Alliance Sales Executive, Associate Director - IBM - Consumer Products & Retail

About the role

EY’s Sales & Strategic Pursuits (S&SP) function unites sales leadership, sector insight, technology expertise, and solution depth to drive market-leading growth. As EY’s growth catalyst, S&SP shapes and executes integrated go-to-market strategies across priority accounts, industry sectors, and strategic alliances — delivering differentiated value through a deeply client-centric culture.

Responsibilities

• Sales Origination: Relentlessly originate and qualify net-new pipeline within the Consumer Products & Retail setors by identifying unmet needs, emerging priorities, and transformation opportunities. Drive sales across three core channels: direct client origination, IBM field-led co-sell motions, and EY account team-led pursuits. Lead early-stage opportunity identification and qualification, independently shaping pursuits from signal detection through deal maturation. Architect and scope deals that integrate IBM technology with EY consulting and managed services capabilities, ensuring engagements generate meaningful EY services revenue alongside the technology sale.
• IBM Alliance Leadership: Act as a trusted partner to IBM Consumer & Retail field teams, evangelizing for EY by building credibility and mindshare across account executives, solution leaders, and sales leadership. Evangelize and position EY’s IBM-powered offerings across the CP&R portfolio: AI-driven planning and FinOps (watsonx, Planning Analytics, Apptio), real-time operations and intelligent automation (Confluent, watsonx Orchestrate, Maximo Application Suite), and retail edge and core modernization (Red Hat OpenShift, mainframe modernization). Activate the right IBM counterpart for each opportunity across IBM Industry CP&R, IBM Technology brand sellers, and IBM Consulting; shape joint go-to-market motions and influence IBM investment toward EY-led pursuits.
• Consumer Products & Retail Industry Impact: Demonstrate deep understanding of CP&R clients’ most pressing issues, including margin pressure, demand volatility, supply chain disruption, inventory optimization, pricing and promotion effectiveness, and evolving customer expectations. Translate IBM capabilities into outcomes that resonate with CP&R executives — AI-driven demand forecasting and planning; intelligent supply chain and operations optimization; omnichannel commerce and customer engagement; data modernization, governance, and AI-enabled decision-making; and retail edge and mainframe modernization. Build executive relationships with CFO, CIO, CSCO, and CMO sponsors to position EY as a strategic transformation partner.
• AI-Enabled Selling & Innovation: Infuse AI into the full sales lifecycle: account and opportunity analytics, intelligent prospecting and prioritization, pattern recognition across pipeline and buying signals, AI-supported storytelling, proposal shaping, and pursuit orchestration, and integration of digital sales agents. Champion AI-enabled EY and IBM solutions with credibility, demonstrating both technical fluency and measurable business impact. Serve as a role model for modern, AI-forward sales execution, helping elevate sales effectiveness across teams.
• Market Leadership & Collaboration: Bring deep CP&R domain knowledge and IBM technology expertise, with the ability to translate that knowledge into enterprise-scale transformations that deliver measurable outcomes. Be the face of EY’s IBM Alliance within EY’s Consumer Products & Retail businesses and the face of EY to IBM CP&R teams. Envision and activate a multi-alliance ecosystem, positioning EY as the orchestrator of partners, platforms, and services to unlock new growth and transformation opportunities for clients. Orchestrate cross-service-line and cross-functional teams; coach and influence account teams and peers through active leadership in the market — not authority alone.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of quota-carrying sales experience in professional services, technology, and/or enterprise solutions.
• Demonstrated success as a net-new business hunter, not solely an account or alliance manager.
• Direct experience selling to Consumer Products and Retail clients, with strong understanding of industry challenges and transformation drivers.
• Strong IBM ecosystem experience, including co-sell and partner-led motions, with active IBM field relationships.
• Deep familiarity with IBM’s enterprise portfolio, including AI, data and analytics, hybrid cloud, automation, and industry platforms.
• Experience operating within a complex, multi-vendor technology landscape.
• Prior experience selling at a Big Four firm or large global systems integrator.
• Demonstrated success closing large, complex solution engagements combining technology platform with professional or managed services.
• Exceptional client relationship management and executive communication skills.
• Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent).

Preferred Qualifications

• Technical background or delivery/program leadership experience.
• Experience selling large, complex, multi-stakeholder transformation programs.
• Experience structuring managed services engagements alongside a technology platform sale.
• Strong coaching and mentoring capability.
• Proven team-selling experience across alliances and solution teams.
• Willingness to travel up to 50%.

Benefits

To learn more about the benefits offered by EY, please visit our careers page.