Pre Sales Manager

Overview

Lead presales and bid management for large, complex RFI, RFQ and RFP pursuits across the full pursuit lifecycle, with a focus on Retail and Luxury Retail programs.

What you'll do

• Lead RFI, RFQ and RFP responses across planning, coordination, governance and execution.
• Run bid kick-offs, review gates and win-strategy sessions, driving on-time, compliant, high-quality submissions.
• Define bid plans, roles, timelines and risk/compliance checkpoints for each pursuit.
• Own the bid/no-bid decision using a structured qualification scorecard covering strategic fit, win probability, risk and delivery capacity.
• Run deal review and approval governance covering margin, discount and risk gates with finance, legal, delivery and leadership sign-off.
• Consolidate technical, business and commercial inputs into cohesive, executive-level proposals.
• Craft win themes, value propositions and executive summaries aligned to client priorities, and ensure narrative consistency across proposal artifacts.
• Build and challenge effort estimates, pricing structures and commercial models aligned to solution strategy.
• Shape deals across Time & Materials, Fixed Price and Hybrid billing models and advise on the right mix per engagement.
• Partner with finance, delivery and legal on margins, risk, deal shaping and approvals.
• Review MSAs, SOWs and terms, flagging liability, IP, SLA/penalty, warranty and data-protection risks with legal.
• Advise on currency, tax and multi-geography commercial nuances for global engagements.
• Prepare and coach pursuit teams for client presentations, orals and best-and-final-offer rounds.
• Support negotiation strategy, objection handling and deal close.
• Maintain a reusable library of proposal assets, case studies, estimation models and accelerators, and standardize templates and content.
• Use GenAI and proposal-automation tools (e.g., Proposal AI) for first drafts, content search and compliance checks, always with human review, and enforce data-confidentiality guardrails.
• Maintain opportunity tracking and pursuit governance, provide accurate pipeline reporting and dashboards, and prioritize pursuits by qualification, fit and win probability.
• Capture market insights, competitive intelligence and structured win/loss feedback; track win rate, cycle time and pursuit cost.
• Coordinate sustainability/ESG, information-security and compliance questionnaire responses within proposals.
• Enable scalable management of multiple concurrent RFPs without impacting delivery teams.
• Ensure a clean bid-to-delivery handover, capturing assumptions, dependencies and risks for the delivery team.
• Manage partner program operations (e.g., Oracle OPN or equivalent), including deal registrations, compliance tracking, certifications, partner status, benefits and audit readiness.
• Build presales maturity across the business unit.

What you'll need

• 15+ years of overall experience, with substantial time in presales, bid management or solution consulting within IT services, consulting or technology.
• Demonstrated track record leading large, complex, multi-tower RFI/RFQ/RFP pursuits and winning strategic deals.
• Experience owning bid/no-bid qualification and deal-approval governance.
• Strong experience in effort estimation, pricing and deal shaping across T&M, Fixed Price and Hybrid models.
• Exposure to contract and commercial risk review (MSA/SOW terms, liability, IP, SLAs, data protection).
• Track record supporting orals, BAFO negotiations and clean transition to delivery.
• Domain exposure to Retail, Luxury Retail and Omnichannel programs.
• Proven ability to work across onsite, sales, delivery, finance and legal stakeholders in a global environment.
• Experience building and leading presales/bid teams and establishing governance and reusable assets.
• Bachelor's degree required.
• Executive-level written and verbal communication; strong proposal writing and storytelling.
• Commercial and financial acumen; comfortable with estimation models and billing structures.
• Contract and risk awareness in partnership with legal.
• Data and analytics literacy, including win rate, cycle time and pursuit-cost metrics.
• Responsible, guardrail-aware use of AI and proposal-automation tools.
• Orchestration under pressure across multiple concurrent deadlines.
• Executive presence, stakeholder influence and cross-cultural collaboration across sales, delivery and C-level.
• Analytical mindset for qualification, win/loss analysis and pipeline governance.
• Attention to detail on compliance, quality and governance.

Nice to have

• Experience in Agile methodologies and consulting.
• MBA or equivalent business qualification.
• Familiarity with partner ecosystems and program management; Oracle OPN experience is a strong plus.
• Bid or proposal management certification (e.g., APMP).

Details

• Full-time position based in Bengaluru.
• Hybrid work options available (country-dependent).
• Domain and technology exposure includes Salesforce multi-cloud, Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Oracle POS, e-commerce platforms and broader retail technology.
• Delivery methodologies include Agile, SAFe, Kanban, Lean and Hybrid; delivery streams include development/build, managed services (L1, L2 and L3 support) and Test Factory-QA.
• Presales tooling includes Responsive, RFP360 and Proposal AI or equivalent platforms.