Head of New Business

Company Description

Fastmarkets is an industry-leading price-reporting agency (PRA) and information provider for global commodities, providing price data, news, analytics and events for the agriculture, forest products, metals and mining and new-generation energy markets.

Fastmarkets' data is critical for customers seeking to understand and predict dynamic, sometimes opaque markets, enabling trading and risk management. Fastmarkets is a global business with a history dating back to 1865 and is built on trust and deep market knowledge. It has more than 700 employees spread across global locations in the UK, US, China, India, Singapore, Brazil, Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland and beyond.

Job Description

The Head of Strategic New Business will lead, coach and develop a geographically diverse team of eight Strategic Account Executives across the UK and US, covering Fastmarkets’ major markets. Reporting to the Director of New Business, this role is central to building a world-class enterprise new-business function that wins priority markets, grows people and delivers durable, high-quality revenue.

The role is accountable for raising seller effectiveness and execution standards across the full sales cycle: converting high-value market leads, building an enterprise-style outbound prospecting engine, winning strategic target accounts, increasing average order value, expanding enterprise licensing and multi-year contracting, and improving conversion, forecast accuracy and pipeline quality. This is a hands-on leadership role for an ambitious sales leader who combines rigorous process, exceptional coaching and data-led performance management.

PRINCIPLE ACCOUNTABILITIES

- Team leadership and high performance: Create and drive a high-performance, values-led culture across eight Strategic Account Executives in the UK and US by setting ambitious standards, translating expectations into measurable outcomes, maintaining a rigorous operating cadence and holding the team consistently accountable for execution and results.
- Coaching and development: Deliver structured, evidence-based coaching through regular 1:1s, call reviews, deal coaching, field observation, development plans and feedback loops; demonstrably improve capability, confidence and results.
- Enterprise new-business strategy: Translate the Director of New Business strategy into territory, market and account execution plans across core Fastmarkets markets; ensure sellers focus on the right strategic logos and value pools.
- Outbound prospecting engine: Build a disciplined, repeatable enterprise outbound motion using target-account selection, account plans, multi-channel outreach, executive engagement, referrals, events, partnerships and account-based marketing.
- Lead conversion: Ensure high-value inbound and market-generated leads are qualified quickly, routed correctly and converted through strong discovery, stakeholder mapping, value articulation and commercial momentum.
- Deal quality and growth: Increase AOV, enterprise licence adoption and multi-year contracts while protecting value, improving win rates and prioritising strategically relevant, durable revenue over low-quality volume.
- Sales process excellence: Support the Director of New Business in embedding a robust and sophisticated sales methodology across discovery, qualification, multi-threading, business-case development, negotiation, legal process, close planning and handover, ensuring consistent adoption and disciplined execution across the team.
- Quality pipeline building and forecasting: Make the creation of sufficient, high-quality pipeline in priority markets a core focus and performance measure; own pipeline governance, forecast accuracy, CRM discipline and leading indicators, and use Salesforce data and KPI trends to assess pipeline quality, identify gaps, focus coaching and drive incremental improvement.
- Strategic deal leadership: Actively support the largest and most complex pursuits, including executive alignment, pursuit strategy, proposal quality, commercial positioning and internal mobilisation.
- Cross-functional execution: Support the Director of New Business in driving coordinated cross-functional execution, aligning Marketing, Product, Editorial, Pricing, Sales Enablement, Customer Success, Consulting, Events, Finance, Legal and Commercial Operations behind priority markets, strategic initiatives and major opportunities.
- AI-enabled performance: Set a high standard for practical AI adoption in research, planning, prospecting, coaching, productivity, insight generation and decision-making, with appropriate judgement and governance.
- Talent and succession: Recruit, onboard, retain and develop excellent sales talent; build bench strength and create visible pathways for high performers to progress.

KEY INTERFACES

Director of New Business; Strategic Account Executives; Commercial Leadership; Marketing; Product; Editorial and Market Intelligence; Pricing; Sales Enablement; Customer Success; Commercial Operations; Consulting; Events; Finance; Legal and Compliance; senior client and prospect stakeholders.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

- A consistently high-performing, well-coached team with ambitious standards, strong engagement, improved capability, clear accountability and sustained delivery against revenue and execution KPIs.
- Greater, more predictable new-logo performance supported by healthy, high-quality pipeline coverage and improved conversion.
- Higher average order value, increased enterprise licensing and materially stronger multi-year contract penetration.
- A repeatable outbound prospecting engine that complements market leads and creates sustained pipeline in priority accounts.
- Improved forecast accuracy, CRM discipline, deal inspection and management of leading and lagging KPIs.
- Stronger penetration of strategic targets across core markets and better cross-functional execution around major pursuits.

Qualifications

We recruit talented, dynamic people with diverse backgrounds and experiences, all united by a belief in our mission to provide the world’s leading and most trusted price reporting, events, and intelligence service for the markets we serve. We’re proud to be an equal opportunities employer and are committed to creating a fully inclusive workplace, where everyone feels able to participate and contribute meaningfully.

If you are open-minded, curious, resilient, solutions-oriented and committed to promoting equality, then read on.

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND SKILLS

Essential

- Demonstrable success leading, coaching and improving enterprise or strategic B2B salespeople, with clear evidence of improved capability and results.
- A sustained record of delivering above target and driving excellent team performance in new-logo, subscription, data, SaaS, information-services or complex solution sales.
- Experience building and running sophisticated, repeatable enterprise sales campaigns and outbound prospecting motions across named or strategic accounts.
- Expert sales-process capability, including discovery, qualification, account planning, multi-threading, value and ROI development, negotiation, forecasting and deal governance.
- Commercial leadership across a diverse, geographically distributed team and confidence operating across UK and US working cultures and time zones.
- High standards, strong judgement and excellent organisation, with the resilience, energy and urgency to drive sustained execution.
- Data-led management capability: able to turn CRM, activity, pipeline, conversion, AOV, win-rate and forecast data into focused coaching and incremental performance gains.
- Proven commitment to coaching, with the patience and discipline to diagnose individual needs, give candid feedback and build practical development plans.
- Strong executive presence and the credibility to support complex client conversations, challenge constructively and align senior internal stakeholders.
- High AI fluency and practical proficiency using AI to improve commercial productivity, insight quality, coaching and customer outcomes.

Desirable, not essential

- Experience in price reporting, commodities, market intelligence or adjacent data and analytics markets.
- Experience selling enterprise licences, multi-year agreements and cross-market or multi-product solutions.

LEADERSHIP ATTRIBUTES

- Driven and ambitious: hungry to build, improve and win, with the potential and desire to take on broader leadership responsibility over time.
- Coach and talent builder: invests time and effort in people, creates clarity and raises performance without lowering standards.
- Strategic operator: connects long-term ambition to simple priorities, tight operating cadences and relentless follow-through.
- Principled performer: pursues high performance with integrity, sound judgement and respect.
- Metrics-driven and accountable: uses evidence to make decisions, owns outcomes and keeps promises.
- Inclusive and collaborative: leads effectively across regions, backgrounds and functions, and creates an environment where people can perform at their best.
- Resourceful and resilient: finds routes to progress, stays composed through setbacks and adapts quickly.
- Exceptional standards: is highly organised, precise and committed to excellence in process, customer experience and results.

We are looking for an individual who is highly motivated, driven, and have a passion to be part of a fast-paced, successful team. Being a strong team player is also important as well as someone who is happy to work flexibly.

If you're excited about the role but your experience, skills or qualifications don't perfectly align, we encourage you to apply anyway.

Additional Information

Our Values

Fastmarkets people come from all different walks of life. It’s this mix of brilliant personalities, experiences and insights that gives us that warm, open, and friendly culture you can feel as soon as you meet us. But however wonderfully different we all are, there are six things we all have in common – and they form our Fastmarkets values.

Created by our own employees to reflect some of the personal traits that Fastmarkets people have, our values are key to what makes our culture unique. They reflect who each of us are and they're embedded in everything we do. Our values are:

- METRICS DRIVEN. We use insights to improve our customers’ experience and our business performance
 
- ACCOUNTABLE. We are accountable to ourselves and those we work with: we keep our promises and get things done
 
- GROWTH MINDSET . This value enables us to be nimble to the changing realities and operate with a sense of urgency
 
- INCLUSIVE. We are inclusive and respectful, celebrating each of us and giving everyone a deep sense of belonging with the desire to bring their best self to work every day.
 
- CUSTOMER CENTRIC. We are customer-centric in all that we do
 
- COLLABORATIVE. We are collaborative, able to work across teams and capitalise on the diversity of intellect, perspectives, and experiences.

We are committed to ensuring all candidates feel welcomed and supported. Should your application advance and you require accommodations for the interview process, please inform us so we can make the necessary arrangements.

Reward and benefits at Fastmarkets

We believe in fair pay and benefits that support you both inside and outside of work. Through Fastmarkets Rewards, you'll have access to a range of core benefits and a flexible allowance, giving you the freedom to tailor your package to suit your lifestyle, wellbeing and financial priorities. We know that everyone's needs are different, so we've designed our benefits to support our diverse global team wherever they're based.

Specific benefits may vary by country and role.

You’ve read a little about us – now it’s over to you!

If you like what you’ve read so far and think you can see yourself as a Fastmarkets person, it’s time to fill in your application form. This form is an important part of the selection process: it’s used to determine whether or not you’ll be chosen to have an interview and acts as a basis for the questions we’ll ask you on the day.

It’s vital that you try to capture all the relevant information we have asked for on the form so we can get a good feel for who you are and why you’re great.