Library Technology Sales Consultant

OCLC; United States; On-site; USD 90,000 - 125,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Tuition reimbursement

Paid parental leave

Fitness facility reimbursement

Best-in-class health coverage

Retirement plan contributions

Job summary

OCLC is seeking a Public Library Services Consultant to drive new business, renewals, and account growth across a US public library territory, owning the full sales cycle from prospecting to renewal. You will engage with library leaders to align OCLC’s library solutions with strategic goals, and collaborate with internal teams to deliver tailored, value-based outcomes.

The role requires strong relationship-building, strategic planning, and the ability to forecast and manage complex sales

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and relevant experience.
• Five or more years of successful consultative sales experience selling technology, software, services, or complex solutions to libraries.
• Experience managing both new business development and renewals.
• Proven record of achieving or exceeding sales targets, building and managing pipeline, advancing complex sales opportunities, and forecasting accurately.
• Strong understanding of public library operations, organizational structures, funding and budget cycles, purchasing processes, and key stakeholder roles.
• Excellent presentation, writing, negotiation, relationship-building, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Willingness to travel 30-50%.
• Working knowledge of AI tools and capabilities, applying ideas to improve outcomes with AI responsibly.
• Prefer direct experience selling an integrated library system (ILS) and discovery service.

Responsibilities

• Meet or exceed annual new business, renewal, retention, and expansion revenue goals within an assigned public library territory.
• Own the complete sales cycle for new and existing OCLC members, including prospecting, qualification, discovery, solution development, proposal creation, negotiation, contracting, closing, and transition to implementation or customer success teams.
• Develop and execute territory, account, and opportunity plans that identify new business prospects, renewal risks, expansion opportunities, competitive situations, and stakeholder engagement strategies.
• Build and maintain a healthy sales pipeline; maintain accurate opportunity information, activity records, account plans, and forecasts in Salesforce.
• Provide reliable and timely sales forecasts, pipeline updates, and market intelligence to sales leadership.
• Proactively manage member renewals by engaging members in advance of contract expiration, reinforcing realized value, addressing concerns, mitigating retention risks, and identifying appropriate growth opportunities.
• Conduct consultative discovery with public library leaders and staff to understand organizational priorities, strategic plans, workflows, technology environments, service models, budgets, funding sources, procurement requirements, and community needs.
• Align OCLC solutions and services to customer objectives and clearly articulate business, operational, patron-service, and cooperative value.
• Develop a strong working knowledge of OCLC’s public library solutions and services, including applicable library services platform, discovery, metadata, cataloging, resource-sharing, interlibrary loan, digital collections, and related offerings.
• Deliver compelling virtual and onsite presentations, solution demonstrations, and executive or board-level discussions tailored to library needs.
• Coordinate internal specialists and cross‑functional partners—including product management, solution consultants, implementation, customer success, legal, finance, marketing, and leadership—to develop and deliver effective customer solutions.
• Establish and maintain trusted relationships with library directors, executive leaders, IT leaders, technical services and collections staff, public services staff, procurement contacts, and other library stakeholders.
• Serve as a strategic partner to assigned libraries, maintaining an understanding of the library’s goals, technology landscape, adoption, satisfaction, challenges, and future needs.
• Identify customer concerns, renewal risks, implementation challenges, and service issues early; coordinate appropriate internal resources and communicate proactively with customers.
• Identify opportunities to expand customer use of OCLC products and services where they provide meaningful value to the library and its community.
• Represent OCLC at library conferences, association meetings, regional events, customer visits, and other relevant industry activities.
• Maintain current knowledge of public library trends, including evolving patron expectations, digital equity, funding and budget pressures, staffing challenges, accessibility, privacy, collection access, resource sharing, and technology modernization.
• Gather, document, and communicate customer feedback, market needs, win/loss information, and competitive intelligence to product, marketing, and sales leadership teams.
• Represent OCLC’s mission and member-centered value proposition, communicating how OCLC services support both local library priorities and broader access to information and resource-sharing outcomes.

Skills

Consultative sales

Territory management

Forecasting

Sales pipeline

Communication

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent

Tools

Salesforce

Job description

OCLC is seeking a Public Library Services Consultant to drive new business, renewals, and account growth across a US public library territory, owning the full sales cycle from prospecting to renewal. You will engage with library leaders to align OCLC’s library solutions with strategic goals, and collaborate with internal teams to deliver tailored, value-based outcomes.

The role requires strong relationship-building, strategic planning, and the ability to forecast and manage complex sales