At a Glance
- Tasks: Drive revenue growth by building partnerships with brands and agencies using audience insights.
- Company: Join The Female Lead, a dynamic media platform focused on female empowerment.
- Benefits: Enjoy 25 days holiday, early finishes, and a competitive salary with commission.
- Other info: Work in a collaborative team with opportunities for personal and professional growth.
- Why this job: Make a real impact by connecting brands with women's voices and behaviours.
- Qualifications: Experience in data-driven sales and a passion for culture and insights.
The predicted salary is between 45000 - 50000 £ per year.
As our Business Development Manager, you will be the engine of revenue growth for our business. Your mission is to build a robust pipeline of new business opportunities by putting The Female Lead's proprietary audience insights, custom surveys, and cultural research front-of-mind for brands and media agencies alike. This is a high-impact, consultative sales role for an intelligent, curious, and well-connected professional who loves data and culture. You have likely cut your teeth at a culturally relevant publisher, research agency, or media brand (think Stylist, LAD Bible, or similar) where you learned how to use deep audience data to solve brand problems.
You possess the strategic gravitas to sell custom research to insight and strategy leads, and the commercial acumen to upsell the media and creative packages that bring those insights to life. You thrive in an entrepreneurial environment. While you will be an individual contributor driving your own pipeline, you are a team player who works seamlessly with our creative, research, editorial, and community team members. Full-time position based in W. London. Hybrid working (2 days in the office).
What You’re Here to Do
Marketers often struggle to connect authentically with women without falling back on stereotypes. The Female Lead bridges this gap by offering deep audience insights, custom research, and high-impact creative campaigns and media packages. Your job is to build a high-quality, consistent pipeline of brand and agency partnerships. You will position The Female Lead not just as a standard media buy, but as a strategic insight, culture, and community partner that helps brands truly resonate with women.
Key Responsibilities
- Agency & Brand Outreach: Leverage and expand your relationships across UK holding groups, independent agencies, and direct brands to drive revenue across our research, insights, and media portfolio. Build a consistent, healthy pipeline of new business opportunities by autonomously prospecting and pitching to media planners, social leads, partnership teams, and brand insights & marketing teams to ensure The Female Lead’s research is utilised at the very start of the planning cycle. Target progressive brands directly, demonstrating how our custom survey capabilities and audience data transform their engagement with female-first audiences.
- Culture & Insight Selling: Confidently pitch and sell our primary research suite, including custom surveys, audience insights, and cultural data reports. Seamlessly package our secondary media offerings - including social amplification, creative content, events, and community experiences - as the activation layer for those insights. Translate client briefs into compelling commercial proposals by working with internal teams to package up our audience insights into actionable insights. Pitch the unique benefits of running custom surveys through our massive, engaged community to help brands uncover proprietary data on women’s behaviours and preferences.
- Pipeline & Relationship Management: Manage the full sales cycle from initial outreach and pitch creation to closing the deal and handing over to execution teams. Keep an accurate pulse on market trends, ensuring our commercial offerings remain competitive and highly relevant to current brand budgets. Secure long-term, repeatable partnerships by delivering exceptional client service during the sales process.
What You Need to Know
Required Skills & Experience: A proven track record of selling data, audience research, SaaS insights, or strategic media solutions into London's media agency networks and direct brands. Prior experience working within a fast-paced publisher, research company, or media owner (e.g., Stylist, LAD Bible, or similar) with a focus on data-led pitching. Proven ability to manage consultative sales cycles, moving clients from tactical research projects to long-term, enterprise-level insight partnerships. Complete comfort with the concepts of quantitative/qualitative data, consumer behaviour, surveys, and research methodologies. The drive to build a pipeline autonomously, combined with a collaborative, team-first mindset.
Nice-to-Have Skills: Existing deep relationships with lifestyle, FMCG, health, or finance brands that heavily invest in understanding female consumer behaviour. Experience working on events or community-led commercial partnerships.
Benefits:
- Holiday: 25 days annual leave
- Work-Life Balance: Early Friday finishes (4 pm)
- Hybrid Working: 2-3 days in our West London office or client site
- Financial: Competitive base salary + commission structure
About The Female Lead: The Female Lead is a high-profile, data-driven media platform and community dedicated to female empowerment and gender equality. We give brands a unique advantage: unparalleled access to women's voices, behaviours, and hidden motivations. TANDEM is the commercial brand consultancy of The Female Lead. Fearlessly female-focused and driven by the highest quality data, we provide a range of insight, media and marketing services that help organisations better understand, reach and engage women. In a crowded media landscape, we stand out by combining creative storytelling of lived experience with deep audience insights from quantitative and qualitative research. We don't just reach women; we understand them, engaging millions daily through powerful social content, custom surveys, and impactful community experiences. We are an independent challenger business, quickly scaling our commercial partnerships across major media agencies and brands directly. As Business Development Manager, you will represent the full TANDEM proposition selling insight-led partnerships that begin with research and audience intelligence, then grow into creative activation, media, content and events. You'll help organisations unlock the commercial potential of the female economy through data, strategy and storytelling that drives measurable business impact. We are an expert, growing team working with top brands and great agencies/media companies. We are based in West London, working together to shape how the world listens to women.
Business Development Manager employer: The Female Lead
The Female Lead is an exceptional employer, offering a dynamic and entrepreneurial work environment in West London that fosters creativity and collaboration. With a strong focus on employee growth, we provide opportunities for professional development through meaningful projects that drive real impact in the media landscape. Our commitment to work-life balance, including early Friday finishes and hybrid working options, ensures that our team thrives both personally and professionally while championing female empowerment and gender equality.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Business Development Manager
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✨Join Local Business Intelligence Meetups
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We think you need these skills to ace Business Development Manager
Some tips for your application 🫡
Highlight Your Analytical Skills:In the business intelligence field, showcasing your analytical skills is a must. Make sure your CV includes relevant experience with data analysis tools, programming languages like SQL or Python, and any projects where you've interpreted complex data sets to drive business decisions.
Showcase Your Business Acumen:Don't just focus on data; show us how you can apply your insights to real-world business problems. Highlight projects where you made a tangible impact on company performance, and be prepared to explain your thought process in your cover letter.
Tailor Your Documents for Us:When applying for a full-time role at The Female Lead, tailor your CV and cover letter to reflect our organisational goals and strategies. Mention specific tools and methodologies that align with what we do—this shows you’ve done your homework and are genuinely interested in our mission!
Include Relevant Certifications:Certifications like Google Data Analytics or similar qualifications can really make you stand out in business intelligence. Include these in your application, as they demonstrate your commitment to the field and your willingness to stay current with industry standards.
How to prepare for a job interview at The Female Lead
✨Show off your analytical skills
In a business intelligence role, you're going to need to demonstrate your analytical prowess. Be prepared to discuss specific tools you've used, like SQL, Tableau, or Power BI. Have real-world examples ready where you’ve turned data into actionable insights – this is what makes us shine in interviews!
✨Practice your technical know-how
Expect some technical questions during the interview that dive deep into your understanding of data modelling and analytics frameworks. Brush up on your knowledge of data warehousing concepts and be ready to tackle any real case scenarios they might present. They’ll want to see how you approach problems using your BI toolkit.
✨Portfolio of Projects
Since it's a full-time role, having a strong portfolio is key! Compile case studies demonstrating your previous projects, preferably showing how your insights led to business improvements. This can help us display how you think through complex datasets and your problem-solving process, which is what employers are keen on seeing.
✨Know their business model
Get familiar with The Female Lead’s business model and recent data-driven decisions. Be prepared to discuss how your skills can specifically support their objectives or challenges. Understanding their landscape shows that you’re not just a data buff, but you’re also genuinely interested in how BI can impact their bottom line.
