Head of Business Development (Exhibitions & Conferences)

Job Title:          Head of Business Development Exhibitions & Conferences
Location:          Home-based, but within 1 hour of London
Salary:              Up to £50K + commission

This is a great opportunity for an accomplished B2B Sales Exec / Manager, with experience selling sponsorship or exhibitor space for conferences, exhibitions, trade shows or other related business events.

The Company:

Our client has been running B2B events for 10 years, increasing delegate numbers and events every year since. They currently run industry specific events at prestigious venues in the UK, Australia, Malaysia and a virtual global event, with plans to extend to North and South America within the next 2-3 years. They’ve averaged compound growth of 30% each year since they started, with their last London event attracting 1,500 delegates, 45 exhibitors/sponsors and 45 speakers, providing you a compelling story to take to market.

The Role:

This critical hire is responsible for driving sales across all global and online events. You will be reporting directly to the group CEO and working closely with their globally dispersed marketing team to ensure an effective, consistent message, supported by a strong, respected brand.

You will be provided an extensive list of warm leads, the vast majority of whom already know the brand or have an existing relationship with other parts of our client’s business, so your approach is likely to be well received.

As well as increasing sales, from both existing and new clients, you will be advising on creative ways of generating revenue from other sources and providing thought leadership across all events, as their sales Subject Matter Expert.

There are no direct reports to this position currently and you will need to produce monthly reports to the CEO. This new role is based primarily from home, with occasional visits to potential clients and team meetings in London once a week/fortnight.

Requirements:

Mandatory:

• At least 5 years’ experience selling services, ideally business conferences, exhibitions, trade shows or other related business events, with a demonstrable track record.
• Self-motivated, confident and passionate, with a strong work ethic.
• Ambitious and driven by success (and the resulting £s!)
• Outstanding communications and influencing skills, with a refined, consultative approach to business development.
• Entrepreneurially spirited with strong commercial acumen
• Proficient with MS Office / Office 365 suite.

Desirable:

• An understanding of, and experience working with, marketing
• Experience negotiating with vendors, venues, guest speakers etc, although this will only be required when supporting / occasionally covering for the CEO.
• Experience selling to software companies, training providers, engineering consultancies, construction / infrastructure / utility companies, recruiters etc.
• An awareness of Programme / Project Management, PMO, Project Controls or Project Planning.
• Advanced Excel (pivot tables, lookups etc) and/or PowerBI, to enable analytics for monthly reporting
• Experience using a CRM

This is great opportunity to join a growing, highly regarded conference provider, where you will be working from a gold-mine of warm sales leads who already recognise the brand and will be introduced to customers from other parts of the group to cross-sell to.

Commission is paid at a basic rate of 5% for first £100K of new business generated globally, which accelerates to 10% for everything over £100K and is uncapped!