Business Development Director, EMEA

Escalent; United Kingdom; On-site; GBP 65,000 - 85,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading market insights company in the United Kingdom is seeking a Business Development Director to drive sales of insight communities across various sectors. The ideal candidate will have a proven track record in sales and client development, along with strong communication skills. This role involves collaborating with marketing and client services and involves various benefits, including a competitive salary and extensive perks.

Benefits

Competitive salary

Bonus structure

Private medical insurance

Cycle to work scheme

Paid sabbatical

Weekly drinks

Regular company socials

Qualifications

• Proven track record of managing against revenue targets.
• Highly organized with excellent attention to detail.
• Strong experience in sales planning and pipeline management.

Responsibilities

• Drive sales of insight communities across various sectors.
• Collaborate with marketing and client services for proposals.
• Develop and manage new client opportunities and relationships.

Skills

Sales expertise

Client development

Communication skills

Strategic sales planning

Client relationship building

Job description

Who We Are

C Space is the leader of Online Communities - having defined and redefined Online Communities for 25 years. We create vibrant hubs of customer insights and put our clients on a first‑name basis with their customers. Now part of the Escalent Enterprise, along with Hall & Partners, this is a great time to join C Space due to an expanded offering and broadened client base to expand our reach.

Role Overview

The Business Development Director is a business driver, who brings sales and client development expertise and vision through the entire purchase funnel, successfully winning and developing new clients and buyers, resulting in sustained revenue growth. The BDD will be driving sales of insight communities for any of our industry sectors (i.e. Tech, Financial Services, Retail, FMCG).

Responsibilities

Works closely with the Director of Growth to refine targeting, share market insights, and ensure CRM data supports strategic decision‑making. Collaborates with Marketing and Client Services to ensure proposals and outreach are timely, relevant, and aligned with the growth calendar. Line‑manages Business Development Representatives, coaching them on outreach quality, pipeline development, and conversion readiness.

• Originating European specific opportunities and RFPs from new buyers in both existing and new clients, as well as successfully closing deals (accountability for organic sales with existing buyers’ rests with colleagues in client service).
• Identify and pursue leads for new business.
• Qualify incoming sales leads to determine if the opportunities match C Space capabilities. Understanding and qualifying leads to target the best opportunities for the organisation to pursue.
• Initiate follow‑up conversations with new clients to understand business objectives and the research need to provide key information to the Account Teams and Solutions Designers to build a winning proposal.
• Contributing to our response on qualified Opportunities/RFPs with Account Teams/Subject Matter Experts. It’s envisaged this will require content creation and editing.
• Update all opportunities in our CRM systems such as Salesforce.
• Leading procurement and commercial negotiations with the support of Finance, Legal, the Account Team and Managing Director, as appropriate.
• Build a strong knowledge base on the C Space offer areas including the core of Communities, Analytics, Insights, and Innovation.

NOTE: If you are a seller/doer now and not yet performing at this level, you are welcome to apply to be considered for other roles.

The role is responsible for achieving specific quarterly and annual quotas – commissions based on a UK‑specific target. Primarily these will be net revenue based, but you will also be accountable for consistently improving client coverage metrics and customer satisfaction across projects. In addition, the individual will be responsible for setting and achieving global sales targets.

Qualifications

Our clients are typically Fortune 500 and are sophisticated, capable, and highly professional. We expect all our colleagues to mirror these standards. We’d expect you to be amongst the best and comfortable operating at C‑level, even though the main buyer is likely to be Insights and Analytics Leaders.

Our client development approaches are based on consultative and challenger models. Both require exemplary discovery, listening and communication skills. In addition, our ambition is always to grow clients over many years, if not decades. This means that we only propose solutions that we’re confident will address the clients’ problems/central question and will result in high quality work and client satisfaction.

• Proven track record of managing themselves against net revenue targets, with a strong desire to consistently overachieve against both personal targets and objectives.
• Highly organised, driven, with good time management skills and a logical approach, able to prioritize workload and excellent attention to detail.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal, with strong presentation skills and the ability to network effectively.
• Strong experience in strategic sales planning and implementation, including pipeline management.
• Ability to drive new business through upper funnel prospecting with new clients and contacts. This position will need to have the ability to quickly build rapport and credibility with prospective clients.
• Ability to build strong client relationships that will drive revenue long‑term with clients.
• Demonstrable sales experience, with a proven track record of delivering strong results against both revenue targets and KPI measures in previous roles.
• Broad subject expertise in online communities, insights, strategy, brand, innovation and activation/socialisation.

Culture

We pride ourselves on our friendly but high‑performing culture. We love people who are self‑starters, see the glass as half‑full and thrive in a fast paced, entrepreneurial environment: six directors of the EMEA business have started their career at C Space as entry level consultants.

We are passionate about our people and proud of our culture. We have six ‘behaviours’ to ensure that we are delivering fantastic work, continuing to learn and develop and building a high‑performance culture which creates opportunities for those who work here:

• I’ve got this: taking responsibility, doing what we say we will.
• Only accept awesome: delivering high quality work that we are proud of and has impact.
• Show the love: celebrating successes & ensuring everyone has a voice.
• Do what scares you: challenging ourselves, taking risks and learning more.
• Tell it like it is: being honest and freeing ourselves from "office politics" and "hidden agendas"
• Open up and listen: Listening first and fully before we respond or react.

Salary/Package

Alongside a competitive starting salary and bonus structure we offer a comprehensive suite of benefits – from a contributory pension, private medical insurance, cycle to work, paid sabbatical, individual wellbeing funding, weekly drinks and regular company socials including our Summer Sports day and renowned Christmas parties too.