Head of Strategic Deals, International
Coupa makes margins multiply through its community-generated AI and industry-leading total spend management platform for businesses large and small. Coupa AI is informed by trillions of dollars of direct and indirect spend data across a global network of 10M+ buyers and suppliers. We empower you with the ability to predict, prescribe, and automate smarter, more profitable business decisions to improve operating margins.
Why join Coupa?
• Pioneering Technology: At Coupa, we're at the forefront of innovation, leveraging the latest technology to empower our customers with greater efficiency and visibility in their spend.
• Collaborative Culture: We value collaboration and teamwork, and our culture is driven by transparency, openness, and a shared commitment to excellence.
• Global Impact: Join a company where your work has a global, measurable impact on our clients, the business, and each other.
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The Impact of a Head of Strategic Deals, International at Coupa:
The Head of the International Strategic Deals Office (SDO) leads an advanced overlay sales function responsible for shaping and guiding Coupa's most complex, highest-value commercial transactions (typically >$1M). Operating across all international regions-EMEA, APAC, Japan-this leader strengthens deal strategy, orchestrates senior stakeholder engagement, enforces governance discipline, and ensures Coupa is consistently positioned as a trusted, strategic partner to customers pursuing business transformation.
A core part of the mandate is to raise the organisation's capability in identifying strategic deal patterns early. This leader will build and deploy a clear identification framework and "decision tree" that helps AEs, SEs, CSMs, and partner teams recognise when to step back from a narrow ask and shape a broader strategic opportunity.
What You'll Do:
- Strategic Deal Leadership & Value Capture
- Lead the entire engagement on complex, high-value deals across the Protect, Prosper, and Penetrate segments.
- Define the core deal strategy, competitive posture, value narrative, governance structure, and executive engagement plans.
- Partner with Account Executives (AEs) to shape multi-year commitments, ELAs (Enterprise License Agreements), cross-product plays, and commercial constructs. Opportunity Identification & Pattern Recognition
- Develop and embed a simple, repeatable framework to help the field identify large-scale deal potential early, moving transactions to transformational opportunities.
- Create a Strategic Deal Identification Framework outlining key triggers (e.g., ERP migrations, mergers, cross-functional demand) and commercial markers (multi-SKU renewals >$1M).
- Train all new hires (Sales, SE, CS, Partners) on recognizing, escalating, and jointly architecting a broader strategic configuration. Stakeholder Orchestration & Executive Messaging
- Mobilize and align all cross-functional stakeholders, including Product, Finance, Legal, Value Engineering, and Deal Desk, as well as partners (channel and GSIs).
- Develop and elevate the enterprise-level narrative for customers, ensuring it ties Coupa solutions to transformation, value realization, and risk reduction.
- Coach sales teams on structuring and delivering impactful executive-level communications. Governance, Process Leadership & Scalability
- Own and refine the governance model for strategic deals, leading structured deal reviews, approval cycles, and executive checkpoints.
- Ensure data accuracy, deal hygiene, and visibility into the strategic pipeline, complying with commercial guidelines and corporate risk frameworks.
- Capture detailed lessons learned from complex deals and translate them into repeatable methodologies, templates, and playbooks for the wider field. Leadership, Development & Global Management
- Lead and develop the APJ Strategic Deals resource based in Singapore.
- Build clarity of roles, decision-making, and the operating rhythm for the International SDO.
- Support organizational maturity by driving consistent process adoption and structured engagement across all regions.
What You Will Bring to Coupa:
- Enterprise Experience & Tenure: Possess 12+ years of experience in enterprise SaaS, technology sales, consulting, or large-scale transformation environments.
- Complex Deal Architect: Proven ability to lead or influence >$1M complex, multi-product transactions and design multi-year, cross-product commercial constructs.
- Strategic Communication: Demonstrate Executive presence and masterful storytelling ability, capable of distilling complexity into compelling, high-value narratives for senior stakeholders.
- Operational Discipline & Leadership: Exhibit strong Strategic Pattern Recognition, capable of aligning multiple internal teams toward a unified strategy with rigorous operational discipline and organization.
- Acumen & Reach: Strong commercial acumen including understanding of pricing strategy and risk management. Experience across EMEA and APJ is preferred, alongside multicultural and matrix leadership experience.
Coupa complies with relevant laws and regulations regarding equal opportunity and offers a welcoming and inclusive work environment. Decisions related to hiring, compensation, training, or evaluating performance are made fairly, and we provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified candidates and employees.
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