About Rewards Network 

For 41 years, Rewards Network has been helping restaurants grow revenue, increase traffic, and boost customer engagement through innovative financial, marketing services, and premier dining rewards programs. By offering unique card-linked offers, we introduce diners to fantastic restaurant experiences, leveraging advanced technology and data analytics to deliver value to restaurants, diners, and our strategic partners' loyalty programs. 

Our Culture  

At Rewards Network, you'll be part of a driven and diverse team that excels in collaboration, issue resolution, and taking ownership of both personal growth and the company's success. We take pride in partnering with the world's most powerful loyalty programs to drive full-price paying customers to local restaurants through marketing services and flexible funding options. Our engaging and rewarding environment is designed to help you gain your full potential. 

Job Overview

The Director of Strategic Marketing Development is an integral part of the restaurant marketing team at Rewards Network. You will partner directly with our Senior Vice President of Sales and Divisional Vice Presidents to manage our most significant restaurant prospects and customers. 

You will sit alongside our senior sales leaders with our prospects and customers to explain the Rewards Network value proposition. You will deliver custom, sophisticated, compelling sales and service messages while evangelizing the range of custom marketing programs and services available to these customers.    

You will direct our broader restaurant marketing team on how to craft personalized sales pitches for our most important customers, enabling you to create new and differentiated value through our marketing and capital products. By understanding each customer segment and particular customer need, you will oversee personalized, clear, concise value propositions supported by data and analysis. You will work hand in hand with your colleagues in marketing to outline and craft proposed customer marketing campaigns.  

You will interact with customers to source feedback and develop an understanding of their business, solution, and product needs. Leveraging this feedback, you will develop a comprehensive understanding of the competitive environment and the specific language that our competitors use to speak to their products.  

For customer retention, you will own the delivery of regular Business Reviews. Your ability to understand a customer, their objections and business needs, think critically, understand complex marketing programs, distill sophisticated analysis into clear and concise conclusions, and communicate effectively will be paramount to your success in this role. 

This is a hybrid position and requires in-office presence Tuesday through Thursday each week in Chicago.

What you’ll bring to the table: (Responsibilities) 

• Sales: Assist in the sales meetings of marketing services and capital products to sophisticated, national restaurant enterprises. Work closely with your sales partners to answer questions, overcome objections, and understand the needs and concerns of the prospect.
• Customer Campaign Communication: Communicate multi-channel marketing campaigns and offer strategies for our most important customers and prospects from concept to execution to analysis.
• Product & Brand Storytelling: Create compelling stories and presentations to communicate our value proposition to our most important customers and prospects.  Partner with Creative Marketing to ensure that visuals clearly communicate the appropriate message.  Partner with analysts in Finance and Data Science to ensure messages are accurate and clearly supported by data, analysis and insights.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner hand-in-hand across Marketing, Sales, Customer Service and Operations Leadership to drive the acquisition and retention of restaurant customers.
• Company Values: Exude Rewards Network’s company values: be open, honest and direct; put customers at the center of everything we do, set a high bar and achieve it, think and act like an owner and always with integrity, presume trust, celebrate others, and have fun.  

Do you have the right mix of ingredients: (Requirements)

• A deep and extensive understanding of the restaurant industry, specifically the business of restaurants.
• Exceptional ability to understand customer needs, position products effectively, seamlessly manage objections, and creatively design marketing solutions to meet customer needs – stated or implied.
• Exceptional ability to bring clarity to complex business situations, to apply frameworks to simplify a message, and to define the appropriate analysis to clearly communicate an outcome.  
• Demonstrated experience creating clear, sophisticated communication materials: presentations, customer-facing summaries, analysis and insights.
• Experience interacting with senior leaders; comfortable asking detailed questions to clarify complex situations.
• Demonstrated ability to ramp quickly into ambiguous, in-flight programs, and operate independently within days or weeks, not months.

Education, Certifications and Experience: Preferred

• Bachelor's degree in business, marketing, or related field
• 7+ years experience in sales, business development, marketing, or similar role
• At least 3 years working directly supporting or within the restaurant industry

What you’ll love about us: 

Comprehensive benefits package, which includes:

• This is a full-time, exempt position and the base compensation for this opening in Chicago is expected to be $140,000-$170,000 annualized, depending on level, candidate experience, skills, and other factors. This position will be eligible for an annual bonus program with a 15% bonus target for total at target of $161,000-$184,000.
• Competitive Paid Time Off and company holidays
• Generous dining reimbursement when you dine with our restaurant clients 
• 401(k) plan with a company match
• Two medical plan options- Standard PPO or High Deductible Health Plan (HSA with company match for HDHP participants)
• Partnership with Rx n Go, offering certain prescriptions for free
• Two dental plan options and a vision plan
• Flexible Spending Accounts and a pre-tax commuter benefit program
• Accident, Critical Illness, and Hospital Indemnity Insurance Plans
• Short Term and Long Term disability 
• Company-paid life insurance and AD&D insurance, supplemental employee, spouse, and child life insurance 
• Employee Life Assistance Program
• Hybrid working space in our state of the art office downtown located by the Metra and Ogilvie train stations
• Catered lunches provided on Tuesday's in our Chicago office