Business Development Manager, Investor Education

About Investor Education

Investor Education, develops and delivers education products, to support signatory progression and build responsible investment capacity across the globe, by converting PRI thought leadership into practical and applied educational content. The function has a dual mandate to disseminate knowledge, build capacity and effect change; and to deliver a diversified revenue stream to support the wide-ranging work of PRI.

The primary business within investor education is the PRI Academy (a subsidiary of the PRI), an industry-leading online B2B training provider, delivering short, applied courses designed to upskill teams and professionals across the investment sector. Over the next three-years, there are ambitious plans to build out the PRI Education function, utilising PRI’s subject matter expertise to create, curate, and quality assure industry-leading training and education, so as to upskill investment organisations and professionals to drive the evolution of responsible investment and sustainable finance. The team will be responsible for building a portfolio of practical and applied online training courses to support our Signatories’ responsible investment progress, as well as exploring new delivery methods and partnerships to create an holistic educational ecosystem.

Working in Investor Education provides an opportunity to engage with a team of highly motivated, culturally diverse professionals in a highly successful and rapidly growing social enterprise.

Job Description

Reports to the Head of Business Development (BD)

The postholder will also be eligible for an annual target-based discretionary bonus.

The BD Manager is a key position in the growth of Investor Education products, in particular the PRI Academy, playing leading role in the full sales cycle: from sourcing opportunities through to close.

Core Responsibilities

Research potential markets and opportunities, and generate leads

• Take responsibility for ensuring a regular supply of high-quality leads are entering the sales funnel.
• Build strong internal relationships with colleagues across the PRI to help ensure all PRI communications channels and all external interactions by PRI colleagues can consider the promotion of the Academy’s offering.
• Build close working relationships with the regional RI Ecosystems team to communicate the value of the Academy, identify potential clients and seek introductions.
• Work with colleagues in the Academy marketing group and the Head of Business Development to coordinate a strategic approach to both awareness raising and lead generation via all communication, marketing and outreach channels.
• Work with the Head of Business Development to refine our events strategy, including taking responsibility for maintaining the Academy external events calendar, identifying cost effective and high value event attendance opportunities, and developing the outreach, onsite and follow-up work necessary to generate and develop sales leads.
• Help to develop the Academy’s outbound sales prospecting strategy, including the effective use of LinkedIn and Sales Navigator.
• Supporting the Head of Business Development and Academy Director in conference and sales presentations, as well as independently giving in-person or virtual presentations to prospective clients

Pitch potential clients and manage their journey through the sales pipeline

• Proactively identify and contact prospective clients to generate market intelligence and foster new sales and leads.
• Have excellent, senior-level presence and the ability to lead and close a complex sales process.
• Deliver high-quality and effective, consultative sales meetings (both remotely and in person) with potential clients in the investment management industry.
• Take responsibility for pitching new leads on a regular basis. Where insufficient numbers of leads are generated by the Academy’s usual marketing and outreach efforts in a particular week, the postholder will be expected to be proactive and innovative in own outreach to leads to ensure monthly pitch targets are met.
• Quickly become familiar with the responsible investment sector, the PRI, the PRI Academy and its training offering, and our addressable market, such that you can assess new opportunities, understand common industry pain points related to training and education, and position the Academy’s product offering as a suitable solution to these pain points.

Close sales and take responsibility for generating sales revenues for the PRI Academy

• Play a leading role in achieving and exceeding quarterly and annual sales revenue targets by closing and maximising sales.
• Coordinate the sales process for key clients, including price negotiation, contracting, onboarding and handover to the Operations Team and Customer Success Manager.

Continually iterate and optimise sales and feedback processes to ensure PRI Academy has marketing leading product offering, process and delivery

• Monitor the offerings, pricing, positioning, and marketing of competitors and peers in the ESG training space, as well as trends and best practice in the wider training sector.
• Work with the Head of Business Development to build out and refine the Academy BD and Sales Playbook and improve and optimise all BD and lead generation activities.
• Working with the product team to help identify new markets and inform new product development, communicating feedback from prospective clients and enhancing marketing collateral.
• Support the Customer Success function in identifying upselling and cross-selling opportunities within existing accounts.

Person Specification

• Demonstrable success and career progression in business development roles encompassing the full sales cycle - lead generation, leading sales calls/meetings, and closing – with a record of strong revenue generation and year-on-year growth.
• A strong understanding of consultative sales approaches with an ability to engage potential clients to interrogate their training-related pain points and adeptly and clearly position solutions to these pain points.
• Extremely strong written and verbal communication and presentational skills.
• An exacting attention to detail and ability to proof and edit written documents.
• Proven ability to build relationships with peers and higher-level management.
• Advanced PowerPoint skills for the creation of promotional and conference presentations.

Preferred

• Experience in the investment industry and/or the training sector would be an advantage.
• An understanding of the global investment sector, its key players, and responsible investment principles would be beneficial.
• Excel and/or Salesforce experience would be beneficial.

The postholder will also be eligible for an annual target-based discretionary bonus.’

We particularly welcome candidates from under-represented groups, including Black, Asian, and other People of Colour, those with visible or non-visible disabilities, LGBTQ+ candidates and those who are neurodivergent.

The PRI is committed to offering flexibility to our employees, both formal (e.g. part-time work) and informal (e.g. a shift in hours to accommodate caring responsibilities). Please talk to us about how we could make this role flexible for you.

N.B. We reserve the right to close a vacancy before the closing date in the event of an overwhelming response or a change in business priorities.

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