Head of Business Development

Job description

We're looking for an experienced leader to join us as our Head of Business Development.

With a new firmwide growth strategy launched, and our marketing & BD strategy signed off by the Board, this a great time to join the business.

What's the team and role about?

As our Head of Business development you'll be a part of the senior leadership team for the overall Marketing & BD Group. You'll set the direction for our BD efforts and lead three teams:

1. The New Business Development team, who help to win work from an agreed BD pipeline of existing clients, short-term prospects, long-term targets, referrers and intermediaries.
2. The Bids and Tenders team, who prepare for, plan, deliver and manage competitive bids and tenders, across both written documents and presentations.
3. The Key Account Management team, who devise and manage the firm's overall key account programme and provide specific support for a handful of our key clients.

What will you actually be doing?

Working with and through the three teams described above, you'll be responsible for:

• Championing a sales-driven culture to develop our sectors and expand our client base, and connect external and internal opportunities.
• Setting up and monitoring new business pipelines for our priority sectors, focusing on existing clients, short-term prospects, long-term targets, referrers and intermediaries.
• Coaching and supporting Client Partners on BD efforts with their nominated clients, prospects and targets in each pipeline.
• Collaborating with partners and lawyers to represent the firm externally, and to identify new growth opportunities.
• Embedding bids best practice in all aspects of tendering, with a particular focus on scoping, bid / no-bid analysis, developing a clear bid strategy and pricing.
• Conducting bid debriefs, and analysing feedback themes to help inform future bid decisions and win strategy.
• Establishing our key account programme, including defining what it means to be a key account of the firm, both from a WBD and client perspective, and identifying our key accounts and implementing an ongoing review / re-select process for any changes required.
• Ensuring the right team is in place for each key account, covering all relevant business groups and teams and taking into account succession plans and team diversity.
• Leading on client journey mapping and client experience, identifying key touchpoints based on client feedback, and linking to our approved positioning.
• Working with the Data, Content & Insights team to ensure that our client listening programme, including independent partner reviews, and any post-matter reviews and secondment feedback, are implemented with our BD pipelines and key accounts, and that client feedback is implemented.

Why should you be excited about the role?

• Winning new clients and new work from our existing clients is a core plank of our marketing & BD strategy, so you'll be working in an area that has the full support of everyone in the business.
• We're fully in growth mode, so you'll be working with people who have the hunger and ambition to realise the firm's potential and commit the effort and time to business development.
• We've done a lot of the groundwork to set the platform for a successful BD programme, but there's still plenty to be done to realise the results, so you can definitely put your own stamp on things.
• The people in the Bids, New BD and KAM teams are talented and energetic, and enthusiastic to work with a Head of BD who'll give them the direction and support to achieve more.
• There's a high-performing marketing team that wants to work closely with their colleagues on the BD side of the M&BD Group, delivering great campaigns that will feed opportunities into our pipelines.
• We have a fantastic BD training programme for lawyers at all levels of experience, which you'll be able to contribute to and deliver parts of.

Who's this role right for?

To be successful in this role you'll need as a minimum:

• Experience working across the three disciplines of new business development, bids and key account management.
• Experience of working in B2B or professional services BD roles, in a partnership environment.
• The ability to lead people and set the direction for a multi-disciplinary team, bringing cohesion and consistency to the way they work.
• Experience of coaching people on effective business development, from identifying and pursuing opportunities, through to pitching and client relationship management.
• Understanding of the commercial levers that underpin profitable revenue growth, including different pricing models.

What makes it great to work here?

We continually work hard to create an open culture that sets us apart from other firms. Our culture gives us much more of a human feel, emphasising that we're more than just suits!

As signatories to the Mindful Business Charter, it's important to us that our people are able to maintain healthy and happy lives, both in and out of work. We have a number of resources and initiatives designed to support health and wellbeing and we're very happy to talk flexible working, full-time or part-time working patterns.

Through our DEI initiatives we create an environment in which difference is valued. We have an Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Group, led by our Board Sponsor, which works with our colleague networks (we currently have firm supported networks for race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage, LGBTQ+, disabilities, families, and women's career development and we're in constant dialogue with our people about how we expand our networks to better support everybody). Find out more about ED&I at WBD here . We encourage applicants from all social backgrounds, ethnicities, disabilities, gender identities and sexual orientations.

We are committed to ensuring our recruitment process is inclusive and accessible to all. If you have a disability or long term condition and need us to make any adjustments to give you the best possible recruitment process, please let us know by contacting the recruiter on the right hand side of this page. Please also let us know if you need this job advert or the application form in a different format.

We will offer an interview to candidates with a disability or long-term condition who meet the minimum criteria for this role. You can opt into this scheme within the application form. Your response to this question is only used for this purpose, is only visible to the recruitment team and is not used for data monitoring.

We are an in-house recruitment team and will always aim to fill our roles directly in the first instance. If you're an agency, please click here for ways that you can work with us.