Business Development Advisor

Business Development Advisor

Birmingham, Cambridge, Manchester, Norwich, Leeds

The role

This is a full-time permanent role.

Mills & Reeve’s business development centres on the following core sectors: charities, education, food and agribusiness, government, health, insurance, private wealth, real estate investment, technology, life sciences, sports and the mid-market. These sectors are underpinned by national service lines: corporate & commercial, employment, family, insurance disputes, private client, projects & construction, real estate and regulatory, public & commercial disputes.

As a Business Development Adviser you will be responsible for managing BD and marketing for a number of sector and/or legal service lines. You will be responsible for the identification of BD opportunities, pipeline management and supporting on client care initiatives. A key part of the role will require you to coach and provide high quality and effective business development advice for partners and lawyers across the business. You will take ownership of all projects and initiatives, ensuring they are executed successfully whether by yourself or by other members of the marketing team.

The role reports to a Business Development Manager.

The role could be based in any of the locations stated above but will involve travel across all our offices as the role requires.

Main duties and responsibilities

Driving process for building pipeline of new business opportunities

*         Drive the development and execution of annual BD plans which identifies target organisations  for your groups and measure results

*         Supporting sales teams and managing pipelines with support from BDM where needed.

*         Co-ordinate plans and associated budgets including monitoring and reporting on expenditure

*         Undertaking market and sector research to identify target organisations and their business issues

*         Identify key memberships to help drive new leads and growth opportunities

*         Rolling-out firm-wide initiatives and projects

Deep understanding of the current client base of your sector and service lines

*         Support client relationship management, client listening and cross-selling initiatives

*         Attend legal and sector association events and conferences to build knowhow and network with clients and prospects

*         Keeping abreast of sector and service line knowledge including market trends and emerging issues via legal and trade press

In-depth understanding of multipliers and referrers of work

*         Attending events with key referrers to build and develop professional networks.

*         Maintain a record of work referred in/out and provide advice on which referrers are growing/declining in importance

Key contact for sector, service lines

*         Attend regular meetings with your group/teams

*         Ensuring awareness of all marketing/business development taking place within sector/NSL and working with marketing team colleagues to ensure delivery of aligned projects

The team

You will be working with a range of marketing and business development experts, partners, lawyers and business and executive services staff.  You will receive some support in the role from a range of business development and marketing assistants.

The person

You will be expected to demonstrate strengths in terms of:

*         A solid educational background, ideally with a relevant degree or Marketing qualification

*         A proven full mix of marketing tools

*         Proven business development and sales management experience

*         Sound working knowledge, and understanding of the business market place

*         Strong commercial acumen: understanding of our business and our clients and their requirements

*         Strong advisory and influencing skills as well as tenacity

*         Exceptional communication and networking skills to enhance the strong relationships already in place, as well as influencing decision makers

*         Ability to manage multiple projects whilst at the same time prioritising critical tasks

*         Credibility and confidence to work with and add value to our partners

The Mills & Reeve business services career structure

We have a firm wide business services career structure and a published career progression framework.  Within the firm wide career structure there are five career levels.  For the purposes of the framework, this role is at an Adviser level and the role profile that details the outcomes and activities expected across the firm is included with this job description.  Further information on the firm’s business services career structure will be made available as part of the interview process.

The package

As you would expect, the firm offers a generous salary and benefits.