Associate Sales & Partnerships Manager

About YourStory

YourStory is India's most strategic ecosystem influence platform — built over 18 years to turn visibility into influence across Startups, Developers, Enterprise Leaders, GCCs and MSMEs. We reach 10M+ monthly users, 2.5M+ newsletter subscribers, and 4.6M+ followers across channels, and we host the country's most influential tech moments: TechSparks (17th edition, 10,000+ attendees), GCC Summit, SheSparks, MSME Sparks and the DevSparks city series.

Brand Solutions is how we partner with the world's most ambitious companies — Dell, Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft, Snowflake, NVIDIA, Accenture, Airtel Business, Delhivery and others — to build narratives, IPs, sponsorships and ecosystem programs that shape India's tech story.

About The Role

What You will Own -

We're hiring an Associate Sales & Partnerships Manager — Inside Sales to lead the inbound revenue engine for YourStory Brand Solutions. This is a desk-led, high-velocity role: you'll convert inbound interest — from our website, microsite enquiries (TechSparks, GCC Summit, SheSparks), newsletter advertiser leads, sales mail, LinkedIn DMs, and warm referrals — into qualified pipeline, closed-won revenue, and long-term accounts.

You won't be doing cold-call outbound prospecting. Your job is to be the fastest, sharpest, most consultative response India's tech brands meet when they raise their hand. You'll qualify, scope, package and close — turning inbound curiosity into multi-quarter partnerships across newsletter takeovers, articles & video IPs, branded content, event sponsorships, and bespoke programs.

You'll work hand-in-glove with Brand Solutions Content, Events, and Marketing. You report into the Chief Financial Officer, with a dotted-line to the SVP — Strategic Initiatives & Business Development for commercial direction and deal strategy.

What You'll Do, Day To Day

• Own the inbound funnel end-to-end
• Speed-to-lead — Be the first human response to every qualified inbound lead — across web forms, microsite enquiries, sales inbox, newsletter & display-ad enquiries, LinkedIn, and warm intros — within a defined SLA (target: under 2 business hours during working hours).
• Qualify with rigor — Run discovery calls to understand the prospect's brand objective, funnel stage (awareness, consideration, conversion, brand recall), audience target, budget band, and decision timeline.
• Disqualify early — Use our standard qualification framework (BANT / MEDDIC-light) to disqualify fast and focus calendar time on the leads that will actually close.
• Package, propose, close
• Map need → offering — Translate prospect goals into the right YourStory offering — newsletter inclusions across YS Buzz, Weekly Wrap and Dev Digest; articles & branded content; signature video IPs (Inside the AI Boardroom, GCC Beyond Borders, Mavericks, Tech Transformers); event sponsorships across TechSparks, GCC Summit, SheSparks, MSME Sparks and DevSparks; or bespoke campaigns combining the above.
• Proposal velocity — Build polished, audience-data-backed proposals in PPT/PDF using approved templates, with clear deliverables, timelines, and commercials. Turn around first drafts within 48 hours of a qualified discovery call.
• Commercial confidence — Run pricing conversations confidently — anchor on value (audience quality, 46% open rate vs. 21% industry average, 64% CXO/founder readership, 200K+ stories told), defend margins, and negotiate within approved guardrails.
• Closing discipline — Drive deals from proposal to PO, coordinating legal, finance, and content teams to compress cycle time.
• Pipeline & CRM rigour
• Single source of truth — Maintain every opportunity in our CRM with current stage, next step, expected close date, and accurate INR value. CRM hygiene is non-negotiable — if it isn't in the CRM, it doesn't exist.
• Forecasting — Provide accurate weekly forecasts and quarterly commits to the Brand Solutions leadership.
• Own your numbers — Track and improve your own conversion metrics — response time, qualification rate, proposal-to-close ratio, average deal size, win/loss reasons — and run a fortnightly retrospective on what's working and what isn't.
• Account growth & repeat business
• Expand inside accounts — After closing the first deal, stay engaged through delivery alongside the Customer Success and Content teams. Use campaign performance moments to surface upsell, cross-sell and renewal opportunities.
• Build durable relationships — For repeat advertisers (50% of our base) and 5-year+ key accounts (10%), build a relationship cadence that keeps YourStory top-of-mind ahead of every brand planning cycle.
• Cross-functional collaboration
• Close the loop with marketing — Work with Marketing on inbound lead-quality feedback — which campaigns send leads that actually close, which don't.
• Sell what we can deliver — Coordinate with Brand Solutions Content and Events teams to scope deliverables accurately, so what's sold is what's delivered.
• Voice-of-customer — Feed insights from lost deals and prospect objections back to leadership to sharpen our positioning and pricing.
  
  

What We're Looking For

MUST HAVE -

• Inbound / inside sales DNA — 3–6 years selling digital media, brand solutions, SaaS, B2B services, event sponsorships, or branded content — with at least 2 years in an inside sales, inbound sales, or desk-based revenue role.
• Quota carrier — A consistent track record of meeting or beating quota, with conversion numbers you can speak to in detail.
• Cycle-running ability — Demonstrated ability to qualify ruthlessly, build crisp proposals fast, and run a multi-stage deal cycle from first call to PO without dropping balls.
• CRM-fluent — Hands-on proficiency with a CRM (HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho or equivalent) and comfort with sales tooling — email sequencing, calendar tooling, e-sign, deck/proposal tools.
• Communicator — Sharp written and verbal English. You can write a 5-line follow-up that gets replied to, and structure a 20-minute discovery call that gets a second meeting.
• Ecosystem-curious — A genuine interest in India's startup, developer and enterprise tech ecosystem — you read about it, you have a view on it, and you can talk to a CMO or a founder without sounding scripted.
  
  

NICE TO HAVE -

• Prior experience selling to marketing or brand teams at tech companies, GCCs, enterprise SaaS, or D2C brands.
• Familiarity with media-sales constructs — CPM, CPL, share-of-voice, takeovers, integrated campaigns, multi-touch attribution.
• An existing network across brand, agency, or startup marketing teams in Bengaluru, Mumbai, Delhi NCR.
• Exposure to event sponsorship sales (conferences, summits, multi-city activations).
  
  

How You'll Know You're Winning

• Inbound enquiries are getting a same-day, useful first response — and prospects are saying so.
• Your qualified pipeline is consistently 3.5x your quarterly quota, with clean stage data.
• Proposals go out within 48 hours of discovery, and feel custom — not boilerplate.
• You're closing deals across the full product surface, not just one or two SKUs.
• Accounts you closed last quarter are coming back this quarter.
• Marketing and Content teams ask for your input because your loop-back is sharp.
  
  

WHY YOURSTORY

• Sell something real — Sell a product the market actually wants — 2.5M+ engaged newsletter subscribers, 46% open rate (2x industry), 64% founder/CXO readership, and India's most influential tech IPs.
• Front-row seat — Work with the brands shaping India — Dell, Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Snowflake, Accenture, Airtel Business, and 30+ industry sectors served.
• Compounding career — Learn from a leadership team with 100+ years of cumulative experience building India's most trusted founder & business storytelling platform.
• Earn for outcomes — Competitive base, uncapped incentives tied to outcomes, and a clear growth path into Senior Manager / Key Account
  
  

Skills: crm,sales,inboubd sales,media sales,d2c