Phone Sales Manager, Mallory Portraits | Portsmouth, NH Full-Time $70k base, OTE$100,000
Mallory Portraits has been creating heirloom portraits for New England families for 15 years. We photograph families and pets with the same level of artistry, and every portrait we deliver is meant to outlive the people in it. Our studio donates more than 2,000 portraits a year to community fundraisers. We believe in the work.
Our booking department runs on a steady flow of warm leads and a one-call close model. We're growing, and we need a Booking Manager who has been in that closer seat, knows exactly what it takes to perform at 80%+ booking rates, and is ready to make other people that good.
This is not a step into management from customer service. This is a sales closer who is ready to lead.
You lead a team of 4+/- reservation specialists who convert warm leads into booked portrait sessions, collecting a deposit on every call. This is a sales department, not customer service. The team's job is to book the appointment and secure the deposit on the first call, every time.
As Booking Manager, you are a working manager. At the current team size, you are on the phones for a portion of your day and coaching around the edges. As the team grows, your time inverts: coaching becomes the majority of the job, and phone time is what you do once your people are handled. You will have a hand in implementing marketing campaigns plus complete ownership of the CRM (you are exceptionally tech savvy), Slack for the company, and maintaining the sales AI employee documents in Claude.
40% of your week is making followup calls to clients, 30% is recruitment, 20% is training and meetings, 10% is CRM management and reporting.
You will run daily mini-huddles via Google Meet, hold weekly 1:1 scorecards with each specialist, conduct call reviews, manage scheduling, handle escalations, analyze call center data, and report results to ownership daily, weekly, and monthly. You will also hire and train new reservation specialists as needed.
A closer first. You have held quotas, hit them, and can describe your performance in numbers: booking rate, show rate, calls per hour, conversion rate. You have coached someone from struggling to strong and can walk through exactly what you did, step by step. You do not wait to be told what to do. When your team's numbers slip, you listen to the calls before you look for another explanation.
You are warm on the phone and direct in a coaching conversation. You can hold a hard standard with someone you like. You give feedback on the single highest-leverage fix, not everything at once. You believe that skill is built through reps and feedback, not talent and motivation.
You understand the northeast USA mentality. You get that the families we work with are busy, skeptical, and worth every ounce of effort it takes to get them through the door.
- You have led a remote phone sales or call center team and can describe how you coached underperformers specifically
- You are comfortable asking for money yourself and modeling that behavior for your team without apology
- Leadership to you means deliberate 1:1s, real call reviews, and a data dashboard you own
- You take feedback on Monday and implement it by Tuesday
- You want to build something: a team, a culture, a standard, not just maintain it
- Your recent management experience is in customer service, not sales
- You have not personally carried a quota in the past year
- You are not technically savvy
- You have not directly hired or fired candidates yourself
- You have never managed a remote team
- You manage through relationships and energy rather than numbers and call reviews
- You find it awkward to address underperformance with someone the team likes
- Proven track record in outbound phone sales with demonstrable performance numbers. Booking rate, close rate, conversion rate. Name them.
- Call center or phone sales team management experience. Mandatory.
- Minimum 8 years in sales with minimum 5 years in a leadership role
- Experience coaching to specific skill gaps, not general motivation
- Tech fluency: GHL, Acuity Scheduling, Google Meet, Slack, Claude, Indeed. All are learnable if your fundamentals are strong.
GHL (GoHighLevel) Acuity Scheduling Google Meet Slack
- $70k base salary + performance bonuses (monthly & annually) tied to outcomes
- OTE $100,000
- 40-hour work week, Monday-Friday
- Hybrid location: Tuesday-Thur in-studio, Mon & Fri remote
- 80 hours paid time off
- Time & half holiday pay
- 2 paid volunteer days
- Reimbursed high-speed internet bill
- Health benefits
- 401(k)
- A tight-knit team that believes in accountability, positivity, and doing the work
