Business Development Manager (French speaking) in Birmingham

Location: Fully remote (UK-based)

Salary: £52,000-£75,000 base + uncapped commission | Realistic OTE £90,000 year one, no cap

Job Type: Full time, Permanent. Monday-Friday, 07:00-16:00. No shift rotation, no weekends.

About the role:

C4 Logistics is one of Europe's leading time-critical and expedited transport providers, with an in-house customs brokerage handling declarations across UK and EU trade. We're expanding our sales team and hiring a French-speaking Business Development Manager to win new customers across the French market for both our transport and customs services. This is a pure hunter role: your job is to bring in new business. Most of the pipeline you build will be your own. We can share some leads and give you a defined Ideal Customer Profile, sector focus, and target account list to work from, but we're not handing you a warm-lead-fed desk. If you thrive on building pipeline from scratch and closing accounts you've hunted yourself, this could be your ideal next role. Once you've won an account, you hand it cleanly to our customer success team and get back to what you do best: finding, qualifying, and closing the next one.

Let's also be honest about the sale itself. Every prospect you call already has a freight or customs provider. Most salespeople accept "we're happy with our current supplier" and move on. That's not this job. Your job is to build the relationship, understand what they do, spot where their current provider is quietly letting them down, and be the person they call when the wheels come off, because eventually, they always do. This is a mature, technical, consultative sale. It rewards trust, persistence, and strategy. If that sounds like your kind of work, apply.

What you'll do:

• Own the French new-business pipeline end-to-end: prospecting, qualification, discovery, capability, negotiation, close
• Build your own pipeline in the sectors we target, the majority of your leads will come from your own hunting, prospecting, and networking
• Work the smaller number of leads we do provide, alongside your self-sourced pipeline
• Have credible, technical conversations in French with supply chain managers, freight managers, and operations directors about their current setup, pain points, and where we can add value
• Play the long game on incumbent-held accounts: stay in touch, add value, be the obvious choice when the current provider slips
• Close new accounts and hand them cleanly to customer success and operations
• Maintain a clean, honest pipeline in our CRM, pipeline hygiene is non-negotiable

What we're looking for:

• Fluent professional French, spoken and written
• 5+ years' B2B sales experience, with a real track record of winning new business against incumbents from a self-built pipeline
• An understanding of transport and/or customs is an advantage. If you've sold freight forwarding, road transport, air freight, express/expedited, or customs brokerage services before, or you've worked operationally in one of these areas and moved into sales, you'll have a head start.
• You're a genuine hunter. You enjoy the outbound work and the discipline of pipeline-building from a cold start.
• You're comfortable building a pipeline from scratch. You know how to research a market, identify prospects, get past gatekeepers, and generate meetings without waiting for marketing to hand you a lead list.
• You work autonomously. You'll have a CRM, an Ideal Customer Profile, a defined sector focus, and some leads to get you started. Everything else is yours to figure out. If you need daily direction to stay productive, this role won't suit you.
• You know how to switch-sell. You've moved incumbent business before and can talk credibly about how you do it.
• Strategic and organised, you know which prospects deserve which level of investment.
• Confident and articulate on phone, video, and in person, the majority of the sale is online, but you'll visit customers when the opportunity warrants it.
• UK-based with the right to work in the UK.

What we offer:

• £52,000-£75,000 base, depending on experience
• Uncapped commission on new business. Realistic first-year OTE £90,000, with top performers earning significantly more
• Travel expenses covered for customer visits when the opportunity warrants it
• 30 days' holiday inclusive of bank holidays, with the option to buy additional days
• Company pension
• Cycle-to-work scheme
• Free eye tests
• On-site parking at our Coventry office
• A defined route to Senior BDM or Head of Sales as you build your book

Where you'll work:

This is a fully remote role, based in the UK and working from home. We expect you to visit the Coventry office at least once a month.