Business Development Manager

Collinson Group is a global leader in driving loyalty and engagement for many of the world’s largest companies. Predominantly through the provision of travel related benefits within a market leading digital travel ecosystem.

The group offers a unique blend of industry and sector specialists who together provide market-leading experience in delivering products and services across four core capabilities: Loyalty, Lifestyle Benefits and Insurance.

The group provides unrivalled insight and expertise around affluent consumers and frequent travellers, creating and delivering products and services now accessible to over 400m end consumers.

We have more than 25 years’ experience, with 28 global locations, servicing over 800 clients in 170 countries, employing 1,800 people.

We have been bringing innovation to the market since inception – from launching the first independent global VIP lounge access Programme, Priority Pass to being the first to sell direct travel insurance in the UK through Columbus Direct and creating the first loyalty agency of its kind in the travel sector with ICLP. Today we still invest heavily in innovation to ensure that we continue to deliver superior customer experiences.

Key clients include: Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, LATAM, Flying Blue, Accor, EasyJet, HSBC, Chase, HDFC.Our mission is focused on doing good beyond profit, which for us means we seek out opportunities for our people to share in our success and that we give back to the communities and people within which we work.

Never short of ambition, the success of our business is delivered through the diverse and talented team of over 1,800 colleagues globally.

What Does a Business Development Manager DoCollinson offers a comprehensive suite of loyalty technology and commerce solutions, combined with Loyalty marketing and CRM services, all with customer data at the heart. We help our clients give their customers compelling reasons to engage, spend more and become loyal advocates, and we have done so for 30 years.

The Business Development Manager will lead our efforts in selling Collinson’s products and services to Financial Services clients under the leadership of the Business Development Director. Together, they will focus on prospects, including banks, credit unions, credit card issuers, general insurers, payment networks and other FS organizations with large customer, cardholder, or membership bases.

The position will leverage Collinson’s global experience serving leading travel brands to develop opportunities with new prospects, as well as cross-selling products and services to existing Collinson clients.

The Business Development Manager will support the evolving, robust pipeline of qualified opportunities/leads across the sub-region to nurture as direct clients, to secure new deals that generate incremental revenue from clients & prospects primarily operating within the travel & tourism sector.

Internally, this will involve close collaboration with the cross-functional teams including loyalty, product and delivery, regional marketing, and account management teams.

Overview Responsible for creating and managing a robust pipeline of new client business with suitable urgency and rigour around prospecting process. While working in a matrix environment, define an effective Go To Market strategy and associated forecast for the travel sector in full alignment with the leadership team.

Support the realization of new revenue through pipeline management, RFP/pitch success and large projects sold within 12 months. Raise profile, awareness, and clarity of Collinson’s Loyalty proposition in the market, while also representing other Collinson group solutions.

What You'll Do

• Support Collinson’s sub-regional Business Development activities across Loyalty products and services through a consultative approach within the financial sector: Help develop sales plan, identifying key prospects; identify and target key decision makers and influencers across all prospect organizations.
• Identify key sales cycles for major contracts/opportunities from RFPs within the financial sector.
• Map and understand the competitor set – which is now diverse and fragmented (loyalty tech providers boutique data shops, to traditional Loyalty providers like Merkel and AIMIA, as well as CRM agencies). Help develop effective and maintain constructive contact strategies with clients and prospects.
• Champion the cross-selling of Collinson Loyalty products and services to existing clients in collaboration with regional account management teams.
• Represent Collinson at key industry and corporate events to develop the brand profile and sales pipeline.
• Collaborate with key internal stakeholders throughout the new business process: Liaise with Loyalty consulting and/or pre-sales subject-matter experts to develop effective win strategies to match client/prospect needs and challenges with relevant Collinson products and services.
• Facilitate two-way interaction with research and marketing, sharing data on sector developments, news, prospect/competitor insight and activities.
• Liaise with regional account teams to introduce Loyalty products and services to existing clients in a strategic and coordinated manner.
• Assist in managing responses to RFIs/RFPs including, ensuring the right casting and materials: Work in tandem with the consulting and pre-sales team to ensure a smooth transition from sales into product demonstration, commercial negotiation, and sales closure.
• Liaise with the relevant Proposition owners, financial analyst(s), brand/marketing, and IT, to develop RFP responses and commercial proposals.
• Co-ordinate and deliver all content to deadlines ensuring quality of execution.
• Ensure thorough evaluation of commercial models to deliver optimal profitability balanced with all forecasted sales and program costs.
• Effective And Timely Reporting Standards And CRM Utilization Adherence to Group new business processes (NBP), pipeline reporting requirements.
• Fulfilment of all regular and ad-hoc reporting in line with requirements set by line-manager (and members of the leadership team from time to time). Timely updates of all prospecting information including all new/revised client/prospect contact status updates, meeting minutes, actions, win strategies and NBP stages into Salesforce. Provision of clear sales performance against targets/objectives set and initiatives in place.

What You'll Need

Proven consultative selling and negotiation skills, up to and including C-Level. Understanding of the competitive landscape. Understand areas that competitors do not currently serve but there is customer and market demand. Ability to identify and propose win-win business terms for both Clients and Collinson.

Ability to positively build relationships and influence internal constituents to efficiently execute and close sales. Experience negotiating legal agreements and working with inside council to ensure needs of both the client and Collinson are met via the contracting process. Ability to formulate and articulate the internal pro-forma process to ensure deal financial hurdles are met.

Agility to generate cold leads and develop warm leads credibly at all levels. Understanding of the loyalty and benefits products in the travel sector, and the key players that focus on loyalty, rewards, and member benefits. Experience of selling consumer benefits, software as a service and/or marketing services would be distinctly advantageous.

Ability to lead by example; act decisively, able to manage challenging deadlines and requests effectively. Use of own initiative, self-motivated, ability to hit the ground running. Ability to recognize opportunities where other regional Collinson markets may benefit from introductions and/or multi market opportunities. Ability to travel as needed (estimated 25-50%).

Collinson is an equal opportunity employer and welcomes differences in all their forms including: color, race, ethnicity, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, family status, age, individuals with disabilities and people from all backgrounds, cultures and experiences as we strongly believe this contributes to our on-going success.

We are focused on continually evolving our purpose driven, high performing culture, providing an environment where our people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential and do interesting and meaningful work. Our company values are: Act smarter, Do the right thing, One team and Be insight led.

These help guide everything we do internally in terms of how we think, act and interact, right through to how we deliver value to our customers and clients.

In your application, please feel free to note which pronouns you use (For example - she/her/hers, he/him/his, they/them/theirs, etc).

If you need any extra support throughout the interview process, then please email us at ushr@collinsongroup.comWe use our expertise and products to craft customer experiences. Our range of services helps global brand acquire, engage and retain choice-rich customers.© 2023 Collinson International Limited.

Registered in England & Wales under registration No. 2577557Registered address : 3 More London Riverside, London, SE1 2AQ, United Kingdom.