Team Lead, New Business Sales (Player-Coach AE) (m/w/d)

You want to lead and still close deals yourself? That’s exactly the point.

Behind our mission, “Empower everyone to lead a self-aware career and life” are 300+ leading enterprises across retail, manufacturing, tech, and services — IKEA, BMW, Airbus, Porsche, LVMH, Bupa, Miro, and hundreds more — as well as €30 million in funding. We got off to a rocket start and made plenty of mistakes along the way. Now our co-founder and CEO is rebuilding the sales organization from the ground up — and you’ll build it with him.

We are the digital platform for 1:1 and AI coaching. Behind thousands of successful leaders and top talents stands a Sharpist Coach. For our customers, we deliver three core outcomes: strengthening the skills of leaders and talent, embedding learning from existing talent programs, and accelerating and safeguarding transformation. The result that matters: change no longer happens only in the annual strategy meeting, but every day in execution.

This role is not a manager job involving spreadsheets and forecast meetings. You will own your own business book, spend at least 50% of your time as a “player” rather than just a coach, and build the structure that reliably gets your team to quota.

You will report directly to the CEO.

If you want to grow and learn, and responsibility energizes rather than scares you, keep reading. Sounds too hardcore?

Meet our AI Coach in action — and see how Sharpist empowers leaders and talents to grow every day:

What you’ll get done here

In your first month, you’ll be able to:

• Know our ICP by heart, understand the buyer personas, and know the job we do for them

• Honestly audit the pipeline, team setup, and ways of working — including what’s broken

• Own your portfolio and move the first deals forward

• Build a working relationship with everyone on your team, not just a 1:1 on the calendar

In your first quarter, you’ll be able to:

• Lead your team toward consistent new business ARR against the quarterly target

• Deliver a forecast that is accurate at the beginning of the quarter and still accurate at the end

• Not just introduce our sales playbook, but embed it so deeply that nobody calls it a playbook anymore

• Improve win rate, deal size, and sales cycle measurably — through initiatives, not opinions

• Establish Power Hours, Calling Days, Deal Reviews, and 1:1s as a rhythm that runs without you

Within your first year, you will have:

• Built a team in which everyone knows, understands, and hits their own quota

• Owned our pitch, proposals, and solution workshops — and made each one better every quarter

• Connected Sales and Marketing so closely that pipeline building becomes a shared mission rather than a game of ping-pong

• Turned our new business engine into a genuine competitive advantage: documented, scalable, and never finished

• Played your part in one of the most exciting turnarounds in the startup world

As you may have noticed, this is not your typical sales lead role.

• A track record in B2B SaaS sales — complex, multi-stakeholder deals, with the numbers to prove it, not just the story

• Experience developing people — you lead close to the deal, not from the dashboard

• At least 50% of your time as a player — you close deals yourself, otherwise nobody will take you seriously

• Strong sales craft : modern sales methodology, pipeline management, and forecast discipline. Claude, HubSpot, Modjo, or comparable tools are tools for you, not obstacles

• Data-driven : you read the results, derive the right action, and iterate quickly

• Native-level German , with excellent English — our customers speak German, our product speaks both

• Experience selling to HR, L&D, or talent functions is a strong advantage

• A genuine willingness to travel to customers — not just “availability,” but enthusiasm

And then there are the five things that are non-negotiable for us:

1. Accountability : You do what you say — and you speak up early when something starts to go off track

2. Proactivity : You see the gap before anyone reports it and close it

3. Delivery : You are a doer — it annoys you that "umsetzen" so sehr nach "rumsitzen" klingt, denn du hasst rumsitzen

4. Care : You want excellence because you genuinely care about the work

5. Fast : You read this job description in 43 seconds and already know whether you’re applying

Working model: 5 days per week in our office in Neukölln or at the customer’s site. You lead from the front; that cannot be done from a home office.

First of all: we explicitly encourage people of all backgrounds, genders, and sexual orientations to apply — we understand that the tone here may feel off‑putting. If you’re somehow interested and irritated at the same time, get in touch and let’s talk about it. We believe in “non‑violent” directness. If you think this job description is crap, feel free to tell us directly

What you get

• Compensation at top-talent level

• Virtual Shares (VSOP) — you own a share of what you build

• Unlimited coaching sessions with certified Sharpist Coaches, plus full access to the AI Coach

• An annual learning budget for courses, conferences, and development

• Company pension scheme

• Quarterly Magnetic Weeks — team weeks that genuinely make a difference

• Flexible working hours (great work, sleep, sports — in that order)

• An office in the heart of Neukölln, Tuesday BBQs, and Thursday breakfasts