Manager Strategic Sales AI Strategy

About Us The Freeman Company is a global leader in events, on a mission to redefine live for a new era. With a data-driven approach and the industry’s largest network of experts, The Freeman Company's insights shape exhibitions, exhibits, and events that drive audiences to action. The integrated full-service solutions leverage a 99-year legacy in event management as well as new technologies to deliver moments that matter.

Summary Freeman's Growth organization is executing an enterprise AI mandate — moving from AI exploration to AI leadership across Strategic Sales Planning (SSP) and the broader Growth org. This role leads the AI Strategy & Automation function, which serves as the operational engine of that mandate: building and deploying the AI use cases that make up our AI strategy, and running the governance and adoption-measurement work that keeps that deployment disciplined. It reports directly to the SVP of Strategic Sales Planning, who owns the mandate's strategic direction and executive relationships.

The Manager is accountable for the results of the AI Strategy & Automation function: setting priorities, adapting SSP's departmental plans to resource and operational challenges, and providing technical guidance on the work. This is a hybrid leadership-and-builder role, not a pure strategy seat and not a pure technical build seat. The right person can build and deploy AI use cases today, moves fluidly between hands-on problem solving and the framework work that keeps AI deployment safe, measured, and adopted, and is ready to grow into leading a team.

This position will support our Strategic Sales Planning group under our Growth (Sales) team. It is eligible to work a hybrid schedule, generally requiring work in-office and/or show site 2-3 days per week. The ideal candidate will be based out of any of the following locations:

• Dallas, TX
• Orlando, FL
• Alexandria, VA
• Chicago, IL
• Las Vegas, NV
• Nashville, TN
• Atlanta, GA

Essential Duties & Responsibilities Leadership & Team Building

• Build the AI Strategy & Automation team over time: define the operating model, roles, and hiring plan as the use case portfolio scales, and partner with the SVP and HR/Talent Acquisition to recruit and onboard.
• Own the function's results: set priorities, allocate effort across use cases, and ensure quality and timely delivery, leading through partnership and influence with SSP's analytics team until a dedicated team is in place.
• Adapt SSP's departmental plans to resource and operational challenges, and escalate trade-offs and capacity constraints to the SVP with clear recommendations, including when and where to add headcount.
• Provide technical guidance to colleagues and business partners on Salesforce, Power BI, Account Segmentor, and AI tooling (Claude, Microsoft Copilot).

Use Case Development & Deployment

• Lead the build and deployment of Strategic Sales Planning Fiscal Year 2027 priority AI use cases, personally at first and through the team as it grows: pipeline reporting automation, CRM hygiene monitoring, SLT/Ops report generation, Win/Loss intelligence, and Segmentor insight narration.
• Stay hands-on where it matters: unblock complex technical and operational problems and move each use case from concept to a working, adopted integration.

AI Governance & Adoption

• Own the Growth org's AI governance framework and, as the team grows, direct its upkeep: usage guardrails, data handling standards, and a taxonomy of what AI does vs. what people own.
• Lead adoption tracking and reporting, measuring actual workflow integration and time savings rather than install rates.
• Partner with Training & Development on enablement and change management as use cases roll out.

Cross-Org Partnership

• Work day-to-day with the Sr. Manager, Strategic Sales Planning & Marketing Liaison and the Sr. Sales Analyst on the analytics work underlying most FY2027 use cases.
• Partner with the Growth org's other AI owners (E&ES Strategic Business Development, CSS Guardians, Customer Experience, and mdg) and their teams as the portfolio expands beyond SSP, influencing them to adopt shared standards and practices.
• Coordinate with Enterprise Architecture & Engineering (IT) on tooling and infrastructure, and with the Salesforce Einstein team on AI tool integration (Einstein NBA, Account Segmentor, Account Plans).

Education & Experience

• 7+ years of progressive experience in analytics, sales operations, or business technology, including 2+ years leading people, teams, or workstreams.
• Experience coaching, prioritizing, and managing performance, and readiness to build a team from the ground up.
• Hands-on experience with some of: Salesforce, Power BI, Microsoft Copilot, Claude or a comparable AI assistant.
• Generalist who learns new tools quickly across Salesforce/Einstein, Power BI, and AI assistants.
• Solves technical and operational problems with an eye to department-wide impact.
• Translates ambiguous business problems into structured, automatable workflows.
• Understands how AI and analytics integrate with sales, marketing, and IT.
• Strong written communication for reporting to sales leadership Influences others, internally and externally, to adopt new approaches.
• Background in sales operations, revenue operations, or business intelligence.
• Exposure to CMMI or another process-maturity framework.
• Experience with workflow automation tools (e.g., Power Automate).

Travel Requirements

Travel up to 25%

What We Offer

The Freeman Company provides benefits that aim to empower our people and their families to thrive mentally, physically, and financially. These are a handful of the types of programs and benefits our full-time people may be eligible for. There may be some variances in specific benefits across regions.

• Medical, Dental, Vision Insurance
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Paid Parental Leave
• Life, Accident and Disability
• Retirement with Company Match
• Paid Time Off
• Salary range of $125,000-$155,000 based upon experience
• Eligible for an annual bonus of up to 10% of the base salary

Diversity Commitment

At The Freeman Company, our commitment to diversity and inclusion is helping us to create not only a great place to work, but also an environment where our employees, our customers and our communities around the world can reach their goals and connect with each other. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status and other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

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