Job Description

Department: Greater China

Team: Sales

Location: Shanghai

Position type: Contract until December 2027 and Hybrid working, 2-3 days in the office

What the hiring manager says

‘‘We’re hiring a Senior Commercial Manager to join our award-winning MWC Shanghai sales team – now is the perfect time to join as we scale on our record-breaking growth and industry-leading success!

We foster a dynamic, supportive culture with global travel, professional development and team collaboration at its core. In this world-class sales ecosystem, you’ll own high-impact commercial growth, drive iconic results for Asia’s premier tech event and unlock your full potential.

If you’re a passionate, results-driven sales professional with a flair for commercial strategy – we want to hear from you!

Kevin Liu, Head of Commercial Growth MWC Shanghai

About the Team

You will join the highly successful and professional MWC Shanghai sales team based in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. This team are part of the wider global event sales team that includes London, Barcelona and Atlanta. In turn you will be supported by other functional global teams including sales support, operations, marketing and finance.

By leveraging the GSMA and MWC event series resources, you have the opportunity to collaboratively work with our technology teams, regional teams, and other event sales team to sell your event.

About the role

The Senior Commercial Manager is responsible for winning new exhibitors and sponsors for MWC Shanghai, Asia’s premier technology event. The role is primarily focused on new-business acquisition and requires a proactive hunter who can identify prospects, create opportunities and close business across priority sectors such as AI, 5G-Advanced, smart manufacturing, smart mobility, commercial aerospace and other emerging technology industries.

This is not a people-management role. It is a hands-on individual contributor position with clear responsibility for sales activity, pipeline development and revenue delivery. The successful candidate will manage opportunities from initial research and outreach through discovery, proposal, negotiation and close, while building productive relationships with both senior decision-makers and day-to-day customer contacts.

Key responsibilities

• Build and maintain a healthy new-business pipeline through outbound prospecting, referrals, industry events, market research, CRM data, social selling and the wider GSMA and MWC network.
• Identify and approach prospective exhibitors and sponsors, understand their commercial objectives and position relevant MWC Shanghai solutions.
• Own the full sales cycle from first contact and qualification through proposal development, negotiation, contracting and close.
• Deliver against individual sales activity, pipeline and revenue targets, with disciplined follow-up and accurate forecasting.
• Maintain complete and timely opportunity, contact and activity records in Salesforce or other designated CRM systems.
• Create clear, customer-focused proposals across exhibition space, sponsorship, content and business-engagement opportunities.
• Work collaboratively with marketing, conference, operations, finance, regional and international sales teams to support customer acquisition and delivery.
• Share customer insight, competitor activity and market feedback to strengthen sector plans and the MWC Shanghai value proposition.
• Represent MWC Shanghai professionally at customer meetings, industry events and relevant GSMA platforms.

About You

• Proven B2B event-sales experience, ideally selling exhibition space, sponsorship or event-led solutions.
• A genuine hunter mentality, with a strong focus on prospecting, opening new accounts and winning new business.
• A consistent record of building pipeline and achieving or exceeding individual sales targets.
• Confidence managing the full sales cycle, including discovery, proposal development, negotiation and closing.
• Ability to understand customer objectives and translate them into clear and relevant commercial solutions.
• Experience using CRM platforms such as Salesforce, together with social networks and market research tools, to identify and develop opportunities.
• Strong communication, negotiation, presentation and relationship-building skills.
• A practical, resilient and self-motivated approach, with the ability to work effectively in a matrix and hybrid environment.
• Fluency in Mandarin and English, including the ability to write clear business emails and proposals.
• Experience in AI, 5G-Advanced, smart manufacturing, intelligent connected vehicles, satellite or other technology sectors is helpful but not essential.

About your skills

• New business development
• Event sales and commercial awareness
• Communication and negotiation
• Delivery and accountability
• Teamwork and agility

We strive to offer a meaningful and inclusive application experience for all candidates. Should you require any accommodations or adjustments due to a disability or for any other reason during the hiring process, please contact talent@gsma.com with your request.

Contract type

Fixed Term Contract (Fixed Term)

Worker type

Employee

What We Offer

Working at the GSMA offers you unparalleled access to the mobile industry. We offer a chance to truly shape the direction of mobile, whatever your role. By joining the GSMA, you will be exposed to a fast-paced rapidly evolving environment, working on global solutions, genuinely fascinating and industry-changing projects and a stimulating and dynamic environment designed to enable you to flourish.

In addition to architect-designed offices and competitive compensation, our benefits include fantastic learning & development opportunities, generous holiday allowances, four additional days off for professional development and many others.

To learn more about the GSMA, visit our career site, our LinkedIn page and our Twitter page.

Being You at the GSMA

We care deeply about diversity, equity and inclusivity and aspire to be the best at it. Your well-being and work/life balance is important, so flexi-time and remote working is available to all staff. We're keen to ensure everyone is equal, represented and connected so we particularly encourage applications from all demographics. The sucess of the GSMA year on year will continue to be contributed by people from all walks of life.

GSMA Values

Our values not only drive our culture – they shape how we work and interact inside and outside our global organisation.

Passionately driven

We approach everything we do with unparalleled capability, tenacity and commitment, knowing that the challenging scale, pace and complexity of our work is what leads to its world-changing impact.

Insightful leaders

We continually develop and engage our expertise, insight and creativity so that we’re always ready to respond to the changing landscape with authority, agility and nuance.

Stronger together

We lean on each other so the industry can lean on us, embracing our diversity by actively seeking out perspectives and skill sets beyond our own, fuelling each other’s successes and constantly asking how we can help.

Underpinning our values is our collective mindset to show up purposefully as good human beings every day, in every situation. When we’re at our best – we are collaborative, considerate and compassionate to others, and we create a safe space for one another to thrive, assuming positive intent in our colleagues. And if we aren’t at our best and the pressure is on – we feel free to be ourselves but still remain curious, lean into the tough stuff and we are always respectful to others and accountable for the part we play.