Business Development Executive

Most salespeople wait years before they get anywhere near a chief executive. This role puts you in front of them now, one job into your career.

You'd own a set of prospects across our client's CEO, CFO and CPO communities and take them through the full sales process, from first contact to close. But the part that makes this role unusual is what happens around the selling. The business runs in-person events for PE-backed leaders, and those events are where the real relationships get built. You'll be in the room with people who run some of the most demanding businesses in the country, having proper conversations rather than working off a script.

A network like that is rare to build this early. The CEOs and CFOs you get to know now are the ones who'll remember you in five or ten years, and for a sales career that's worth more than almost anything on a comp plan. You'll learn a lot simply by being around them too: how they think, what keeps them up at night, how deals actually work inside private equity.

And because the company is still growing fast, what you do here genuinely lands. You won't be a cog in a machine that runs without you. The events you fill and the relationships you build will help decide where the business goes next.

About our client

PE-backed CEOs and their teams face a strange double job. They have to run a business and lead an investment at the same time, usually for the first time, and almost always without a playbook. That's the problem our client exists to fix. They're the UK's only peer-to-peer learning provider built specifically for PE-backed leaders. Members get access to a community of 150+ Honorary Members (seasoned PE leaders who've been round the deal cycle several times) plus structured two- and four-day programmes for themselves and their teams. Nobody else does quite what they do in this market.

What you\'ll do

You'll own a defined set of prospects and run the full sales process for them: discovery calls, trial event invites, pre-event briefings, and the closing conversation. Marketing-qualified leads get allocated across the team, and you'll pick yours up and move them through.

Filling events is central to the job. Each in-person event needs 3–5 of your prospects in the room, which means managing a pool of warm and cold contacts carefully so the right people turn up. When they do, you're there in person, making sure their first experience of the company is a good one and using those conversations to move things forward. Over time you'll become a credible voice at events yourself, not just someone working the room.

LinkedIn is your main outreach channel. You'll use Sales Navigator to spot PE-backed CEOs, CFOs and CPOs at the moments that matter, like new appointments and leadership moves, and reach out while it's relevant. Alongside that you'll design segmented campaigns: work out who your prospect groups are, write messaging that actually fits each one, and run the outreach that turns cold contacts into qualified ones.

The job doesn't stop at the sale. You'll stay close as new members are handed to the Membership Manager, sit in on onboarding calls, and look for cross-sell opportunities across the portfolio (CEO, CFO and CPO Membership, CEO Accelerate, CFO Accelerate, the Excellence Programme). Keeping the CRM clean and current is part of it too, so the rest of the business can make good calls off good data

What we're looking for

Someone ambitious and precise who likes building relationships with senior people, doesn't need handholding, and doesn't let things slip.

• 1–2 years of B2B sales experience, ideally somewhere consultative or relationship-led
• Clear, confident written and verbal communication.
• Comfortable running outreach campaigns and a live pipeline at the same time
• Tenacious and detail-minded. You follow through on what you start
• Able to juggle several prospects and priorities without dropping any of them.
• You treat LinkedIn as a sales tool, not just a profile
• Genuinely keen to build a network in the UK PE community

Nice to have, but we won’t rule you out without them:

• Some experience selling to C-suite or senior leaders
• A working sense of private equity: deal cycles, portfolio structures, management incentive plans
• HubSpot or a similar CRM
• A real interest in personal development, your own and that of the leaders you'll work with

What\'s on offer and how we measure it.

This is a metric-driven role. You'll be measured on events filled, pipeline generated and members converted. Pay is a competitive base plus performance-related commission, and is tied directly to the revenue you bring in. Get it right and there's fast learning and quick progression behind it. If the idea of building a senior PE network this early in your career appeals, we'd like to hear from you.