Product Specialist
Location
High Wycombe (Head Office), with UK-wide client travel as required
Reporting to
Director of Product
Working pattern
Full-time, hybrid
Hours
37.5 hours per week
Salary
£40,000 - £50,000 + Bonus + Benefits
Contract
Permanent
Key Responsibilities
1. Pre-Sales and Commercial Engagement
- Lead and deliver tailored product demonstrations across Intelli-Park’s full technology portfolio — ANPR hardware, software platforms, integrated management systems — to prospects, clients, and partners at all levels including C-suite and procurement.
- Own the technical qualification of each sales opportunity: assess client requirements, operational environments, integration constraints, and deployment considerations to ensure solutions are accurately scoped before commitment.
- Develop and deliver compelling solution presentations that clearly articulate commercial value, operational benefit, and technical differentiation — not product features in isolation.
- Respond to formal RFPs, ITTs, and technical questionnaires in collaboration with Sales, ensuring responses are accurate, complete, and commercially competitive.
- Support pricing and commercial modelling by providing technically validated scoping inputs and flagging risks or dependencies that affect cost or timeline.
- Represent Intelli-Park with authority and credibility at client meetings, site visits, industry events, and trade shows.
2. Client-to-Product Translation
This is what distinguishes the Product Specialist from a standard sales or technical role. You are the structured interpreter between what clients need and what the product team builds.
- Conduct structured client discovery sessions to capture business requirements, operational workflows, integration needs, and success criteria — going beyond surface-level requests to understand underlying drivers.
- Translate client requirements into precise, technically accurate briefs for the Product and Development teams, using language and frameworks that enable effective prioritisation and build.
- This includes functional specifications, user stories, integration requirements, and clearly articulated constraints.
- Requirements must be client-validated, commercially grounded, and technically feasible before handover.
- Work with the Product team during the development cycle to validate that build decisions remain aligned with client intent — raising concerns early when scope drift or technical change creates commercial risk.
- Act as the primary point of escalation when client-facing technical questions arise post-sale and pre-implementation, ensuring no client is left in a gap between Sales and Delivery.
- Maintain a structured log of client requests, recurring pain points, and unmet needs — presenting these as a prioritised, evidence-based input to the product roadmap on a regular basis.
3. Product Knowledge and Market Intelligence
- Develop and maintain expert-level knowledge across the full Intelli-Park product portfolio, including hardware specifications, software architecture, platform capabilities, integration methods, and known constraints.
- Stay current with product releases, updates, and roadmap developments — ensuring commercial messaging is always accurate and the Sales team is promptly briefed on changes that affect how products are positioned.
- Monitor competitor products and pricing, emerging technologies in ANPR, smart parking, and mobility management, and relevant regulatory or standards changes. Synthesise this intelligence into actionable insight for the commercial and product functions.
- Own the development and maintenance of high-quality sales enablement materials: product comparison documents, technical data sheets, objection-handling guides, demo scripts, and configuration reference guides.
- Define and enforce standards for how products are demonstrated, described, and positioned across the Sales team — ensuring consistency, accuracy, and commercial alignment.
4. Client Onboarding and Early Adoption
- Lead structured onboarding programmes for new clients, tailored to their operational context, technical environment, and user base.
- Deliver product training to client teams across varying levels of technical confidence — from operational administrators to senior technical contacts.
- Work alongside the Projects and Account Management teams during the implementation phase to resolve product-related queries, manage configuration decisions, and maintain client confidence.
- Monitor early adoption health indicators and proactively intervene where usage patterns suggest confusion, underutilisation, or misalignment with the client’s original requirements.
- Conduct structured post-go-live reviews to capture client feedback, confirm outcomes against expectations, and identify improvement opportunities — feeding findings back to Product and Sales.
5. Internal Collaboration and Commercial Enablement
- Work as an integral member of the commercial team, participating in pipeline reviews, bid strategy sessions, and client planning meetings.
- Train and coach the Sales team on product knowledge, demo technique, and effective technical positioning — raising the overall technical credibility of the commercial function.
- Build strong working relationships with the Product, Technology, Operations, and Project teams — operating as a trusted, two-way channel between commercial and technical functions.
- Contribute to the monthly commercial reporting cycle with product-related pipeline insight: common objections, demo conversion rates, lost-deal technical reasons, and feature request trends.
- Participate in product development forums and roadmap planning sessions as the commercial voice — ensuring product decisions are informed by what clients are asking for and what deals are being lost on.
Skills and Experience
Essential
- Demonstrable experience in a pre-sales, technical sales, solutions consultant, or commercial product specialist role — ideally within parking, ANPR, smart infrastructure, SaaS, or a related technology sector.
- Proven ability to lead technically complex product demonstrations and translate product capability into client-specific commercial value propositions.
- Strong technical literacy: able to understand system architecture, hardware specifications, software integration concepts, and data flows without being a developer.
- Exceptional communication skills: equally effective presenting to a client’s board, facilitating a technical scoping workshop with a development team, or coaching a sales colleague on objection handling.
- Structured and analytical approach to capturing, documenting, and communicating client requirements — with experience producing functional briefs, specifications, or user stories for product or development teams.
- Experience supporting or leading formal procurement responses (RFPs, ITTs, technical questionnaires).
- Highly organised, self-directed, and comfortable managing multiple concurrent opportunities at different stages of the sales cycle.
- Proficiency in Microsoft 365; familiarity with CRM systems and project or requirements management tools.
- Full UK driving licence and willingness to travel to client sites across the UK as required.
Desirable
- Hands-on experience with ANPR hardware, parking management software, or integrated access and enforcement systems.
- Familiarity with API-based integrations, cloud platforms, or SaaS product architecture in an enterprise or operational context.
- Experience working within or alongside an Agile product development team, including involvement in sprint planning, backlog prioritisation, or UAT.
- Background in client-facing roles within smart cities, mobility, facilities management, or related sectors.
- Exposure to consultative selling methodologies (MEDDIC, SPIN, Challenger, or equivalent).
Personal Attributes
- You understand that product knowledge is a means to a commercial end. You measure your own success by pipeline contribution, win rate, and client satisfaction — not by how technically impressive a demo was. — Commercially driven
- You know enough to be credible with developers and architects, and you know the limits of your knowledge — responding to gaps with structured curiosity, not bluster. — Technically confident, not technically defensive
- You extract what clients actually need, not just what they say they want. You ask the right follow-up questions, you take structured notes, and you replay requirements back to confirm accuracy before acting on them. — An exceptional listener
- You are equally effective in a structured boardroom presentation, an informal site visit, a technical workshop with engineers, or a fast-moving internal briefing. Your register changes; your credibility does not. — Adaptable and composed
- The briefings you produce for the product and development teams are complete, accurate, and usable without significant rework. You understand the downstream cost of a vague requirement. — Rigorous and thorough
- You do not silo knowledge. You brief, train, and share proactively — because you understand that a more capable Sales team around you creates better outcomes for everyone. — Genuinely collaborative
Key Competencies
Pre-Sales and Solutions Consulting
Technical Product Knowledge (ANPR / SaaS)
Client Requirements Capture and Analysis
Commercial Proposal and RFP Writing
Product Demonstration and Presentation
Client-to-Technical Translation and Briefing
Sales Enablement and Internal Training
Market and Competitor Intelligence
Client Onboarding and Adoption Management
Stakeholder Management (Internal and External)
Pipeline Reporting and Commercial Insight
Cross-Functional Collaboration