Director of Retail Activation & Customer Success in Alexandria, Virginia at National Association of Convenience Stores
Job Description
Serving as the operational leader for retailer activation and customer success, the Director owns the end-to-end retailer journey—from recruitment and qualification through implementation, technical onboarding, go-live, transaction readiness, adoption, expansion, and ongoing customer success. Reporting to the NACS Vice President of Retail Engagement, Research & Education, and partnering closely with the TruAge CEO and NACS Vice President of Technology, the Director will leverage NACS' established retailer relationships and engagement infrastructure to accelerate recruitment, streamline activation, and drive sustained usage. This leader is accountable for delivering a seamless, repeatable, and scalable retailer experience while driving measurable outcomes.
As TruAge enters its next phase of national scale, retailer activation and sustained transaction usage are critical growth drivers. Every successful deployment expands TruAge's reach, strengthens its network of retail and technology partners, and advances its mission to prevent underage access to age-restricted products through privacy-first, frictionless digital age verification. The Director will build and lead the team, processes, playbooks, and performance metrics needed to scale thousands of retailers and tens of thousands of locations while delivering an exceptional customer experience.
This is a hands-on, results-oriented leadership role that combines building a scalable operating model with direct accountability for execution. The Director must be comfortable leading a lean team, coordinating complex, partner-dependent implementations, resolving stalled deployments, and delivering predictable activation and adoption outcomes while building capacity for growth.
Key ResponsibilitiesRetailer Recruitment & Activation
Lead the end-to-end retailer activation strategy for the convenience channel, including:
- Recruit, qualify, and activate new retailer partners
- Develop and manage the retailer activation pipeline
- Drive retailer engagement from initial interest through successful deployment
- Prioritize activation opportunities to maximize "Doors" growth
- Manage relationships between major oil companies (MOCs), State Associations and point of sale (POS) companies to support roll-outs, joint marketing and communications efforts to efficiently reach retailers to drive integrations and activations.
- Maintain accurate viable universe projections and subsequent forecast numbers for retailer adoption based on point of sale readiness and software releases, major oil company releases, and more.
- Prioritize the activation portfolio against retailer readiness, POS availability, technical dependencies and support capacity, translating growth objectives into phased, achievable rollout plans.
- Partner with designated NACS Retail Engagement and TruAge commercial relationship owners on strategic account transitions and market expansion.
- Align on account ownership, readiness criteria and handover points for strategic accounts and partner-led opportunities, including adjacent channels.
Lead all retailer implementation activities, including:
- Enterprise onboarding and implementation planning
- Technical onboarding and POS coordination
- Retailer training and operational readiness, including in-store materials and signage
- Go-live planning and launch management
- Transaction monitoring and early-life support
- Customer adoption and utilization monitoring
- Expansion planning across additional stores and locations
- Establish delivery responsibilities, milestones and escalation routes with internal teams, POS providers, service providers and retailer IT teams. Coordinate implementation while designated technology owners retain responsibility for technical configuration, integration development and technical issue resolution.
- Personally lead resolution of complex operational blockers and senior retailer escalations, securing decisions and maintaining momentum across parties outside your direct control.
Build a best-in-class customer experience that drives sustained adoption, measurable retailer value, and long-term advocacy by:
- Delivering consistent, high-quality onboarding and activation experiences that reduce implementation timelines and accelerate time-to-value.
- Driving retailer adoption, engagement, sustained transaction usage, satisfaction, retention, and expansion opportunities.
- Establishing measurable usage expectations, success metrics, and customer health indicators; proactively identifying underperforming locations and leading recovery plans with clear ownership and timelines.
- Translating TruAge's value into practical outcomes for retailer operations and store teams, including frontline training, change management, and ongoing adoption support.
- Developing customer success programs and executive business reviews that demonstrate measurable results, strengthen retailer relationships, and cultivate reference customers and industry advocates.
Partner with Technology, Product, Marketing, Government Relations, and Operations to:
- Prioritize retailer feedback and customer insights
- Improve implementation workflows and eliminate operational friction
- Build (or revise as needed) scalable activation processes, playbooks, and standard operating procedures
- Leverage onboarding tools, technical documentation, and training resources already available; develop incremental tools as needed
- Establish KPIs, dashboards, forecasting, and operational reporting to monitor activation performance and customer health
- Produce reliable activation forecasts based on retail location-level readiness, milestones and dependencies. Explain forecasts, identify systemic causes or opportunities and implement corrective actions.
- Establish common reporting definitions that distinguish locations committed, configured, live and actively transacting, and track sustained adoption alongside new activations.
Build and lead a high-performing customer-facing organization responsible for:
- Retailer recruitment and activation
- Enterprise onboarding and implementation
- Liaison with NACS Government Relations team for state legislation and coalition building tied to data and privacy
- Customer support and technical coordination
- Customer adoption, success and lifecycle management
- Continuous process improvement and operational scalability
- Own activation strategy, priorities, resource planning, team performance and escalations. Delegate day-to-day retailer progression and deployment coordination to the Activation & Growth Manager, with clear decision rights and accountability.
- Coach and develop the Activation & Growth Manager and wider team, establish consistent working standards and identify the skills and staffing required to scale.
- Pipeline Progress: New retailers recruited and locations committed
- Active Doors & Transactions Counts
- Activation Rate: Percentage of committed locations successfully activated
- Activation Forecast Accuracy
- Speed to Value: Time from commitment to lab to first live transaction
- Customer Health: Retention, customer satisfaction score, and active utilization
- Expansion & Advocacy: Additional locations, referrals, and reference customers
- Recovery of Inactive or Underperforming Locations
- 10+ years of progressive leadership experience in customer success, enterprise implementations, retail activation, field operations, account management, or customer operations within high-growth technology, SaaS, or retail environments.
- Relevant industry experience in convenience retail technology, POS systems, payments, identity verification, digital identity, fintech, hospitality technology, or enterprise software; experience with age-restricted products, franchised or distributed retail networks preferred.
- Proven success building and leading hands-on, customer-facing teams responsible for retailer recruitment, onboarding, implementation, activation, adoption, and long-term customer success, with demonstrated ability to convert retailer commitments into live deployments, sustained usage, and measurable business outcomes.
- Experience managing complex, multi-site enterprise deployments involving POS providers, technology and service partners, and retailer Ops and IT teams; skilled at resolving technical and operational barriers, managing implementation dependencies, influencing partners without direct authority, and establishing scalable rollout processes.
- Strong commercial and operational acumen, with demonstrated success expanding retailer relationships, accelerating time-to-activation, driving adoption and transaction volume, coaching teams, and delivering predictable deployment outcomes.
- Data-driven operational leadership, leveraging CRM and customer success platforms (e.g., HubSpot) to manage retailer pipelines, implementation milestones, activation conversion rates, customer health, usage metrics, deployment forecasts, and operational performance.
- Exceptional executive communication, cross-functional leadership, and change management skills, with the ability to align Sales, Marketing, Product, Technology, Government Relations, Operations, external partners, and senior customer stakeholders around aggressive activation, adoption, and growth objectives.
The successful candidate is:
- Customer-first
- Operationally excellent
- Highly organized
- Collaborative
- Process-oriented
- Calm under pressure
- Strategic while remaining execution-focused
- Passionate about delivering exceptional customer experiences
We hugely value, invest in and are devoted to the constructive culture that we’ve built and work on every day at NACS. Almost everything we do requires broad, multi-department collaboration to ideate and execute creative initiatives that deliver compelling value to our members and our industry. What that requires is a relatively flat organizational structure that empowers teammates at different levels from all departments to constructively engage and support each other. Titles really don’t matter in such an organization. What matters is a culture of constructive behaviors that relishes divergent perspectives to craft well thought-out initiatives and then come together to execute them. NACS Values:
- Do the right thing
- Focus long term
- In their terms
- Be fiscally responsible
- Strive for excellence
The NACS culture is highly collaborative, and we are better when we are together. NACS is a culture that believes in working together from the office.
Other Pertinent Information- Comprehensive Benefits Package
- Salary commensurate with experience
- Approximately 10% travel
- In-Office Position w/ Work from Anywhere (WFA) Days
- Metro Accessible – 2 blocks from King Street metro
Salary Range: $140,000 - $190,000 actual compensation will be based on several factors, including but not limited to relevant experience, education, skills, and other qualifications.
NACS is an Equal Opportunity Employer, dedicated to a policy of non-discrimination in employment on any basis. All applicants will be considered for all positions on the basis of qualifications and without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, marital status, veteran status, disability, sexual orientation, and any other legally protected status. For more information, visit convenience.org. Follow NACS on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
About TruAgeTruAge is a mission-driven, not-for-profit technology company developed by NACS and Conexxus to modernize age verification for the digital era. Built by the industry, for the industry, TruAge delivers privacy-first, frictionless digital age verification that helps retailers sell age-restricted products responsibly while protecting consumer privacy and improving operational efficiency.
As the convenience and fuel retailing industry rapidly evolves toward digital identity, mobile IDs, wallets, loyalty integration, biometrics, and connected commerce, TruAge is leading the development of an open, interoperable ecosystem designed to support faster, safer, and more seamless retail experiences. Today, TruAge is integrated with major point of sale (POS) providers and working alongside leading retailers, technology partners, state agencies, and global brands to shape the future of responsible retailing. Learn more at www.mytruage.org
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