Careers

Business Development Consultant

Are you ready to work for the leader in the facilitation industry?

General Description

Leadership Strategies – The Facilitation Company is seeking a Business Development Consultant (BDC) with proven skills to join our growing Sales team.

We are the nation’s leader in providing professional facilitators and facilitation skills training to corporate, government and non-profit organizations.  Our facilitators lead executive retreats, strategy sessions, focus groups, conferences and other group sessions.  Through our flagship training course, The Effective Facilitator, we have trained more people in facilitation skills than any other organization in the US. We also provide training classes in consulting skills, presentation skills, leadership and other areas.

The overall goal of the BDC function is selling registrations for our public (open enrollment) classes. Additionally, you will be asked to uncover private (onsite) class, and meeting facilitation services needs and work with one of our Client Executives on these potential opportunities.  The successful candidate will report to the Vice President of Sales and will work closely with the entire Sales Team to drive revenue for our Public Class workshops.

The successful candidate for our Business Development Consultant position will have a proven history of displaying certain clearly defined core competencies.

  1. Collaboration. As the leading facilitation company in the nation, we are highly collaborative in our decision-making, believe strongly that great ideas can come from anywhere in the company, and therefore place a premium on giving opportunities for input. If you enjoy making decisions on your own, and find it bothersome to hear the input of others, you will not find a comfortable home here.
  2. Coachable learner. No one is perfect. We find that people are better when they recognize the areas in which they need to improve. If you can’t identify one or two areas you are working on improving right now, or if you are afraid to admit mistakes you’ve made in the past and what you learned from them, or if you can’t name any changes you have made based on feedback you have received, we are not the right environment for you.
  3. Drive for Achievement and Growth. Our Sales Development Representative will have an exceptional level of motivation, energy and drive. We are a small but growing organization and we’re focused on extremely high levels of achievement. We have a high performance sales culture and we need every member of our team focused on their own personal and professional success as well as the success of the team. We are the right place for team members who enjoy working hard, accomplishing big things, collaborating and gaining insights from others, and developing their skills.

Responsibilities

We are looking for a talented, motivated individual to follow up on leads for Public Class workshops. You will also proactively reach out to individuals who register for or attend our monthly webinars but who are not active leads with the goal of creating interest and closing additional Public Class opportunities  This is an inside sales position with 50% or more of your day spent interacting with clients and potential clients over the phone.

A key component to success will be the ability to conduct business dealings in a way that creates a superior prospect experience that will set the stage for effective sales follow-up, as well as future product sales. This role requires a high level of creativity, attention to detail, and communication skills. Those who are successful in this position have the opportunity over time to be considered for one of our other sales team roles

Responsibilities include:

  • Working to ensure that each public class scheduled is filled and includes, at a minimum, the number of participants to avoid cancellation.
  • Follow up on all leads provided in a timely fashion (typically 24-48 hours).
  • Follow up with public class attendees from the prior month within one week of the class to seek referrals and other opportunities.
  • Prospect and provide follow-up to targeted lists.
  • Manage and nurture a pipeline of potential Public Class attendees to maximize sales results.
  • Average at least 50 telephone sales call per day.
  • Successfully manage and overcome prospect objections.
  • Proactively reach out to Webinar registrants and participants who are not active leads and create and close Public Class Seat opportunities.
  • Identify possible Private Class or Meeting Facilitation opportunities that arise out of Public Class sales conversations.
  • Perform any administrative activities to support the sales team, including timely updating of engagement summaries and tracking all activities in the CRM system.
  • Identify opportunities for and strategize approaches to successfully attain greater reach.
  • Attend trade shows, increase skills through training, moderate webinars, attend association meetings of facilitators and other outside activities as your manager deems beneficial.
  • Meet and exceed sales and business development goals as established by management.
  • Report to the Vice President of Sales on (weekly/monthly/quarterly) results.

Requirements:

  • Education: B.A. or B.S. in Marketing, Business Administration or equivalent experience.
  • Experience: Mandatory minimum 1-3 direct sales experience.
  • Experience: Mandatory at least one year in a position requiring heavy prospecting activity.
  • Desirable:
    • At least one year selling in a service industry
    • At least one year experience utilizing customer centric selling, solution selling, or some other structured consultative sales methodology
    • At least one year selling training or consulting services
    • At least one year in a small business with less than $10 million in revenue
    • Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook experience.
    • Experience with Microsoft Dynamics CRM a plus.

Skills and Characteristics:

  • Excellent oral, written, and communication skills.
  • Strong attention to detail. Ability to achieve thoroughness and accuracy when accomplishing a task.
  • Ability to enthusiastically engage people in conversation by asking questions to identify their goals and needs.
  • Be positively persistent. You will be fortunate to close 1 out of 20 leads.  If rejection is a problem for you, this is not the place.
  • Ability to manage multiple competing tasks.
  • Highly motivated self-starter.
  • Comfortable with high (50-60) outbound call volume
  • Excellent problem solving skills.
  • The highest level of integrity.
  • Strong customer, entrepreneurial, quality, and results orientation.
  • Strong planning and organizational skills.
  • Thoroughness and attention to detail in follow up.
  • Ability to collaborate and work well within a team.
  • Strong interpersonal skills.

To apply send your resume AND a cover letter to personnel@leadstrat.com that responds to the below items. Applications without a cover letter will not be accepted.

  1. Proactive Pipeline Creation – Tell us about a time you proactively grew your pipeline and what specific steps you took to accomplish this.
  1. Engaging Clients – We would like to get an idea of your ability to engage prospects over the phone. Choose a product that you have sold in the past, and give us the 2 – 5 sentences you would use if you were contacting a prospect for the first time about that product.
  1. Coachable learner – Tell us about a change you have made in the past two years in the way you sell, based on feedback you have received.
  1. Experience – Describe your experience in those areas sited in the “Experience Mandatory” section above. Also describe your experience for any of the “Desirable” areas you meet.  Use bullet points and give dates, quota performance, etc.

We recognize that we are asking you for a lot of information. However, by answering the questions in your narrative letter, you will demonstrate that you understand our needs and are a good fit for this position.