Business Development Director - Enterprise

About Us: native is a fast-growing, innovative, and dynamic company dedicated to bringing extensive content and experiences to the student marketplace. We focus on revolutionising and supercharging the university experience for students by bringing world-class brands to their campus. Our student advertising platform unifies the advertising opportunity, making it easy for advertisers like Deliveroo, Samsung, and Lloyds to connect with student consumers across the UK. With our unique blend of local, regional, and national advertising clients, we combine the scale of a national footprint with the opportunity to reach specially selected student populations. Our tailored advertising propositions enable brands to make major impacts, drive their success metrics, and secure short-term goals along with long-term customer acquisition. The market opportunity is huge; native is the market leader in on-campus advertising, and in managing this we are looking to expand our business development and sales capability.

Role overview: The Business Development Director (BDD) is responsible for architecting, pitching and closing new business opportunities for native amongst the UK’s top advertisers, matching enterprise customer needs with native’s commercial proposition across fairs, media, insights, data, sponsorship and beyond. The successful candidate will have a proven track record in sales in a key account and enterprise environment and will have built strong relationships with large UK advertisers to the marketing director level in previous roles.

• Business Development: Identify, target, and engage with significant and recognised brands to architect, present and sell large deals while building long-lasting partnerships.
• Client Relationship Management: Lead the relationship-building process with senior stakeholders, ensuring a deep understanding of client needs and delivering exceptional service.
• Strategic Planning: Develop and implement strategic plans to secure new business, focusing on brands that resonate with Gen Z and student audiences.
• Sales Leadership: Drive the entire sales cycle from initial contact to agreement closure, including proposal development, negotiation, and contract management.
• Market Analysis: Conduct thorough market research to identify trends, opportunities, and competitive landscape relevant to Gen Z and student-based advertising.
• Visioning and Storytelling: Create and present compelling narratives that showcase our unique value proposition and vision, effectively communicating our story.
• Collaboration: Work closely with internal teams (most notably account management and delivery functions) to ensure seamless execution of advertising campaigns, aligning client objectives with our creative and operational capabilities.
• Performance Tracking: Monitor and report on sales performance, providing insights and recommendations for continuous improvement.

What you will have:

• Experience: Minimum of 5-7 years of experience in key account or enterprise sales, selling to, securing and managing high-profile brand clients at the Marketing Director level.
• Communication Skills: Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to influence and negotiate at senior levels.
• Strategic Thinker: Strong strategic planning and analytical skills, with the ability to translate insights into actionable business plans and highly compelling creative proposals.
• Storytelling: Demonstrated ability to create and deliver compelling narratives that resonate with clients and stakeholders.
• Results-oriented: Proven ability to meet and exceed sales targets and drive business growth.
• Strong organisational and time management skills: with the ability to work in a fast-paced scale-up commercial environment.
• CRM: Proficiency in using CRM and sales software.
• Education: Bachelors degree in Marketing, Business Administration, Communications or related field. MBA or equivalent is a plus.

Additional skills and experience advantageous:

• Media and Events: Strong understanding of the media landscape, advertising & events industry and Gen Z audiences.
• Sales Management Experience: especially mentorship of SDRs assigned to generate pipeline.
• Industry Knowledge: In-depth understanding of Gen Z and student-based markets, with the ability to connect brands to these audiences effectively.

What’s in it for you:

• Strong Base Salary & OTE of up to 100% and uncapped.
• Pension contributions of 5%.
• 25 days holiday + bank holidays + your birthday.
• Share Options for all.
• A Mac or Windows laptop.
• Dog friendly office.
• Health and Wellbeing budget.
• Wednesday free office lunches.
• Season Ticket Loan scheme.
• Paid maternity, paternity, adoption or shared parental leave.