Sales Lead

We’re looking for an experienced Sales Lead

We’re looking for a dynamic and experienced Sales Lead to head our Concierge team at Byway. As Sales Lead, you will be responsible for guiding and developing a team of sales executives and managers, including regional experts. You’ll develop and expand our sales performance and results, meeting ambitious team targets, and shape our overall sales strategy. 

You will inherit a capable team with significant experience creating tailored Byway trips, helping them grow into high-performing sales professionals supporting their customers with superb holiday journeys and tailored experience-enhancing adjustments (including in response to disruption), from initial enquiry to departure. Your leadership skills, sales expertise, and passion for slow travel will be instrumental in achieving our growth targets, maintaining our five star review record and fostering long-term relationships with our Concierge customers.

We help holidaymakers love their journeys

We're not just another travel company – at Byway, we're pioneering 100% flight-free holidays with Journey AI, the world’s first tech for journey-based trips. We’re a certified B Corp committed to making flight-free travel mainstream. Since our inception in March 2020, we've booked 7,000 travellers onto unforgettable holidays, with 95% five-star reviews. We’re growing 3x YoY and are regularly featured in the press, including the Guardian, BBC, and New York Times.

Your key responsibilities

  • Lead and develop the team: Guide, mentor, and support our team of executives, helping them achieve their targets and acting as their day-to-day escalation point and coach. You’ll be responsible for hiring, onboarding, and training to ensure continuous professional growth.

  • Own sales strategy and execution: Develop and implement effective sales strategies, tactics, and goals to drive revenue growth and increase revenue per person over time. 

  • Foster a customer-centric sales culture: develop and extend our culture of superb customer service and ensure excellence in the holiday experiences we provide for our clients, building long-term customer relationships.

  • Monitor and optimise performance: Monitor and analyse sales performance (quant and qual), identify areas for improvement, and implement corrective actions as needed to ensure the team meets and exceeds targets.

  • Manage a pipeline: Lead by example with a small personal sales pipeline, including managing complex requests and escalations and creating bespoke journey experiences for customers using your expert knowledge.

  • Collaborate across teams: Collaborate with other teams, including Marketing and Ops, to align sales efforts with overall company objectives and enhance customer experience.

  • Improve tech and tooling: Implement processes, technologies, and tools for further automation, including working with product and tech to launch tools  that streamline and enhance our sales processes.

What we’re looking for

  • Proven experience leading a high-performing sales team, ideally but not necessarily in travel, with a strong track record of meeting and exceeding sales targets.

  • Demonstrated ability to improve technical products/tooling and create reporting and automations to streamline processes.

  • Deep knowledge of sales best practices and frameworks with a clear ability to coach and guide sales teams including through comms reviews and call listening 

  • Outstanding customer service and management skills including in crisis response, with an ability to listen to, learn from, and resolve customer escalations.

  • Strong analytical and problem-solving skills and good financial acumen, with a data-driven approach to decision-making.

  • Belief in our mission and a passion for sustainability or slow travel.

  • Willingness to be an escalation point out of hours, occasionally, and to take turns on a weekend/holiday rota when the team’s short-staffed.

What would be great (but isn’t required)

  • Knowledge of flight-free travel routes in the UK and Europe.

  • Fluency in French, German, Italian, Spanish, or Portuguese.

  • Understanding of the Interrail m-pass product range and related opportunities and constraints.

What we offer

  • £45-£55k p.a. depending on experience plus on target bonus

  • Company ownership through equity

  • Remote-first, flexible working:

    • 20 days wherever: work when you like and where you like for most of the month - we’ll fund a day a week in a coworking space

    • 2 days together: join our team in the London office two days each month (a couple of exceptions per year is fine!)

  • One cost-price Byway holiday per year and agency rates with Eurostar for you and your family/friends

  • An annual autumn Away Afternoon and optional Weekend Away in spring

How to apply

Please apply here with your CV and a short covering letter. We're more interested in your covering letter than your CV.

We’re eager to receive applications from all backgrounds, including from people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, parents, carers, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. If there’s anything we can do to accommodate your specific situation, please let us know.

The process

If we like your application, we'll set up a 15-20 minute call for you and Neil, our current Head of Sales. After that, there's a short take-home scenario then a more technical interview with founder/CEO, Cat or Holly, CMO. The third and final interview is focused on us getting to know you, and you getting to know Byway. It will be with Cat or Holly and Claire, our Head of Ops, who will be this role’s line manager (she’s not yet started with us, which is why you don’t meet her earlier in the process). If that's great, we move to job offer and references.

We offer flexible scheduling for our multi-stage interview process and are open to adjustments based on candidate needs.