Navan’s Global Operations and Service (GO&S) organization is looking for a Director of Client Experience (Pre-Sales Experience & Implementation) to architect and lead the strategic framework that bridges our commercial engine with global operational fulfillment. This individual is a visionary change-agent who balances revenue acceleration with operational risk mitigation. You are comfortable navigating complex cross-functional landscapes, selling both success and failure, and aligning executive stakeholders and commercial partners on innovative ways of working to ensure we flawlessly deliver on our promises while protecting operational capacity.
The primary duty of this position is to lead the global pre-sales and onboarding strategy, ensuring that our operational capabilities and service offerings (Core through Premier) are accurately aligned, scoped, and executed from initial prospect pitch through live client launch. This will require directing a high-performing team of Senior Managers across Pre-Sales Solutions and Launch/Implementation. This role will partner directly with global Sales and Commercial Leaders to institutionalize GO&S participation in late-stage sales pitches—shifting the perception of support from a "commercial blocker" to an elite differentiator—while establishing strict "Rules of Engagement" (RoE), shortening Client Time-to-Value (TTV), and institutionalizing seamless transition protocols. Setting macro-level expectations and confidently enforcing operational guardrails with commercial leadership is critical to success in this role. This role will also regularly interface with strategic enterprise customers when the need arises to guide them through the onboarding and Travel Experience Journey.
In this leadership position, you will operate as the ultimate executive escalation point for complex, high-value global prospect deals and implementation roadblocks related to Global Operations and Service. You will work both pre-emptively and proactively to design systems that prevent post-signing friction, building deep, trusting partnerships with internal commercial executives as well as our most valuable incoming corporate clients.
What You’ll Do
- Deploy the GOS Sales Squad: Partner with Commercial VPs to institutionalize GO&S participation in late-stage sales pitches, embedding a specialized "Sales Squad" into marquee enterprise deals to turn our redefined Five-Star Care into a primary selling point.
- Build Strategic Alignment: Forge strong relationships and operational governance across global commercial leadership and Global Operations and Services to ensure a "CX-first" mindset across the sales cycle.
- Govern Scope Boundaries: Standardize and govern the macro-level expectations of global Sales teams, prospects, and implementation partners regarding our operational scope of services and tier definitions.
- Ruthlessly Simplify Tier Configurations: Partner with commercial pricing and marketing teams to collapse complex legacy service offerings into unified, high-impact packages that remove market confusion.
- Serve as Executive Liaison: Act as the primary operational partner and definitive source of truth for Sales and Commercial leadership during high-value pitches, RFPs, and global go-to-market rollouts.
- Optimize Time-to-Value (TTV): Drive structural process improvements and scale automated onboarding frameworks within Global Operations to compress the timeline from contract-signing to a client's first live booking.
- Champion the Pre-Sales CX Lens: Serve as the organizational pre-sales customer expert, maintaining a deep understanding of complex market needs, tier economics, and localized global implementation trends.
- Architect Data Strategies: Establish a standardized pre-sales data reporting suite (tracking TTV, launch velocity, and custom scoping drag) to drive data-backed commercial decisions.
- Synthesize Complex Insights: Leverage a deep understanding of data, intuition, and customer feedback to rapidly extract actionable information and proactively modify the pre-sales operational roadmap.
- Enable the Commercial Engine: Empower the Sales and Customer Success organizations with scaled enablement collateral and continuous updates so they can speak transparently, accurately, and effectively about our support ecosystem.
- Define Metrics for Success: Partner with global CX and Operations leadership to define, monitor, and scale key performance metrics for the pre-sales and implementation lifecycle.
- Ensure Day-1 Excellence: Recommend and implement process optimizations that guarantee newly onboarded clients successfully meet contractually established service level agreements (SLAs) from the moment they go live.
- Protect Operational Capacity: Leverage data to speak fearlessly and confidently about operational boundaries, guiding commercial leadership on high-risk custom scoping or premature tier selling.
What We’re Looking For
- Proven Leadership Background: 8–10+ years of progressive leadership experience in Client Experience, Revenue Operations, Global Implementation, or Technical Onboarding, preferably within corporate travel ecosystems.
- Global Complexity Expert: Strong background leading multi-regional teams and managing complex, cross-functional discussions between disparate geographic organizations.
- Executive Presence & Communication: Masterful interpersonal, negotiation, and relationship-building skills, with a proven ability to confidently manage discussions and maintain firm boundaries with Sales/Commercial Leaders.
- Strategic & Independent Thinker: The ability to operate with high integrity, critical and independent thinking skills, and sound judgment in high-growth, ambiguous, or transitional environments.
- Advanced Data-Driven Decision Maker: Strong analytical skills with a proven track record of using data, business intelligence, and predictive insights to influence organizational behavior and protect operational margins.
