Senior Director, Small Group CA New Sales

With revenues over $5.5 billion a year, enterprise-wide, Small Group serves 80K Group Customers and 1M Members, manages relationships with 7,000 brokers, 7 General Agencies, and 3 of the Small Group exchanges, and is responsible for enrolling over 250,000 new members through new and existing groups. The National Small Group Program Office has broad accountability including the national strategy, pricing, product development, sales and account management go-to-market plans and best practices. It also provides business line leadership for each market, establishes and operates shared services and internal/external technology programs, and is accountable for the National Small Group Program Service Level Agreement (SLA) and acts on behalf of all markets to coordinate functional support for the business line. We currently have a need for a Senior Director of CA New Business Sales for Small Group, reports to the national Line of Business (LOB) VP and is a member of the CA and Program Office Small Group leadership teams. The position is accountable for achieving annual new business sales targets and responsible for providing strategic leadership, short- and long-term planning, go-to-market planning, developing, and optimizing the sales team, and representing Kaiser Permanente small group to the market including brokers, general agencies, and our small group exchange partners.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Builds organizational capacity and prepares high potentials for growth opportunities and advancement; builds collaborative networks inside and outside the organization for self and others. Provides framework for soliciting and acting on performance feedback; drives collaboration to set goals and provide open feedback and coaching to foster performance improvement. Models and drives continuous learning and oversees the recruitment, selection, and development of talent; stays current with industry trends, benchmarks, and best practices; ensures performance management guidelines and expectations to achieve business needs. Acts as a thought leader on industry trends, benchmarks, and best practices; shares best practices within and across teams to drive improvement. Motivates and empowers teams; maintains a highly skilled and engaged workforce by aligning cross-functional resource plans with business objectives. Provides guidance when difficult decisions need to be made; creates opportunities for expanded scope of decision making and impact across teams.


• Oversees the operation of multiple units and/or departments by identifying member and operational needs; ensures the management of work assignment allocation and completion; translates business strategy into actionable business requirements; ensures products and/or services meet member requirements and expectations while aligning with organizational strategies. Engages strategic, cross-functional business units to champion and drive support for business plans and priorities; assumes responsibility for decision making; sets standards, measures progress, and ensures resolution of escalated issues. Sets and communicates goals and objectives; analyzes resources, costs, and forecasts and incorporates them into business plans; obtains and distributes resources. Anticipates and removes obstacles that impact performance; addresses performance gaps and implements contingency plans accordingly; ensures teams accomplish business objectives; serves as a subject-matter expert and trusted source to executive leadership; provides influence and consultation in the development of the larger organizational or business strategy.


• Ensures a high level of customer service is provided by: championing and creating strategies for future-oriented solution development to ensure that lead/prospect/customer needs and service quality goals are met for company-wide initiatives; exhibiting cutting-edge knowledge in several professional fields of health plans and benefits to leads/prospects/customers and brokers/consultants to convey KPs unique value proposition; and exhibiting expert consultation on highly complex, future-oriented lead/prospect/customer strategic questions or issues for organizational initiatives.


• Serves as an advocate for process improvement by: championing teams when identifying and/or implementing initiatives for overcoming obstacles to sales initiative progress, evaluating potential barriers to other team members and/or strategy, taking action to overcome obstacles by presenting solutions to management, and ensuring objectives are met on time and/or within budget; championing work groups of sales subject matter experts focused on meeting department objectives, and identifying, designing, and implementing new and improving existing process-related initiatives, systems, and practices; championing the use of cutting-edge strategies for the continuous improvement of tools, technology, and processes to optimize effectiveness and encouraging others to do the same; utilizing expert knowledge in several fields of Federal and State laws, regulations, contracts and rulings to provide consultation in highly complex or critical situations and to influence how changes would impact processes; championing teams to track performance trends and articulate the performance update consistent with the strategy, along with story behind what is occurring, and to influence long-term strategy decisions; and championing team members group installation and/or member enrollment processing across the company to ensure that all critical milestones are met.


• Generates prospective sales by: championing advanced, future-oriented strategy for open enrollment events, including content development, and assessing event success; providing expert consultation on state-of-the-art strategies to build relationships with key influencers, brokers, consultants, decision makers, and/or community groups to support new business opportunities and prospective customers; exhibiting cutting-edge knowledge on prospecting, sourcing, and developing and maximizing referral networks and integrates critical information from many diverse areas to build one or more lines of business or provide expert consultation to team to build their book of business; championing company-wide progress on all incoming future-oriented business opportunities; providing expert consultation on state-of-the-art strategies for communication with key influencers, brokers, consultants, decision-makers, and/or community groups to successfully win new leads/prospects/customers by conveying the value of enrollment; and empowering teams to use and identify new applicable and relevant resources, such as the sales database, reports, media, and industry intelligence, to create innovative strategies for finding prospects, and to provide updates to executive leadership.


• Makes the best use of available resources by: directing and championing team to utilize resources (i.e., marketing, management, technical), including following through on intended outcomes to achieve or support sales targets, goals, and initiatives independently; and overseeing and providing expert consultation on the total budget, and ensuring team members budget and allocation are in alignment with company-wide initiatives.


• Contributes to strategic development by: championing team to develop and/or refine strategy to meet annual sales targets, goals, and initiatives; utilizing sales status reports to oversee future-oriented sales activity, follow-up, closings, and target achievement across the company; championing teams to use knowledge of health care marketplace to articulate internal sales strategies and drive external sales; overseeing progress on long-term strategic objectives for analyzing and applying competitor and industry trends related to sales strategy; championing teams to use sales performance data to maximize performance and develop insights and sales strategies to accomplish sales plans; and executing decision making on long-term strategy for optimal offering conditions and/or market segmentation to drive internal negotiations and sales strategy.