Manager, Business Development

Role Purpose:

The incumbent of this role is responsible for business development by acquiring new sales with vendors not currently supplied or supplied small share by Coats. Using a structured approach to Prospecting and Digital selling to target vendors, identify opportunities and securing profitable new business is the key deliverable for this role. 

Once a business relationship has been established for a defined period of time, the incumbent is expected to handover the vendor relationship to an Account Manager to manage and grow the business over time.

Principal Accountabilities and Key Activities:

Principal Accountabilities:   

• Evaluate the market landscape to identify the potential customers to target and new business channels entering the market. Gather information on the competitive landscape to determine the priority opportunities
• Call on trading agents to gather intelligence and identify new business opportunities 
• Active customer prospecting and acquisition of profitable new business
• Analyse market trends and data to identify growth opportunities
• Build and develop personal network including LinkedIn and participate in professional organizations to build expert status to enable introductory meetings with new vendors
• Collaborate with Marketing/Technical teams to leverage digital sales opportunities to target and communicate with potential prospects.
• Collaborate in the development of and implementation of marketing & technical presentations needed for prospect sales meetings
• Build contact map to create new business opportunities and improve prospect conversion rates

People Development:

• Develop and coach the business development team in accordance with competency profiles and aligned to the Commercial Academy Training programmes
• Build capability and consistency of the team by training and developing and providing coordination to the relevant stakeholder of GA, Technical services , Customer service and O2C team. 
• Encourage and engage the Business Development team to develop a growth mindset based on proactive actions to enhance performance and improve results.
• Drive engagement, motivation and recognition within the team to build accountability to achieve their goals.
• Actively support and promote the Commercial Academy training modules with their sales team to build a consistent way of working aligned to the overall sales capability development plan.

Education, Qualifications and Experience:

(Include skills and competencies required to perform the role competently)

• A bachelor's degree or equivalent in any commercial discipline.
• Minimum 10 years’ experience in customer facing industry, preferable B2B
• Proven track record in sales, preferably in an apparel environment
• Results driven with considerable experience in negotiating and closing deals
• Outstanding communicator, able to rapidly build rapport with new vendors
• Financial and business awareness with good numerical and analytical skills
• Innovative self-starter with the ability to take ownership and set goals and priorities
• Results orientation, strategic thinker, tactical implementer, customer focussed
• Sound knowledge of products, applications and end user industry manufacturing processes
• High quality analytical written and verbal communication, negotiation, decision making, and people development skills
• Proven leadership ability and high results orientation