Business Development Director

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR
Client Growth Delivered (Manufacturing)

Bracknell, UK

Overview of the role:

The UK Business Development team (UKBD) are responsible for driving company growth through two streams: winning new business from our competitors and from organisations not yet purchasing data.  IRI is in a unique position in the UK having without doubt the best breadth and depth of coverage, superior analytics capability and technology solutions.

We are looking for someone with a strong insight, FMCG and business development heritage either within an agency, a manufacturer or retailer.

The Business Development Director has a clear objective; to lead IRI to become an unrivalled partner for our largest prospect clients, supporting them to achieve their top and bottom line performance goals.

The key delivery of this role is to build and maintain a ‘depth and breadth’ of engagement with our largest prospect opportunities, at exec level and with key commercial positions (Category Directors, CMI Directors, Sales Directors, Marketing Directors etc).

The measure of success of client engagement is that a) at the point when the manufacturer is ready to launch an RFP for their market measurement services, IRI is already regarded by their key decision makers and influencers as the partner most capable of helping them achieve their top and bottom line growth; and b) we have influenced the time horizon for the launch of RFP, to ensure enough transition time between signed contract and delivery of service.

We know that if a client launches an RFP without a previously developed positive perception of IRI by the key decision makers, then we have a significantly reduced ability to win based on reasons other than price differential to our competition.

A further measure of success for this role is the development and achievement of revenue opportunities for our Growth Solutions.

Focusing on Growth Solutions has two key benefits: By building engagement with the buyers of Growth Solutions in our largest prospects, we can achieve in-year revenue, despite not holding the client’s central market measurement contract. Furthermore, by delivering successful Growth Solutions projects, we can increase our engagement by demonstrating our enhanced understanding of their business challenges and opportunities, which in turn will increase their perception of our ability to reliably deliver against their needs for an enhanced market measurement service, which will increase our win chances.

The core outputs of the BDD role are to:

• Build a pipeline of incremental revenue opportunities from UK manufacturing clients that don’t currently have market measurement contracts with IRI, with prioritisation on the very largest UK manufacturers.
• Ownership of the largest revenue opportunities, managing the end to end sales process from initial contact through to proposals, negotiating, closing the deal and contract negotiation
• Win revenue in the current financial year by closing 2 to 3 major contracts per year
• Win revenue for Growth Solutions in our largest prospect clients
• Develop a pipeline for opportunities in the 12 to 48 months horizon

This role will be achieved by excelling across 4 leadership areas; Client leadership, People leadership, Commercial leadership, & Industry thought leadership.

Main role responsibilities:

Client Leadership:

• Engagement: to lead a broad & deep engagement across the client's organisation that adds value by bringing IRI expertise and thought leadership to all levels of their business, personally owning the senior level contacts.
• Growth Delivered; a) ensuring there is a clear value proposition in place for each prospect that clearly demonstrates the added value that working with IRI can bring, ensuring every key contact at each client is aware of all of IRI's growth solutions capabilities, and this is evidenced by IRI's involvement in briefs and RFPs that play to the strengths of our solutions;

People Leadership:

• Collaboration & connectedness; collaborating with a broad network within IRI in order to deliver the best possible proposals to meet the challenges and opportunities of our prospects
• Values; Live the IRI values.  Build on the company’s high performance commitment by creating an environment that supports innovative thinking, calculated risk-taking, and performance-based recognition-motivating team members to high performance. 

Commercial Leadership:

• Client contracts and P&Ls;  Manage a long-term win-strategy, ensuring that all necessary teams at IRI are coordinated against the plan, and the client value proposition is clear. Create compelling commercial proposals as part of this, with the support of the Commercial Director.
• Grow IRI revenue; Own the delivery of the IRI commercial revenue plan across a defined set of clients. Build account plans that will identify the required opportunities, and the necessary go-to-market plans that enable the plan to be exceeded.
• Financial Administration; Accurate and clear management of STAR and client invoicing processes to ensure seamless financial administration with the client. 
• Opportunity identification; feedback internal recommendations on opportunities that exist to add greater value to clients, into IRI’s innovation pipeline. Work with Commercial Director to create business case recommendations to bring these to life.

Industry thought leadership:

• Trusted advisor; a) demonstrate an up to date understanding of the UK retail market, the key dynamics impacting it, and the implications our clients need to be considering as a result. This knowledge is built up across the full suite of IRI capabilities, as well as other sources of industry insight; b) demonstrate a ‘next level’ understanding as to how these implications play out at category level, and which should be on your clients radar. Be able to talk about this to a c-suite audience.
• IRI strategy; Articulates the companies strategies and vision with confidence to key stakeholders
• Bringing outside in; Has a strong understanding of best practice examples from across the industry, as to how other clients are tackling key industry challenges that our clients can learn from. These examples will span each area of IRI expertise, and include the ability to talk confidently about how IRI can help clients achieve these same results, and how we compare against our competitors in being best placed to do so.
• Thought leadership; Design and deliver a regular, agreed programme for IRI thought leadership across client base, which ensures that our best big-picture thinking ends up in the hands of our contacts, from junior through to senior.

Skills and Experience Required:

• High level of strategic competency and consultative business skills as evidenced by ability to identify critical business issues and sell solutions to the level.
• Ability to identify, develop, sell and execute a cross-functional consultative sale of size and significant impact
• Ability to lead the agenda with the client, proactively matching IRI Group solutions to the client’s key issues/strategic vision.
• Demonstrated ability to lead change
• Strong influencing abilities
• Strong presentation skills and ability to “command the room”
• Ability to integrate solutions or bundle offerings in ways that ensure maximum client penetration and margin.
• Executive presence that makes a strong impression quickly
• Strong financial acumen

ABOUT IRI:

What we do:
 IRI is a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics and forward-looking insights that help FMCG, healthcare, retailers and media companies to grow their businesses. With the largest collection of purchase, media, social, causal and loyalty data, all integrated on an on-demand cloud-based technology platform, IRI guides its clients around the world in their quests to remain relevant, connect with consumers and deliver market leading growth.
 

Who we are:

As well as the technical skills, experience and attributes that are required for the role, our values sit at the core of our organisation. Therefore we always look for people who can continuously champion our values through-out the business within their day-to-day role:-

• Collaboration:
  The ability to work as a wider team and consider the business as a whole in every action
• Personal Development:
  Pro-actively seek out new ways to develop your skills and become more effective within your role
• Executional Excellence:
  Superb attention to detail with the ability to plan effectively for the future
• Client Growth:
  Natural ability to nurture client relationships and deliver sustainable business growth to clients
• Innovation:
  Consistently seek out new ways to approach every task/situation
• Creativity:
  Continuously challenge the way we do things and how we can make our offering different to our competitors

Where we are:

Our UK Head Office is based in Arlington Square, Bracknell. This is just a short drive from the M4 and a 10-15 minute walk from Bracknell Train Station.

What working for IRI can do for you:

• Long-term career development in a market-leading organisation.
• Competitive salary and impressive benefit package to match.
• Working in an international company with opportunities across the UK and globally.
• Bespoke training to suit your individual needs and development.
• Friendly working environment with regular social events planned by our internal social committee through-out the year.