Business Development Manager

Ready to own your market, unlock new opportunities, and drive growth for a globally trusted brand while working flexibly from anywhere in the UK or Ireland?

We are looking for a commercially driven Business Development Manager to lead growth across a defined market area. This role is responsible for developing new business opportunities, growing existing customer relationships, identifying new prospects, and delivering sustainable sales growth across DNV's management systems certification and training services.

This is not a desk-based sales role. Success requires a proactive approach to customer engagement, market development, opportunity creation, and territory planning. You will be expected to build a strong pipeline of opportunities, maintain excellent customer relationships, and act as a visible representative of DNV in your region.

Key Responsibilities

Drive New Business Growth

- Develop and execute a territory growth plan aligned to business objectives.
- Identify, qualify and convert new customer opportunities.
- Build and maintain a healthy pipeline of opportunities sufficient to achieve annual sales targets.
- Generate demand through direct customer engagement, networking, referrals, events and targeted campaigns.
- Win business from both greenfield prospects and competitor accounts.

Grow Existing Customer Relationships

- Develop relationships with existing customers.
- Identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities across the DNV portfolio.
- Support customer retention through proactive engagement and commercial management.
- Conduct regular account reviews focused on growth opportunities and future customer needs.

Territory and Market Development

- Build market knowledge across assigned sectors and geographic areas.
- Identify emerging trends, industry developments and growth opportunities.
- Develop relationships with industry associations, consultants and influencers.
- Maintain a structured approach to territory coverage and customer prioritisation.

Pipeline and Forecast Management

- Maintain accurate CRM records and opportunity updates.
- Deliver reliable sales forecasts and provide regular pipeline reporting.
- Demonstrate clear opportunity progression through the sales cycle.
- Take ownership of achieving both activity and revenue objectives.

Customer Engagement

- Conduct customer visits, virtual meetings and presentations.
- Develop value-based proposals and commercial solutions.
- Lead negotiations and support contract closure activities.
- Represent DNV professionally at customer meetings, events and industry functions.

Collaboration

- Work closely with Planning, Strategic Accounts, Customer Service and Technical teams.
- Support seamless customer transitions from sale to delivery.
- Contribute to wider sales initiatives and growth programmes.
- Share market intelligence and customer insights with colleagues.

What Success Looks Like

The successful candidate will:

- Consistently achieve or exceed sales targets.
- Build a strong and sustainable sales pipeline.
- Increase penetration within existing accounts.
- Deliver measurable growth from new customers.
- Maintain high levels of customer satisfaction.
- Demonstrate strong forecasting accuracy.
- Actively contribute to regional and national business objectives.
- Operate with professionalism, integrity and a customer-first mindset.

Skills and Experience

Essential

- Proven business development or consultative sales experience.
- Demonstrated ability to win new business and grow existing accounts.
- Strong commercial awareness and negotiation skills.
- Ability to manage a complex sales pipeline.
- Excellent communication and relationship-building skills.
- Self-motivated and able to operate independently.
- Experience using CRM systems and managing sales forecasts.

Desirable

- Experience within certification, assurance, testing, inspection, training or professional services.
- Knowledge of management system standards and business improvement disciplines.
- Experience working with medium and large enterprise customers.
- Established industry network within relevant sectors.