Head of Sales ( Maternity Cover - 12 month FTC)

🚀Head of Sales, Breathe HR (Maternity Cover) 🚀

Please note this a 12 month FTC maternity cover role.

A bit of background on Breathe HR

Located in Horsham and London, Breathe isn’t your typical SaaS business. We’re private equity owned, well-funded and trusted by more than 17,000 customers, with an average customer lifetime of six years. We’re proud to be the number one HR software for SMEs in the UK.

There’s more to us than a strong product and an established customer base. Our work culture is award winning, with talented people committed to driving impact while having fun together. We’re proud of what we’ve achieved, but we’re even more excited about what’s to come.

Breathe has strong momentum, and this maternity cover role comes with a genuine mandate to lead the next phase of growth. You’ll join with a structured handover from the outgoing Head of Sales and take ownership of a team of six Account Executives and one manager.

Confidence can sometimes hold us back from applying for a job. But we'll let you in on a secret: there's no such thing as a 'perfect' candidate. Breathe is a place where everyone can grow. So however you identify and whatever background you bring with you, please apply if this is a role that would make you excited to come into work every day.

🌟Our Values: What We Live By

🫶Start With People - We remember our work affects real people, so we take the time to listen, understand and act with care.

🤝Own It, Together - We take responsibility for our part, support each other through the messy bits, and focus on fixing things rather than finding blame.

🙌Clear Is Kind - We speak honestly and with care. We don’t avoid difficult conversations, and we make sure people have the clarity they need to move forward.

🔥Why This Role Is SO Important:

We’re looking for a Head of Sales to accelerate Breathe’s growth during a defined maternity cover period.

You’ll own the day-to-day sales operation, sharpen a healthy inbound engine, stand up and scale a new SME outbound motion and lead quota, territory and incentive design. You’ll also create the operating rhythm that helps a high-performing team stay focused, coached and accountable.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You’ll be expected to understand the detail behind the numbers, test what works, coach the team directly, keep the pipeline honest and make clear recommendations when process, tooling, headcount or incentives need to change.

You’ll have the autonomy to lead the sales process, tooling stack, quota and territory design and team structure day to day, with commission-plan changes and headcount decisions agreed with the CMO where they have wider commercial or P&L impact.

Key Duties & Responsibilities

Let’s be clear from the start: this isn’t a caretaker role. You’ll have a fixed period in which to understand the business quickly, improve performance and leave the sales team with stronger playbooks, sharper operating rhythms and a scalable route to growth.

Sharpening the Inbound Playbook

Optimising Conversion: Taking a strong existing inbound playbook and improving call scripts, qualification criteria, follow-up cadence and stage definitions.

Running Structured Experiments: Designing and running focused tests that improve trial-to-opportunity conversion, opportunity-to-close conversion, sales cycle length and win rate by trial source.

Compounding Performance: Turning successful experiments into consistent team practice and tracking performance quarter over quarter.

Building the SME Outbound Motion

Defining the ICP: Working with the Head of Demand Generation to define the SME ideal customer profile, target segments and priority opportunities.

Designing the Playbook: Creating and piloting the sequencing, messaging, channel mix and operating rhythm for a new outbound motion.

Scaling What Works: Turning the pilot into a fully operational motion that contributes a meaningful share of pipeline.

Measuring Impact: Tracking outbound-sourced pipeline in value and as a percentage of total pipeline, outbound conversion rate and time to first outbound deal closed.

Owning Quota, Territory and Incentive Design

Setting Quota: Owning quota-setting for the team and ensuring targets are ambitious, credible and aligned to capacity and opportunity.

Designing Territories: Creating territory splits that are fair, covered effectively and capable of supporting team performance.

Reviewing Incentives: Assessing within the first 90 days whether the current commission structure should be refined or redesigned.

Driving the Right Behaviour: Designing commission and incentive structures that are simple to understand and closely connected to the behaviours and outcomes the business needs.

Leading Reporting, Forecasting and AI Enablement

Owning the Forecast: Creating a forecast leadership can rely on, with clear assumptions, risks, confidence levels and actions.

Improving Visibility: Using pipeline insight to identify trends, gaps and risks early and reduce the time it takes to understand sales performance.

Exploring AI: Actively identifying where AI tools such as call analysis, lead scoring, rep coaching and forecasting can sharpen the team’s edge.

Building the Case: Evaluating AI tools rigorously and making the case for investment where there is a clear conversion, productivity or efficiency benefit.

Coaching, Motivation and Development

Running a Consistent Cadence: Establishing regular 1:1s, call reviews, deal coaching and performance conversations.

Developing the Team: Creating individual development plans that keep a high-performing team engaged, effective and growing.

Building Capability: Coaching for stronger ramp times, quota attainment, retention and internal progression.

Creating Accountability: Addressing underperformance directly and fairly, while providing the clarity and support people need to improve.

Maintaining Pipeline and CRM Discipline

Owning the Run Sheet: Treating the run sheet as the single source of truth for stage accuracy, next-step clarity and close-date realism.

Maintaining Hygiene: Keeping the pipeline sharp and current through daily and weekly review rhythms.

Improving Data Quality: Tracking CRM data hygiene, accurate next steps and slippage on committed deals.

Using Your Autonomy Well

You’ll be empowered to proactively request:

• Tooling and AI enablement budget where there is a clear conversion or efficiency case.

• Training and coaching budget for the team.

• Headcount changes backed by a capacity and coverage model.

• Commission and quota changes, with CMO sign-off where there is a wider P&L impact.

What Success Looks Like During the Cover Period

📈Inbound conversion improves across trial-to-opportunity, opportunity-to-close, sales cycle length and win rate by source.

🚀A new SME outbound motion is piloted, refined and contributing meaningful pipeline.

🎯Quota attainment, territory coverage and incentive design are understood and actively managed.

🔮Forecast accuracy improves, with clearer visibility of pipeline health and risks.

🤖AI tools are evaluated and adopted where they create measurable commercial or efficiency impact.

🤝The team has a consistent rhythm of 1:1s, call reviews, deal coaching and development planning.

✅HubSpot and the sales run sheet are trusted sources of truth, with strong data hygiene and realistic next steps.

🌱The team remains motivated, high-performing and capable of continued growth after the maternity cover period.

Key Competencies & Behaviours

You’re curious: You actively question why a metric moved and dig into the reasons behind changes in performance.

You’re solution-oriented: You come to problems with a proposed fix or test already in mind and work through obstacles quickly and practically.

You’re urgent and rigorous: You move quickly given the defined timeline of the role, while validating ideas properly before scaling them across the team.

You take high ownership: When a number moves, you lead with “here’s what I’m going to change” and take personal accountability for the outcome.

You’re direct and transparent: You surface news early and plainly to the team and leadership so issues can be solved while there is still time to act.

You’re evidence-led: You hold strong opinions, back them with data and adapt quickly when the evidence points somewhere new.

You develop others: You use every coaching conversation as an opportunity to grow the rep and build capability that lasts beyond any single deal.

You’re commercially focused: You understand the relationship between team activity, conversion, pipeline, revenue and profitable growth.

You’re hands-on: You’re comfortable working directly in HubSpot, reviewing calls, inspecting deals and getting into the detail behind performance.

You’re energised by transformation: You enjoy improving what exists, building what is missing and creating momentum from the ground up.

It would help if you have:

• Proven experience managing and scaling an SDR and/or AE sales team of similar or larger size in a SaaS environment.

• A track record of measurably improving an inbound sales playbook.

• Experience building or substantially redesigning commission, incentive, quota or territory structures.

• Hands-on experience working in HubSpot.

• A demonstrated coaching and people-development track record, including ramp times, promotions or retention outcomes.

• Experience in HR technology or adjacent SME SaaS.

• Experience working with SME segments, particularly shorter sales cycles, higher volumes and price-sensitive buyers.

• Experience building an outbound motion in a business that previously had none.

• Formal Sales Enablement or Revenue Operations experience.

• Experience evaluating or deploying AI tools in a sales organisation.

• Experience operating in a hybrid, multi-site team environment.

🎁Why You’ll Love it Here:

🕒Flexible working – 50% office based & core hours are 10am to 3.30pm

🏖️25 days holiday (+ 1 extra after 3 years!) PLUS Your Birthday off!

🎄UK Bank holidays + Christmas Eve and New Years Eve afternoons off!

🐶Dog friendly office – because furry co-workers make everything better!

🏥Private medical insurance (PMI) - with enhanced mental health, dental & optical coverage via AXA

💗Employee Assistance Programme – Support when you need it

🛡️Life Insurance – 2 x salary & Matched pension (5%) – because the future matters

🤝2 x volunteer days per year – give back to causes that matter to you

📱Access to Mintago – Exclusive financial wellbeing through discounts and expert advice

🛍️Retail discount scheme – perks and savings just for being part of our team!

The Hiring Process: Let’s Make it Personal! 🤝

📞Screening Call: Virtual via Google Meet with one of our team to have a friendly chat, learn more about your experience, what excites you about the role and how you approach sales leadership.

💻Competency Interview: You’ll meet the hiring manager and explore your experience with inbound optimisation, outbound creation, sales leadership, forecasting, coaching, incentives and AI enablement.

🏢Final Stage Interview: You’ll meet members of the wider leadership team and talk through how you would approach the first 90 days, improve the sales engine and lead the team through the maternity cover period.

🚀Ready to accelerate Breathe’s next phase of growth? Apply Now!