Role: Head of New Business (Chemical Sector)

Location: UK Flexible, Commutable to Oxford

Salary range: £60,000 - £75,000 plus commission and benefits

Role ID: 2023-1823

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Ricardo is looking for a passionate and experienced sales manager / leader who is focused on maintaining and developing a high performing team and with potential to grow into a wider sales leadership role within the organisation. This focus is primarily on the chemical sector, working to deliver productised service offerings under the banner of our NCEC (National Chemical Emergency Centre) brand.

The NCEC business is a highly successful chemical, safety, response and compliance business. Our flagship global emergency response service works with over 600 clients with strong multi-year revenue and remarkably high renewal rates and a 50-year legacy of delivering best in class telephone emergency response as a product to the private and public sector.

This is complemented by a range of regulatory consultancy services which primarily address the UK and European regulatory regime but with global touch-points, including REACH, CLP / GHS. Services include SDS authoring and review, mixture notifications as well as technical toxicology consultant with our world leading expertise in persistence chemicals and environmental fate.

We also support the wider sustainability business in identifying and progressing sales opportunities for our corporate sustainability, net zero and decarbonisation portfolio.

We are looking to recruit an experienced and hungry sales leader who would be responsible for leading and developing 5-6 successful sales professionals and managers in our chemical risk business area with a specific focus on providing team leadership, direction setting and management, supporting them development and growth to achieve their own sales targets.

You will also carry your own direct sales target, alongside that of the team, and a key objective is to ‘pace set’ with your own direct sales activity.

You will be part of Ricardo’s wider Sales Team, reporting directly to the Sales and Client Director, with development potential to deputise for and ultimately take over more of this role.

Key responsibilities

• Lead, support, and co-ordinate all new business winning activities for our chemical risk business area.
• Lead, manage, and inspire an existing and successful new business team or c. 5-6 professionals, driving collaboration, competition, activity, innovation, and success.
• Own each team members individual career development plans and maintain the culture of personal and functional development.
• Plan, develop and deliver a new business sales strategy / go to market strategy for new client acquisitions, particularly focusing on our emergency response product area.
• Develop and implement your own tactical plan to augment the team performance with your own direct sales against the new business sales strategy.
• Pipeline management and reporting on behalf of the team.
• Collaborate with marketing to develop and position sales campaigns and marketing campaigns follow up activity.
• Track competitor activity and customer / market insights to refine and adjust the go to market strategy.
• Developing, coaching, supporting and mentoring the new business team, alongside the existing team leader within the area, to exceed their sales objectives and support their ongoing development.
• Continue to develop sales messaging that resonates with the market, ensuring a focus on profitable offerings.
• Interface between the New Business team, the Account Management Team and the Customer Service team to ensure a seamless sale-to-service process.

Key competencies and experience, skills and behaviours

You should be able to demonstrate the below criteria:

• A successful and demonstrable sales and business development track record, operating through the full sales life cycle.
• An inspirational leader with experience of managing experienced sales and BD managers to success and developing high performance teams.
• Experience in recruiting, on-boarding and developing successful sales professionals.
• Strong client relationship management skills, building trust and confidence at senior management level.
• Experience developing and implementing sales strategies and tactics, both at team and individual level, to successfully grow the business.
• An organised, commercially aware, target focused professional who appreciates excellent customer service and client relationships are critical to the achieving business objectives.
• A team player able to work with a wide range of stakeholders both inside and outside of the organisation, being comfortable and confident in working with clients to ensure they are getting value from our services and seeking further support opportunities.
• Committed to continuous improvement of the business, the service delivery, and client risk management.
• Strong client relationship management skills, building trust and confidence at senior management level.

Desirable

• Experience of working within a consultative sales environment, for example within a consultancy, software, or similar environment.
• Experience in working within a risk management, chemical response, regulatory or safety business area.
• Experience working with a CRM system, especially MS Dynamics, would be an advantage.

Working here

Ricardo is an exciting and rewarding place to work and you have the opportunity to make a difference. You will work with teams of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. Alongside having a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalised approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Wellbeing and work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that's working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential. Our People are important to us, and we take pride in our wellbeing programmes and policies that support individuals including flexible working, carers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance programme.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and ensure a culture of inclusivity, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

Benefits

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.