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

We are looking for an experienced sales manager / leader who is focused on maintaining and developing a high performing team. Potential for growth into broader sales leadership role. Responsibilities include leading and developing 5-6 sales professionals/managers in our chemical risk business area, providing team leadership and support for achieving sales targets.

The focus of this role is primarily on the chemical sector, working to deliver productised service offerings under the banner of our NCEC (National Chemical Emergency Centre) brand. We also support the wider sustainability business in identifying and progressing sales opportunities for our corporate sustainability, net zero and decarbonisation portfolio.

NCEC is a highly successful chemical, safety, and compliance business. Our flagship global emergency response service has a 50-year legacy of excellence. We deliver top-tier telephone emergency response services to both private and public sectors, serving over 600 clients. We also provide regulatory consultancy services, specializing in UK and European regulations such as REACH and CLP/GHS. Our expertise extends to SDS authoring, mixture notifications, and toxicology consulting for persistence chemicals and environmental fate.

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.

We’d love to hear from you if you have the following competencies and experience:

• Successful and demonstrable sales and business development track record, operating through the full sales life cycle.
• 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.

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.

As the Head of New Business your main responsibilities would be:

• 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.

Working here

You will be warmly welcomed into our workplace where every voice matters. We are diverse thinkers and doers, coming together to create a culture of inclusion. We will support you to find your place.

We will encourage you to use your passion and expertise to make a positive impact through the projects you work on.  Your knowledge and desire to bring about change will be invaluable in helping deliver innovative solutions that support communities across the globe in becoming safer and more sustainable.

Work life balance  

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that is 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.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.  

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.

Next steps

We are a disability confident employer, please advise the recruitment team via recruit.ee@ricardo.com if you require any adjustments to support you throughout the recruitment process.

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.