Business Development Representative

Role purpose

The Business Development Representative is responsible for driving HSO’s pipeline growth, converting Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) for hand off to our Sales Organisation who will qualify and develop them into opportunities.

The role focuses on two pipeline development actions:

• Working alongside Marketing Managers and Sales Specialists, the role ensures that every campaign, event, digital engagement and prospect interaction is followed through to a clear SQL outcome.

• Proactive prospect engagement, opportunity qualification and market intelligence gathering.

 Success is measured not simply by activity levels, but by the creation of high-quality SQLs that are accepted by sales teams and progressed into opportunities..

Opportunity generation and qualification

The primary focus of the role is identifying organisations that may benefit from HSO's expertise and progressing conversations into SQLs.. Business Development Reps are expected to conduct meaningful conversations that uncover business challenges, establish buying intent and determine suitability for further sales engagement and action.

• Engage prospective customers through telephone, email and LinkedIn activity.
• Generate qualified SQLs for HSO's sales teams.
• Qualify opportunities using agreed Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline (BANT) criteria.
• Gather sufficient information to support effective sales engagement.
• Schedule and coordinate introductions between prospects and sales specialists where appropriate.

Campaign execution and marketing support

Business Development Reps operate as part of the marketing team, ensuring investment in campaigns translates into meaningful conversations and pipeline. And reducing the number of leak points. They provide direct follow-up to marketing activity and help maximise engagement across HSO's target accounts and sectors.

• Work alongside Marketing Managers to support campaign objectives.
• Drive registrations for events, webinars and marketing programmes.
• Follow up event registrants and attendees.
• Engage contacts who download HSO content and research.
• Follow up inbound enquiries and expressions of interest.
• Ensure all campaign responses receive a clear outcome and disposition.

Customer and market insight

Every conversation represents an opportunity to better understand customer priorities, challenges and buying intentions. The Business Development Manager plays an important role in gathering and sharing intelligence that helps HSO improve targeting, messaging and campaign performance.

• Capture customer challenges, priorities and business drivers.
• Identify buying signals and upcoming opportunities.
• Record competitor insight and market trends where identified.
• Share feedback that supports campaign optimisation and account planning.
• Provide regular intelligence to sales and marketing teams.

CRM and process excellence

Accurate information is critical to effective reporting, campaign measurement and sales execution. Business Development Managers are expected to maintain complete and timely records of all activities and outcomes within OneCRM.

• Maintain accurate account, contact, lead and activity records.
• Record all engagement outcomes promptly.
• Update opportunity qualification information.
• Support closed-loop reporting between marketing and sales.
• Adhere to agreed data quality standards and processes.

Key performance indicators

Performance is measured through a balanced scorecard that considers activity levels, SQL quality, sales acceptance and contribution to pipeline growth. The emphasis is on generating SQLs that can progress through the HSO sales process rather than simply achieving activity targets.

• Average 70 successful conversations per day across the month (pro-rated to contracted hours).
• Convert 30%+ of engaged organisations into Sales Accepted Qualified Opportunities.
• Convert 65%+ to SQLs that have progressed to  Sales Accepted Opportunities.
• Maintain 80%+ sales acceptance rate of generated SQLs.
• CRM data accuracy and compliance.
• Capture at least 10 validated buying signals, projects or intelligence items per month that support future pipeline generation.