Head of New Business

We’re BDO, an accountancy and business advisory firm, providing the advice and solutions entrepreneurial organisations need to navigate today’s changing world. We work with the companies that are Britain’s economic engine – ambitious, entrepreneurially‑spirited and high growth businesses that fuel the economy - and directly advise the owners and management teams that lead them.

Our Sales and Marketing team is being reshaped to directly support BDO’s growth ambitions. We’re building a high‑performing function that is proud of its technical skills, reliable in delivery, and outcome‑led in how we prioritise and execute. You’ll join a team big enough to offer diverse roles and opportunities, yet personal enough to ensure you’re supported and empowered from day one.

Here, we think beyond activity. You’ll bring ideas, fresh thinking and help shape how we deliver campaigns, insights and engagement across the business. Working closely with internal clients, you’ll deepen your understanding of our sectors and add value in your role. From strategic storytelling to capability building and smarter ways of working, you’ll grow your skills while working with people who care about doing the right thing and doing it well.

Leading organisations trust us because of the quality of our advice. That quality grows from a thorough understanding of their business, and that understanding comes from working closely with them and building long‑lasting relationships. You’ll be someone who is both comfortable working pro‑actively and managing your own tasks, as well as confident collaborating with others and communicating regularly with senior managers, directors, and BDO’s partners to help businesses effectively.

You’ll be encouraged to identify and draw attention to opportunities for enhancing our delivery and providing additional services to organisations we work with.

Role Purpose: The Head of New Business leads the New Business sub‑capability, accountable for increasing new client acquisition by building a professional, repeatable approach to identifying, targeting and converting new organisations and individuals within our “sweet spot”. The role ensures new business activity is aligned to growth and market priorities, including the firm’s target and Priority Client programmes, and supports the early stages of our sales methodology through disciplined targeting, connection and qualification activity.

This is a Wider Leadership role responsible for methodology, service standards, performance management and skills development. The Head of New Business leads a team that generates qualified meetings through proactive origination and progresses sales‑qualified leads (SQLs) generated by marketing campaigns—ensuring disciplined follow‑up, clear handoffs and accurate campaign attribution.

The role partners closely with GTM, Markets Activation, Marketing and Operations/Insights to ensure activity is insight‑led, buyer‑led and solution‑oriented, and that learning loops continuously improve propositions, messaging and performance. A key expectation is building the firm’s capability by upskilling fee earners and supporting adoption of consistent selling habits aligned to our sales methodology.

Key responsibilities:

• Own and continuously improve the New Business methodology covering: targeting, outreach, qualification, SQL follow‑up, progression, handoff and feedback loops, aligned to our sales methodology.
• Maintain a clear “how to engage” service guide: inputs, outputs, timelines, definitions of done and quality standards.
• Establish briefing standards for requests into New Business (what good looks like, minimum information, priority rules).
• Run practical learning loops (what’s working/what isn’t/what we’ll change) to improve standards, scripts and tools.
• Partner with GTM and Sales leadership to define target priorities and focus areas aligned to growth and market priorities and firm programmes (Target and Priority Client).
• Ensure targeting is grounded in buyer needs and issue‑led opportunities, not just firm structure.
• Lead delivery of proactive origination and meeting generation with clear standards and measurable outcomes.
• Define and govern how the team receives, qualifies and progresses sales‑qualified leads (SQLs) from marketing campaigns, ensuring speed‑to‑lead, follow‑up quality and clear next steps.
• Partner with Markets Activation and Content to ensure propositions and proof points are buyer‑led, issue‑based and solution‑oriented.
• Work with Campaigns and Digital to align targeting, nurture and lead handoff processes, including definitions and feedback loops.
• Ensure insight from outreach and SQL progression feeds back into proposition refinement and GTM/campaign planning.
• Establish clean handoffs into Partners/Account teams with minimum packs and acceptance criteria (what has happened, what matters, what is next).
• Ensure accurate campaign attribution and source discipline in CRM so marketing contribution is visible and trusted.
• Partner with Operations/CRM and Digital to operationalise new business activity through tools and automation (e.g., consistent logging, follow‑up discipline, templates, workflow and reporting), improving consistency and reducing manual rework.
• Build awareness and adoption of available tools for fee earners (playbooks, quick guides, short enablement sessions), ensuring teams know what is available and how to use it well.
• Define and track KPIs for New Business performance (origination activity, SQL follow‑up timeliness, qualification quality, meeting conversion, progression signals and outcomes).
• Lead and develop the New Business team: recruitment input, onboarding, coaching, performance management and progression.

You’ll be someone with:

• Significant experience in new business sales/origination in complex B2B environments (professional services preferred).
• Proven ability to build repeatable approaches and improve conversion through disciplined execution and coaching.
• Strong buyer‑led, issue‑based and solution selling capability and confidence embedding sales methodology adoption.
• Strong performance mindset: comfortable defining measures, using insight and driving interventions.
• Strong stakeholder influence skills; able to contract priorities and manage trade‑offs.
• Proven people leadership and capability‑building experience.
• Experience operationalising activity through tools/automation and building adoption across stakeholders is beneficial.

At BDO, we’ll help you achieve your personal goals and career ambitions, and we have programmes, resources, and frameworks that provide clarity and structure around career development. Mutual support and respect is one of BDO’s core values and we’re proud of our distinctive, people‑centred culture. From informal success conversations to formal mentoring and coaching, we’ll support you at every stage in your career, whatever your personal and professional needs.

Our agile working framework helps us stay connected, bringing teams together where and when it counts so they can share ideas and help one another. At BDO, you’ll always have access to the people and resources you need to do your best work. We know that collaboration is the key to creating value for the companies we work with and satisfying experiences for our colleagues, so we’ve invested in state‑of‑the‑art collaboration spaces in our offices.

BDO’s people represent a wealth of knowledge and expertise, and we’ll encourage you to build your network, work alongside others, and share your skills and experiences. With a range of multidisciplinary events and dedicated resources, you’ll never stop learning at BDO.

At BDO, we help entrepreneurial businesses to succeed, fuelling the UK economy. Our success is powered by our people, which is why we’re always finding new ways to invest in you. Across the UK thousands of unique minds continue to come together to help companies we work with to achieve their ambitions. We’ve got a clear purpose, and we’re confident in our future, because we’re adapting and evolving to build on our strengths, ensuring we continue to find the right combination of global reach, integrity and expertise. We shape the future together with openness and clarity, because we believe in empowering people to think creatively about how we can do things better.