StudioHawk - Head of Sales

Head of Sales | Build the Sales Function at Australia's Most Awarded Specialist SEO Agency | $145,000–$160,000 Base + Super, OTE $260,000–$280,000 Uncapped | Melbourne (Hybrid)

Build the sales function. Coach the team. Keep your own number.

You have scaled a sales team before. This is the seat where you do it again, with a brand that opens the door before you say a word.

StudioHawk is Australia's largest dedicated SEO agency. Not a generalist digital shop. A specialist, and a serious one.

Founded by Harry Sanders in 2015, the agency has been named SEMrush Agency of the Year, won Optus Media, Marketing and Advertising Business of the Year and Best Agency Culture at the Global Agency Awards, and featured on BBC World News, Forbes and SmartCompany. Across 300-plus campaigns, never a single Google penalty. Clients hold an average 300% ROI.

120+ specialists across Melbourne, Sydney, London and Atlanta, working with 250+ clients including New Balance, Officeworks, The Good Guys, Cue, Aje Athletica and Petstock. The agency is moving deliberately upmarket, toward larger and enterprise engagements, and now into AI search alongside SEO.

The sales function is ready for a leader to own it and build it.

Why this role?

• $145,000–$160,000 base + super, with OTE of $260,000–$280,000 and no cap on it.
• 5% personal commission on the new clients you win, paid across each client's first 12 months.
• A 1% override on the new-client book your team builds, so you are paid for leading, not just for selling.
• You are building the function, not inheriting someone else's. The strategy, the process and the team shape are yours to set.
• A brand that does the warming up for you. The awards and the results are real, so the first conversation starts further along.
• You report to the General Manager. Short line to the decision, no layers to negotiate.
• Hybrid working out of the Prahran office, with a genuine learning culture behind it.

What you'll actually do

• Own the team's new business target, and lead the team to deliver it.
• Lead, coach and develop the team through 1-1s, live deal coaching and development plans that get them closing more.
• Run the team day to day: priorities, capacity, lead allocation and the weekly sales WIP, clearing the blockers so they can sell.
• Lead personally on the deals that matter most, the strategic and enterprise ones, steering them to close alongside the SEO performance team.
• Own the pipeline and lead allocation, getting every enquiry to the right BDM fast, with disciplined qualification in and out.
• Grow the referral and channel partnerships with marketing leaders, CMOs and CEOs.
• Own the CRM, the deal-stage discipline and the sales forecast.
• Bring new growth and offer ideas that fit what StudioHawk is genuinely best at.

Who this suits

You don't need to have sold SEO. What matters is that you have built and scaled a sales team before, and that you still want to sell at the front while you do it.

• 8+ years in high-growth B2B sales, with real time in a leadership seat.
• You have built, coached and scaled a high-performing sales team. Not managed one someone else built. Scaled one.
• You have led a team to a revenue target and hit it.
• You use AI to sharpen how you sell and how your team prospects, and you can show where it made a difference.
• You are data-informed, with confident pipeline, forecasting and CRM habits.
• You treat Marketing as a true peer. Collaborative, aligned, never territorial.
• You are a natural relationship builder, at ease with CMOs, marketing leaders and founders.
• You’re humble - happy to work within a talented team of customer success, delivery, marketing + more to ensure the business gets the best outcome - even if it means accepting a disqualification that you’ve fought against.
• Melbourne-based, at the Prahran office on a hybrid pattern.

This is a player-coach role with a personal target.

If you want to manage and never close again, this isn't the one.

Equally, if your background is account management without a hunting edge, this will be a hard fit.

What success looks like

• First weeks: you know the pipeline, the team, the offer and the client base properly.
• First quarter: your own deals are landing, and the team's pipeline and forecast are tightening under your hand.
• Six months: a repeatable engine is running, with stronger conversion and bigger average deals.
• Twelve months: a high-performing team is winning consistently on the systems and partnerships you built.

The process

Four steps, and it moves quickly.

1. A short introductory chat with founder Harry Sanders.
2. A half-hour call over Google Meet.
3. A mock discovery call, with coaching. This is a working session, not a trap.
4. A presentation.

The mock discovery and the presentation are there because they are looking for people who have genuinely done this before. If you have, this is where it shows.

Why this opportunity is different

Most "Head of Sales" roles are one of two things. A pure management seat where you never close again, or a senior rep title with a team bolted on as an afterthought.

This is neither. You build the function and you keep your own number, inside a specialist agency with real awards, real results and a brand that opens doors instead of needing constant explanation.

And the brief here is honest about what it is. They are not asking for an SEO expert who can sell. They are asking for a sales leader who has scaled something, and who is curious enough about search to learn the craft properly.

Apply now, or reach out to Luke Marshall for a confidential conversation about the role.

Pointer Strategy is partnering with StudioHawk on this search. We work a small number of roles properly rather than spraying CVs, and we stay involved well beyond the offer, with onboarding and ramp support for the person who lands it.

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