Sales Executive

Sales Executive, Academic

Job Description

This is a sales role focused on driving growth within our Academic customer base, encompassing both the expansion of existing relationships and the acquisition of new customers.

The successful candidate will be responsible for selling the full Thomson Reuters legal portfolio, including Westlaw, Practical Law and CoCounsel, alongside student-facing subscriptions, to academic institutions where budgets are tightly controlled and value-for-money is critical. The role spans several stakeholder groups, including in-house legal teams, librarians and knowledge managers, and faculty members.

The role targets institutions facing the dual challenge of budgetary pressure and increasing demand for research, teaching and student support. It plays a key role in demonstrating how Thomson Reuters' legal and AI-enabled solutions can help teams improve efficiency, maintain quality under pressure and support learning outcomes and building of key knowledge and skills.

We are looking for a consultative, value-led seller who can understand academic priorities and tailor solutions to meet institutional needs. Success in this role will depend on the ability to establish and maintain strong relationships across the institution, identify opportunities, build credibility with key stakeholders, and clearly articulate return on investment, impact and value.

Key Responsibilities

As Sales Executive, you will:

• Identify, target and win new business opportunities across universities, colleges and other academic institutions

• Sell the full Thomson Reuters legal portfolio, including Westlaw, Practical Law, CoCounsel and HighQ

• Build and manage a strong pipeline of qualified new business opportunities and well as self-sourcing leads

• Liaise with librarians and knowledge managers to understand research, collection and information resource requirements

• Work with in-house legal teams at academic institutions to understand their risk, compliance and service delivery needs

• Build relationships with faculty members to understand teaching and research requirements and identify opportunities for adoption

• Conduct consultative discovery to understand institutional priorities, operational pressures and budget constraints

• Position Thomson Reuters solutions as practical tools to support staff and students under workload and resource strain

• Demonstrate the value of AI-enabled solutions in improving research efficiency, student learning and legal service delivery

• Tailor propositions, demonstrations and commercial discussions to the needs of academic customers

• Navigate procurement, budget approval and stakeholder engagement processes effectively, including consortium and framework purchasing

• Build trusted relationships with legal, library, faculty, procurement and operational stakeholders

• Maintain accurate CRM records, pipeline visibility and forecasting discipline

Required Qualifications

• New business sales: Proven success in new business sales and customer acquisition, ideally in a B2B environment.

• Consultative selling: Strong consultative selling skills, with the ability to uncover customer needs and align solutions accordingly.

• Value communication: Ability to articulate value clearly in budget-conscious environments.

• Technology and AI fluency: Comfortable demonstrating technology and explaining the practical value of AI-enabled solutions, including handling questions on trust, accuracy and data security.

• Commercial judgement: Strong commercial judgement and the ability to build business cases for investment.

• Portfolio selling: Confidence selling a portfolio of products or solutions across legal, research and student-facing offerings.

• Communication and influence: Strong communication, influencing and relationship-building skills.

• Resilience and drive: Resilient, proactive and highly self-motivated.

• Procurement navigation: Ability to navigate structured buying, procurement or governance processes.

• CRM discipline: Hands-on experience with Salesforce or a similar CRM, with accurate records, pipeline visibility and reliable forecasting.

Preferred Qualifications

• Academic sector understanding: Understanding of the pressures facing academic customers and prospects, including budget constraints and research and teaching priorities.

• Complex sales cycles: Experience managing complex sales cycles with multiple stakeholders.

• Legal market knowledge: Experience selling to legal, library or academic institutions, or familiarity with legal research tools such as Westlaw or Practical Law.

• Consortium and framework purchasing: Experience navigating consortium or framework purchasing routes in the education sector.

• Degree or equivalent: A degree in law, business or a related subject, or equivalent commercial experience.

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What’s in it For You?

• Hybrid Work Model: We’ve adopted a flexible hybrid working environment for our office-based roles while delivering a seamless experience that is digitally and physically connected.
• Flexibility & Work-Life Balance: Flex My Way is a set of supportive workplace policies designed to help manage personal and professional responsibilities, whether caring for family, giving back to the community, or finding time to refresh and reset. This builds upon our flexible work arrangements, including work from anywhere for up to 8 weeks per year, empowering employees to achieve a better work-life balance.
• Career Development and Growth: By fostering a culture of continuous learning and skill development, we prepare our talent to tackle tomorrow’s challenges and deliver real-world solutions. Our Grow My Way programming and skills-first approach ensures you have the tools and knowledge to grow, lead, and thrive in an AI-enabled future.
• Industry Competitive Benefits: We offer comprehensive benefit plans to include flexible vacation, two company-wide Mental Health Days off, access to the Headspace app, retirement savings, tuition reimbursement, employee incentive programs, and resources for mental, physical, and financial wellbeing.
• Culture: Globally recognized, award-winning reputation for inclusion and belonging, flexibility, work-life balance, and more. We live by our values: Obsess over our Customers, Compete to Win, Challenge (Y)our Thinking, Act Fast / Learn Fast, and Stronger Together.
• Social Impact: Make an impact in your community with our Social Impact Institute. We offer employees two paid volunteer days off annually and opportunities to get involved with pro-bono consulting projects and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives.
• Making a Real-World Impact: We are one of the few companies globally that helps its customers pursue justice, truth, and transparency. Together, with the professionals and institutions we serve, we help uphold the rule of law, turn the wheels of commerce, catch bad actors, report the facts, and provide trusted, unbiased information to people all over the world.

About Us

Thomson Reuters informs the way forward by bringing together the trusted content and technology that people and organizations need to make the right decisions. We serve professionals across legal, tax, accounting, compliance, government, and media. Our products combine highly specialized software and insights to empower professionals with the data, intelligence, and solutions needed to make informed decisions, and to help institutions in their pursuit of justice, truth, and transparency. Reuters, part of Thomson Reuters, is a world leading provider of trusted journalism and news.

We are powered by the talents of 26,000 employees across more than 70 countries, where everyone has a chance to contribute and grow professionally in flexible work environments. At a time when objectivity, accuracy, fairness, and transparency are under attack, we consider it our duty to pursue them. Sound exciting? Join us and help shape the industries that move society forward.

As a global business, we rely on the unique backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences of all employees to deliver on our business goals. To ensure we can do that, we seek talented, qualified employees in all our operations around the world regardless of race, color, sex/gender, including pregnancy, gender identity and expression, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, disability, age, marital status, citizen status, veteran status, or any other protected classification under applicable law. Thomson Reuters is proud to be an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer providing a drug-free workplace.

We also make reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities and for sincerely held religious beliefs in accordance with applicable law. More information on requesting an accommodation here.

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More information about Thomson Reuters can be found on thomsonreuters.com.