Business Development Manager, Freight Forwarding in London

A freight forwarding business within an established, privately owned and profitable logistics group that has traded for well over a century. The group operates accredited warehousing, storage and United Kingdom distribution alongside the freight business. There is real customs expertise, competitive rates and strong carrier relationships in place.

The group came from road freight and haulage, and it shows. A container can travel twelve thousand miles and lose money in the final fifty, and this business understands that better than most forwarders because that final leg is where it started. On time delivery is measured and reviewed every week, and where something runs late the cause is investigated and designed out rather than excused. Behind the freight sits accredited warehousing and United Kingdom distribution within the same group, so you can sell a genuine end to end solution rather than a rate.

This is an individual contributor role first, and it should be understood that way. You will find, approach and win new forwarding customers, and you will own what you bring. Activity and conversion are the measures, and there will be no ambiguity about that. You will build and work a structured target list of importers and freight decision makers across the region. You will map decision makers within those businesses and work more than one route in, rather than relying on a single relationship. You will grow and retain the accounts you bring on, and you will keep your pipeline and activity properly recorded so that progress is visible. As the branch grows, so does your remit. You will take on coaching and leadership responsibility as performance and branch size justify it, with a genuine route into leading the branch.

You are a business developer working in freight forwarding today with a recent and demonstrable record of winning new business. You have a book of business or a strong network you could work from day one, and you know the importers and freight decision makers across the North West. You understand ocean and road freight, with a working knowledge of customs sufficient to hold a credible conversation with an importer. You have a structured approach to prospecting that you can describe, rather than a list of people you happen to know, and you can talk through how you have found and converted business that was not simply handed to you. Above all you are hungry, and you have the resilience to build from a low base.

Be ready to talk in detail about what you have won recently: how you found it, how long it took, what obstacles you worked around, and what those accounts are worth now. We are more interested in the method and the consistency than in a single large win. Evidence that you have grown accounts as well as opened them matters too, because that is where forwarding margin is protected.

This is a business that decides quickly and expects people to get on with things. The owner is accessible and involved, and the culture is built on service, straight dealing and doing what was promised. You will operate with limited day to day supervision and will need to be genuinely self directed. You will also need the ambition to lead and the willingness to earn it. The route into branch leadership is real, but it is earned through performance rather than granted after a period of time.

The reward is £50,000 to £65,000 base depending on experience and on what you bring, plus a quarterly bonus of fifteen per cent of branch EBIT. Alongside that sits an uncapped long term incentive of a further ten per cent of branch EBIT, accumulated and payable as a lump sum after ten years, with a review point at five years. The base is not the point. The point is that what you build, you keep being paid for, for years. Car or car allowance, private health insurance and pension sit alongside.

The appointment can be based at the group headquarters near Cambridge, or in the North West. Whichever suits the right person. If you have built a following across the East of England, the Home Counties or the South East, working the gateways at Heathrow, Stansted, Luton, Birmingham or East Midlands, the rail freight terminal at Daventry, or the ports at Felixstowe, London Gateway and Tilbury, that experience is directly relevant here. It is office and field based rather than hybrid. Progress and performance are reviewed formally at six and twelve months, which is also how the route into wider responsibility is assessed.