Zowta

Founding Merchant Development Specialist/Sales Consultant

Help us build a new kind of SaaS sales function.

Most SaaS companies have SDRs. We are building something different.

ShipperHQ is looking for our first Founding Merchant Development Consultant, a commercially curious, digitally savvy sales professional who can identify great merchants, understand how they sell, spot problems in their pre-purchase and shipping experience, and turn those insights into meaningful business conversations.

You will own the front end of ShipperHQ's sales motion across inbound qualification, intelligent outbound prospecting, industry-event follow-up, social selling, and merchant research.

This is not about making the most calls or sending the most automated emails. It is about finding the right merchants, at the right moment, with the right reason to talk.

Because this is a founding role, you will do more than execute the playbook. You will help us build it. If successful, you will have the opportunity to help shape and potentially lead the Merchant Development function as ShipperHQ grows.

ABOUT SHIPPERHQ

ShipperHQ is a trusted leader in the e-commerce shipping space, with over 15 years of experience helping merchants deliver better checkout experiences. Founded in 2009, we power shipping logic and checkout optimization for thousands of brands, from DTC disruptors to enterprise retailers, in 150+ countries. Based in Austin with a global team, we are a fast-moving, product-led company shaping the future of e-commerce logistics.

WHAT IS MERCHANT DEVELOPMENT?

We believe traditional Sales Development is changing. Buyers are more informed, generic outbound gets ignored, and brands live across multiple digital channels. The best sales conversations increasingly begin with a seller who understands something meaningful about the buyer's business before asking for their time.

That is the idea behind Merchant Development.

You will combine research, technology, commercial curiosity, social selling, qualification, and human conversation to identify where ShipperHQ can create measurable value for an e-commerce merchant.

The goal is not simply to book a meeting. The goal is to create a qualified business opportunity with a reason to exist.

You will ask questions like: What's happening in this merchant's business? How do they sell and ship? Where is there friction in the pre-purchase and checkout experience? What might that friction be costing them? What signals suggest something is changing? Who is likely to care? How could ShipperHQ create measurable value?

Then you will turn those answers into conversations.

WHAT YOU'LL OWN1. INBOUND MERCHANT QUALIFICATION & INTELLIGENCE

When a merchant raises their hand, speed matters. You will own the first stage of ShipperHQ's commercial response to inbound demand.

• Rapidly review and respond to trial users, contact requests, marketing-generated leads, tickets, and other potential merchant opportunities.
• Maintain a strong sense of urgency around inbound demand and consistently deliver fast speed-to-lead.
• Research merchants to understand their brand, e-commerce presence, technology, shipping model, and potential fit for ShipperHQ.
• Evaluate storefront, pre-purchase, checkout, and shipping experiences to develop an initial commercial point of view.
• Conduct initial discovery and qualification to understand business challenges, technical requirements, buying process, urgency, and potential value.
• Identify high-intent opportunities and quickly connect them with the appropriate Account Executive.
• Recognize when an inquiry is not a sales opportunity and route or disposition it appropriately. Ensure Account Executives receive meaningful merchant intelligence and qualification context, not simply a name and email address.
• Maintain disciplined follow-up so high-potential opportunities do not fall through the cracks.
• Engage and qualify post-industry event and trade show contacts, collaborating closely with Marketing to ensure timely, relevant follow-up and progression from lead to qualified opportunity.
• Partner with the Social Media team to strategically engage verified brand accounts through ShipperHQ's verified social channels, using brand-to-brand interactions to strengthen engagement, create additional touchpoints, and help progress qualified inbound opportunities.

2. OUTBOUND MERCHANT DEVELOPMENT

When inbound is not demanding your attention, you will create new opportunities. We are looking for intelligent, targeted prospecting rather than indiscriminate volume.

• Identify and research e-commerce brands that fit ShipperHQ's target merchant profiles.
• Build targeted account and contact lists based on merchant characteristics, technology, shipping complexity, growth signals, and commercial potential.
• Research a merchant's online buying experience before engaging priority accounts.
• Identify pre-purchase, checkout, delivery, and shipping inefficiencies ShipperHQ may be able to solve.
• Develop a value hypothesis before outreach: What appears inefficient? Why might it matter? How could ShipperHQ improve it?
• Where sufficient information exists, quantify potential impact in conversion, cart abandonment, shipping cost, margin, operational efficiency, or customer experience.
• Turn those observations into relevant, merchant-specific outreach rather than generic sales messages.
• Prospect through phone, email, LinkedIn, social media, video, and other modern virtual-selling channels.
• Engage relevant e-commerce, operations, logistics, technology, marketing, and executive stakeholders.
• Generate qualified meetings and Sales Accepted Opportunities for the Account Executive team. Prioritize quality, relevance, and conversion while maintaining consistent outbound execution.
• Partner with Marketing after industry events and trade shows to develop targeted outreach strategies, ensuring contacts are actively worked, nurtured, and progressed rather than becoming dormant.
• Collaborate with the Social Media team to identify and engage verified target-brand accounts through ShipperHQ's verified social channels, incorporating thoughtful brand-to-brand social engagement into multi-channel prospecting strategies to open conversations and advance target accounts.
• Continuously test messaging, channels, merchant segments, and prospecting approaches.

3. MERCHANT VALUE DISCOVERY

This is one of the things that makes this role different. We do not want you to simply research who to contact. We want you to develop a hypothesis about why they should care.

You will learn to rapidly evaluate a merchant's online experience and identify potential inefficiencies around pre-purchase shipping information, delivery expectations, checkout, shipping options, rate presentation, complex shipping requirements, fulfillment, international shipping, margin, conversion, and customer experience.

You will connect those observations to commercial outcomes. Where possible, you will quantify potential impact through conversion, cart abandonment, revenue, margin, shipping cost, operational efficiency, or customer experience.

The goal is not to pretend we know everything about a merchant from the outside. It is to arrive at the first conversation with an informed hypothesis worth discussing.

4. MERCHANT & MARKET INTELLIGENCE

• Develop a strong working knowledge of e-commerce, shipping, fulfillment, logistics, and online checkout.
• Understand how modern e-commerce brands sell and operate online.
• Become familiar with major e-commerce platforms and the technology ecosystem surrounding merchants.
• Understand where brands live digitally and use LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and other relevant channels for research, prospecting, and commercial intelligence.
• Follow target brands to understand launches, expansion, hiring, platform changes, fulfillment strategies, and other signals that may create a reason to engage.
• Identify opportunities where brand-to-brand social engagement can complement direct sales outreach.
• Bring merchant intelligence back to Sales and Marketing to improve targeting, positioning, campaigns, and messaging.

5. CRM, TECHNOLOGY & VIRTUAL SELLING

• Use CRM as the operating system for your Merchant Development activity.
• Maintain accurate and timely records across leads, contacts, accounts, activities, and opportunities.
• Understand how leads progress through a modern SaaS sales funnel.
• Use sales engagement, research, social, video, and virtual-selling tools as part of your daily workflow.
• Document discovery, qualification, merchant challenges, value hypotheses, and commercial context before handing opportunities to Account Executives.
• Maintain disciplined follow-up across immediate and future opportunities.
• Use CRM data and buying signals to prioritize your work.
• Partner with Account Executives and Marketing to continuously improve lead routing, qualification, messaging, conversion, and outbound strategy.

6. BUILD THE MERCHANT DEVELOPMENT PLAYBOOK

The word Founding matters. We are not hiring you simply to inherit a mature SDR playbook and execute it.

Alongside Sales and Marketing leadership, you will help develop and refine merchant qualification criteria, inbound response standards, merchant research methods, pre-purchase assessment frameworks, value-hypothesis development, outbound account selection, prospecting messaging, social-selling strategies, event handoffs, brand-to-brand engagement, AE handoff standards, CRM processes, KPIs, and what should and should not be automated.

You will test ideas, measure what works, discard what does not, and turn successful approaches into repeatable processes. The expectation is that the function becomes more sophisticated because you helped build it.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

This is a revenue-generating position. Success will be measured primarily by the quantity of quality opportunities and pipeline you create that convert to a close post-handoff.

Key measures include:

• Speed-to-lead for inbound merchant inquiries.
• Percentage of inbound opportunities worked within established SLAs.
• Qualified merchant meetings booked and held.
• Sales Accepted Opportunities created.
• Qualified inbound and outbound pipeline generated.
• Inbound qualification and outbound conversion rates.
• Industry-event lead progression and pipeline generated.
• Quality and completeness of Account Executive handoffs.
• CRM accuracy and follow-up discipline.
• Ability to identify merchant inefficiencies and develop credible value hypotheses.
• Contribution to improving the Merchant Development playbook.

Ultimately, success means:

Find the right merchants. Understand them. Identify a reason to talk. Engage them intelligently. Qualify the opportunity. Create pipeline. Warm transfer them to an AE to close.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

• 1+ years of experience in Sales Development, Business Development, Inside Sales, e-commerce, or another relevant customer-facing commercial role.
• Hands-on CRM experience and a solid understanding of leads, contacts, accounts, activities, opportunities, and pipeline management.
• Familiarity with modern virtual-selling methods including phone, email, video, LinkedIn, social selling, sales engagement technology, and digital prospect research.
• Working knowledge of e-commerce and how brands sell products online.
• Familiarity with shipping, fulfillment, logistics, or the broader e-commerce technology ecosystem.
• Comfortable using social media as both a business-intelligence and prospecting channel.
• Commercially analytical, with the ability to identify potential inefficiencies, connect observations to business outcomes, and articulate how ShipperHQ could create measurable value.
• Strong discovery and qualification skills with excellent written and verbal communication.
• Comfortable starting conversations with people you do not know across phone, email, video, and social channels.
• Highly organized with exceptional follow-up and time management.
• Able to balance urgent inbound demand with proactive outbound prospecting.
• Curious enough to learn a merchant's business before asking for their time.
• Self-driven and comfortable operating where the playbook is still being built.
• Competitive, coachable, experimental, and motivated by measurable results.
• A critical thinker who looks for the opportunity behind the task.

BONUS POINTS

• Experience working for or selling to e-commerce brands, retailers, or merchants.
• Experience in shipping, fulfillment, logistics, 3PL, or e-commerce SaaS.
• Familiarity with Shopify, Shopify Plus, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce (Magento), WooCommerce, or other e-commerce platforms.
• Experience with HubSpot
• Success using LinkedIn and social media for prospect research and social selling.
• Familiarity with technology stacks used by modern DTC and retail brands.
• Experience evaluating online storefronts, checkout experiences, or customer journeys.
• Experience identifying trigger events or buying signals and turning them into conversations.
• Demonstrated success generating qualified pipeline through inbound and outbound channels.
• Comfortable using data to build a simple business case or quantify the potential impact of a problem.
• Experience helping create or improve a sales-development process or playbook.

WHO WILL THRIVE HERE?

You see an interesting brand online and instinctively want to understand what they sell, how they operate, what platform they use, how they ship, what their checkout experience looks like, where there may be friction, and whether ShipperHQ could make it better.

You are naturally curious about businesses and enjoy turning research into relevant commercial conversations. You are comfortable moving between a CRM, a merchant's storefront, LinkedIn, Instagram, a phone conversation, email, and Zoom because that is where modern selling happens.

You move quickly when opportunity appears, but you do not confuse speed with carele