Sales Associate (Mission Associate)
Location: McLean, VA Reports to: Director of Revenue Operations Type: Full time
About Defense Unicorns
Defense Unicorns delivers secure software capabilities to national security missions across the Department of Defense, the Intelligence Community, and the federal government. Our sales team spends its time in the field with the people who own those missions. [Replace with standard company boilerplate as needed.]
About the role
Our sellers close deals in rooms, on bases, and at customer sites, not behind a laptop doing data entry. This role exists to protect their selling time. As a Mission Associate, you support account executives and deal owners across our federal, DoD, and Intelligence Community territories, along with our work with commercial independent software vendors (ISVs), federal systems integrators (FSIs), and the broader defense industrial base (DIB). You take on the administrative work that surrounds every deal. You are their eyes and ears when they are on the road, the person who keeps the record straight in HubSpot, and the one who makes sure nothing slips while they are mobile.
You will also carry a second mandate: figure out where seller time actually goes. You will track the recurring administrative tasks that eat the most hours, quantify them, and bring recommendations to our sales operations and enablement teams so we can streamline and automate the work rather than just absorb it.
What you will do
Deal support and CRM ownership
- Capture meeting notes, next steps, new contacts, and deal updates in HubSpot within one business day of every customer interaction, working from seller voice memos, Slack messages, and call debriefs.
- Make sure seller email is synced to HubSpot, with inboxes connected and customer threads logged to the right contacts and deals, and fix gaps when logging breaks.
- Keep deal records current ahead of weekly deal meetings and monthly deal reviews, including stages, close dates, forecast categories, and qualification fields.
- Maintain contact and account data quality, including new contact creation, role changes, org structure updates, and ownership hygiene.
Calendaring and meeting logistics
- Own scheduling for customer meetings, demos, and internal deal calls, including invites, confirmations, reschedules, and reminders.
- Coordinate meeting logistics such as visitor requests, base access paperwork, demo setup, travel details, and conference schedules.
- Prepare short pre-meeting briefs covering attendees, account history, open action items, and relevant recent activity.
Quoting and order support
- Draft quotes and pricing documents for seller review, track internal approvals, and keep paperwork moving so deals never stall on administration.
- Route RFIs, RFQs, and proposal requests to the proposal team, then track them through to submission so the seller always knows status.
Field support
- Monitor inbound customer email and Slack for sellers who are traveling, flag anything time sensitive, and handle routine responses at the seller’s direction.
- Turn field debriefs into same-day CRM updates and draft follow-up emails for the seller to review and send, using AI tools to keep turnaround fast and quality high.
- Track open action items across each seller’s deals and follow up with internal owners so commitments made in the field get met.
Process improvement
- Maintain a running log of the administrative tasks that consume the most seller time, with time estimates.
- Deliver a monthly summary to sales operations and enablement identifying the top time drains, with specific recommendations for templates, automation, or process changes.
