BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER, CONVERSION – sKale 60
London / Warwick
The business
Kantar is the world’s leading data, insights and consulting company. We have a complete, unique and rounded understanding of how people think, feel and act; globally and locally in over 90 markets. By combining the deep expertise of our people, our data resources and benchmarks, and our innovative analytics and technology, we help our clients understand people and inspire growth.
Our Insights Division is in the business of human understanding. We work with the biggest brands in the world, helping them understand their customers and take the right decisions in relation to opportunities and challenges across Brand, Creative, Media, Innovation, Customer Experience, Consulting and Analytics. We have over eight hundred colleagues across the UK and Ireland, based either in our offices or remotely; part of a global company working across over one hundred different countries.
The team
Our Business Development team now has a mid-level vacancy for either someone looking to take the next step in their commercial career, or alternatively a candidate with market research experience now looking to step into a Business Development role - specifically focused on converting identified opportunities from receipt of an RFP through proposal & pitch leadership, to wins.
Our Business Development team is a cross-solution team that works across the entire Kantar Insights UK offer, with a lead focus on bringing new logos into the business, and a key role on driving and supporting cross-domain growth with existing clients.
The role
This role will have a priority focus on client opportunities related to their innovation workstreams: building proposals and pitches to meet clients’ varied needs throughout the NPD journey, from defining innovation strategies and ideation, through to product, pack and price optimisation. The role will also stretch beyond this to mixed method opportunities, where the successful candidate will need to bring together the best of Kantar, supported by subject-matter experts.
The successful candidate will have a solid understanding of client insights questions, how market research is used to answer these, and be able to use strong storytelling skills to clearly demonstrate to prospective new clients how we will deliver against their needs and why Kantar is uniquely placed to do so.
WHY THIS JOB IS IMPORTANT:
The Business Development team are a huge driver of commercial growth for Kantar Insights UK&I, helping bring new logos into the Kantar business, along with unlocking growth opportunities with existing clients.
As a crucial part of the central BD team, the Business Development Manager will be responsible for delivering against a personal sales target, and to do so with purposefully collaborate with other members of the team across dedicated skillsets of opportunity hunting and the more technical Programme Design, and broader subject-matter experts across Kantar.
Our Innovation solution area sees us supporting a rich variety of client types, across categories and markets, with a host of different research needs they are looking for our support with. At Kantar, we have many different ways we can help these clients and answer their questions, so this role is crucial in navigating the best way we can do this across tools, experts, data sources and techniques, and bringing this together in a compelling way through our proposals, pitches, and live conversations.
WHAT YOU’LL BE DOING:
You will lead on the conversion efforts for many of our new business opportunities in our Innovation solution area, taking an RFP through proposal and pitch, through to secure the win
You will be part of a BD cohort made up of different roles & expertise, across opportunity hunting, proposal & win conversion, and research design experts
You will play a key role on cross-solution/multi-method opportunities, unifying these into a single compelling Kantar narrative for prospective clients
You will lead proposal and pitch-writing on your opportunities, weaving together a compelling narrative with the benefits of why a client should choose to partner with Kantar – often particularly partnering with a research design expert to best demonstrate why Kantar are the right choice.
You will be expected to deliver against a personal sales target
You will play an active role in implementing and achieving the Business Development strategy for how we better convert Innovation opportunities
SKILLS & EXPERIENCE REQUIRED:
A strong performer with a good understanding of market research techniques and how they can be used to help answer clients’ strategic and tactical questions – coming from either an existing commercial role, or other market research function background.
Desirable: 3+ years in a relevant client-facing role within a market research environment
The ideal candidate will have experience in delivering or selling in strategic projects (e.g. segmentation, brand strategy) across mixed methods (e.g. qual, quant, digital data sources)
The ability to use storytelling skills to produce compelling narratives and sales stories, tailored to an individual client/opportunity.
A client-first mindset – ensuring that everything we propose, and every story we tell, is designed specifically to their objectives (business & individual) and their context.
Combines energy, creativity, credibility and a winning mentality to converting client opportunities.
Strong collaborative skills, to lead on opportunities that have multiple internal stakeholders across departments, and to deliver with clarity in how we show up as a cohesive and connected Kantar offer to clients.
An effective networker, building relationships and partnerships inside and outside of the Business Development team, essential to winning work.