SMB Innovation Sales & Strategy Lead

Job description

About the Team OpenAI is building the next generation of advertising for an AI-powered world. As AI changes how people discover information, explore possibilities, and make decisions, we believe this presents a huge opportunity for small and medium-sized businesses to connect with customers in new ways. The SMB Ads Marketing team is building this opportunity from the ground up. We define how businesses discover OpenAI’s advertising platform, become successful advertisers, and grow their investment over time. Working closely with Product, Ads Engineering, Data Science, and Sales, we combine customer insight, rigorous experimentation, and fast execution to turn early opportunities into scalable growth. About the Role The SMB Innovation Sales & Strategy Lead will identify, incubate and scale new revenue opportunities across OpenAI’s SMB Ads business. This foundational role combines strategic thinking, analytical rigor and hands-on execution to develop differentiated customer propositions, validate product opportunities and launch new go-to-market programs. Working across Product, Engineering, Sales, Marketing and Data Science, this person will lead initiatives from opportunity assessment through customer discovery, commercial pilots and transition to scale. The remit includes industry-specific opportunities, differentiated customer engagement models and innovative approaches across self-serve, sales-assisted and partner-led channels. The lead will also partner with SMB leadership and the Strategy & Operations team to inform the overall SMB strategy, contributing customer segmentation, commercial insights and evidence from incubation programs to broader planning and investment decisions. In This Role, You Will Identify untapped opportunities across SMB segments, industries, and channels. Build business cases and launch pilots to validate customer demand and commercial potential. Design new acquisition, activation, and expansion programs, including industry-specific and assisted-growth approaches. Partner with sales teams and outsourced sales providers to connect self-serve adoption with sales-assisted engagement. Translate customer discovery into product opportunities. Partner with Product and Engineering to evaluate solutions and use customer and commercial evidence to guide investment. Develop actionable SMB segmentation based on needs, business characteristi…