Vice President, Customer Success & Account Development

Join a purpose-driven B-Corp, with a vision to end avoidable food waste, one of the most powerful levers to mitigate climate change.

Are you excited to work on a solution to one of the biggest global challenges and opportunities of our time? That’s what we do every day at Leanpath. We are a B-Corp with a vision to ensure a sustainable future by helping to eliminate wasted food in foodservice and hospitality.  We pursue this outcome with our organizational mission to make food waste prevention and measurement everyday practice in the world’s kitchens.

We have an exciting leadership opportunity for a Vice President of Customer Success & Account Development, who is passionate about our mission, aligned with our values, and ready to make a lasting impact.

Leanpath pioneered the food waste industry and we continue as the leading and largest player in the market.  We work with high-volume foodservice and hospitality organizations with customers around the world like Google, Sodexo, Compass, Marriott, and many others in thousands of kitchens around the globe. We help our customers measure food waste with hardware-enabled SaaS tools and leverage data and analytics to eliminate avoidable food waste, and drive lasting change. We are a group of diverse and passionate culinarians, technologists, sustainability experts, and change-makers connected by our mission and excited to make the world a better place.

We were founded in 2004 in Portland, OR and today we have team members around the world in the US, Canada, UK, China and Australia. We are growing and scaling up, and with it we’re growing our team of amazing people.

The VP, Customer Success & Account Development plans, organizes and directs activities of account directors, account managers, and customer success managers supporting enterprise and independent customers in building global food waste prevention programs and ensuring lasting success, ROI and impact.

This role is pivotal in driving customer value, customer satisfaction, retention, and revenue growth. The ideal candidate will be a strategic thinker, a proactive problem solver, and a collaborative leader capable of aligning customer success initiatives with the company's growth objectives.

This role is primarily accountable for two KPIs:  existing customer expansion (NRR, Net Revenue Retention) and customer churn minimization (GRR, Gross Revenue Retention).  The VP, Customer Success & Account Development serves as a key member of our senior leadership team, participates in crafting our overall business strategy, and represents Leanpath in external settings such as public events, speaking, and committees.

Key Accountabilities

• Leadership: Provide visionary leadership to the Customer Success and Account Development teams, fostering a culture of high performance, accountability, and continuous improvement.
• Deliver Customer Value: Design approaches to continuously demonstrate return-on-investment (ROI) to customers, providing input into product and customized reporting to ensure customers understand value and return.
• Customer Success Strategy: Lead and optimize a comprehensive customer success strategy aligned with the company's goals, emphasizing customer satisfaction, retention, and expansion.
• Relationship Building: Design strategies to build and maintain strong, long-term relationships with senior stakeholders within client organizations, understanding their needs and aligning Leanpath efforts. Play an active role as an executive sponsor and, in many cases, the top liaison to the senior leadership level within our client partners.
• Revenue Growth: Drive existing customer expansion (NRR) through strategic upselling, cross-selling, and expansion opportunities within the existing customer base.
• Churn Minimization: Implement proactive measures to identify and address factors contributing to customer satisfaction and churn, working to minimize attrition and increase customer lifetime value.
• Team Development: Recruit, mentor, and develop a high-performing team, providing coaching and support to enable individual and team success.
• Data-Driven Insights: Utilize data analytics and customer feedback to derive insights, inform decision-making, and enhance customer success strategies and processes.
• Collaboration: Collaborate closely with Sales, Marketing, Product, and Operations teams to ensure alignment of customer success initiatives with overall company objectives.

Key Performance Indicators

• Customer expansion (Net Revenue Retention, NRR)
• Customer retention (Gross Revenue Retention, GRR)
• Net Promoter Score (NPS)
• Client food waste and food cost reduction in %, Weight and Value Reduced
• Client engagement (developing KPIs for product usage)
• Team engagement and growth (EE turnover rate)

Competencies

A successful Vice President of Customer Success and Account Development in this role will embody these competencies, driving the company's mission forward while achieving sustainable growth and fostering a customer-centric culture.

• You have a genuine passion for our business: This is a must! You have a genuine passion for food waste prevention, demonstrating dedication and enthusiasm that inspires both internal teams and external stakeholders. Passion is required, but it would be even better if you have experience working on food waste prevention or food sustainability initiatives.
• You’re an experienced executive leader: You’re someone who has adeptly built an organization or led teams of more than 20 people, from strategy to execution. You’re an exceptional manager and coach, fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation and customer-centricity. You’re not afraid to get in the weeds and build strategies and processes where they are lacking. You’re focused on results and have a track record to show for it. You’re an excellent communicator, both in writing and verbally. You’re accustomed to leveraging data and research to make analytical, evidence-based decisions. You’re relentless in your focus on excellence and continuous improvement.
• You’re highly skilled at building senior-level enterprise customer relationships: You’ve worked with large, multi-national organizations where understanding the organizational goals, structure and key stakeholders is an art. You know how to build high, wide and deep relationships, creating a strong partnership; you always look for ways to strengthen these partnerships and add value.
• You are tenacious about customer value: You listen deeply to understand customer needs, you are a leading advocate for customer perspectives across our organization, and you ensure we prioritize strategies to deliver relevant value.
• You have experience in a recurring revenue B2B business (SaaS or similar): You  understand the unique drivers in a recurring revenue B2B business model and have successfully led and managed teams to achieve success in this context. ARR, NRR, GRR, CAC, LTV and Churn are metrics you've used previously and you have a track record of consistent achievement and improvement. You are well-versed in creating win-win contracts and commercial terms with customers.
• You have experience in foodservice & hospitality: Foodservice and hospitality are complex ecosystems so your experience in food tech or in foodservice operations (particularly contract management) will be valuable in this position, but this is not a requirement.  

Requirements (Summary)

• Proven experience (10+ years) in a leadership role within Customer Success, Account Management, or related field with demonstrable achievements in growth, retention, and customer satisfaction.
• Bachelor's degree (Master's degree preferred)
• recurring revenue experience
• Desired: Experience in foodservice and/or hospitality