges, needs, and use cases—and ensure their platform delivers maximum relevance, adoption, and transformative value. This is a foundational role, initially hands-on and later team building and system-scaling, that directly influences customer delight, product-market fit, use case validation, reference ability, and renewal expansion.
Core responsibilities:
Go to Market and Sales Leadership
- Architect and execute commercial strategy, practices & goals across direct sales, channel partnerships, strategic alliances, and self-service capabilities.
- Design and refine their go-to-market approach to match customer segments, industry verticals, and buyer profiles.
- Lead and execute the entire sales lifecycle—from lead identification and qualification through demo, negotiation, closing, and post-sale handoff.
- Define and evolve their pricing model, customer acquisition funnel, and value communication strategy.
- Establish a high-trust, insight-driven enterprise sales methodology aligned with customer needs and executive decision-making processes.
Customer Onboarding, Implementation & Enablement
- Personally, leadsonboarding and activation for all initial closed-beta and first commercial customers.
- Translate each customer’s specific context into custom implementation plans that guide them from setup to early wins.
- Deliver hands-on workshops, training sessions, and AI-agent customization journey for executive users and organizational teams.
Customer Outcomes & Value Realization
- Act as executive sponsor for all early-stage customers; own the success of their experience and outcomes.
- Align company’s platform to each customer’s key business challenges, goals, and opportunities.
- Continuously monitor usage, engagement, and satisfaction metrics, intervening proactively where needed.
Customer Reference ability & Success Narratives
- Drive creation of case studies, testimonials, executive references, usage stories.
- Collaborate with Marketing and Product on turning early customer success into go-to-market content
Function Design, Team Building & Scaling
- Define the vision, structure, and processes for Sapience AIʼs Sales function.
- Build out playbooks, training guides, onboarding templates, and KPIs for scale.
- Hire, coach, and lead a high-performance CX team as the company grows.
Professional Qualifications and Experience
- 12 + years in enterprise B2B sales, commercial operations, or business development roles, preferably in SaaS, AI, AIaaS, or Knowledge Services
- 7+ years in senior executive leadership roles with end-to-end sales responsibility, including P&L exposure and GTM team leadership
- Proven track record of closing large, complex deals with C-level executives, professional communities & networks, board members, decision-making groups
- Experience selling into or partnering with professional networks, member-based organizations, executive peer groups, or knowledge-driven enterprises
- Demonstrated success in launching early-stage sales infrastructure and processes from zero-to-one in startup environments
Skills & Competencies
- Deep understanding of enterprise solution & service buying cycles, deal structuring, and high-trust relationship building
- Strategic thinker with operational rigor; capable of designing sales systems, presentation & pitch methods, partnership models and executing against timelines
- Natural storyteller and value translator with excellent executive presence
- Exceptional written, visual, verbal communication skills with strong negotiation ability
- Analytical mindset with experience building, managing detailed revenue models and forecasts
- Ability to lead, inspire, and grow multidisciplinary teams in a high-growth, high-impact environment
- Exceptional EQ, empathic intelligence, and active listening skills to uncover customer needs and ensure satisfaction.
- Strong strategic planning and organizational design acumen.
- Proven ability to operate in ambiguity, iterate rapidly, and serve as both a hands-on operator and executive leader.
- Excellent communicator with strong presentation and storytelling capabilities.
- Bachelorʼs degree in Business, Marketing, Communications, or a related field
- MBA or equivalent advanced business degree strongly preferred
- Prior experience in startups (particularly in Seed–Series A stage), preferred.
- Background working in or with professional networks, affinity-based organizations, or executive user communities.
- Knowledge of AI, vertical AI, or collective intelligence systems is a plus.