Associate Director, Business Development

Publicis Sapient is seeking an Associate Director, Business Development to further accelerate growth across the industries we serve in the Nordics region through proactive research and outreach to new clients. This role is responsible for identifying new business opportunities, new customer outreach, building a strong pipeline of qualified pursuits, and positioning Publicis Sapient effectively with large enterprise clients and strategic buying centres.

The role combines market research, commercial origination and client engagement before engaging commercial leadership teams to convert opportunities into measurable pipeline and revenue growth. This role will be based from our office in Gothenburg.

Your Impact:

• Build and own a strong sales pipeline and support the opening of new client accounts.
• Develop and execute a focused new business development research and outreach strategy across all sectors, aligned to priority growth areas and target accounts.
• Research the market extensively to identify major RFPs, high-potential prospects, whitespace opportunities and new large-scale corporate clients not currently engaged with Publicis Sapient.
• Build, shape and maintain a substantial multi-million pipeline of qualified opportunities, with clear forecasting through CRM.
• Create pursuit plans that optimise Publicis Sapient's positioning as a credible supplier for strategic opportunities.
• Engage senior client stakeholders to understand business priorities, transformation agendas and procurement pathways, converting insight into actionable pursuit activity.
• Partner closely with industry leadership, account teams, alliances and subject matter experts to project manage RFP responses, shape compelling propositions and differentiated responses.
• Leverage relevant partner and industry networks to increase access, intelligence and opportunities, while managing conflicts and protecting key strategic relationships.
• Monitor pipeline health, deal progression, conversion rates and commercial KPIs and sharing insights to improve quality, pace and win probability.
• Ensure disciplined use of CRM and reporting processes so that pipeline visibility, next steps, and opportunity status are accurate and current.
• Contribute insight on market trends, competitive activity and client demand to commercial leadership team to maximise opportunities for deal conversion and inform broader go-to-market planning.

The Individual

• Experience of supporting and driving a business development process through extensive research, proactive identification and tenacious outreach to impactfully position a product/service amongst new clients.
• Tenacious and resilient approach to sales pipeline building, management and exceeding targets.
• Demonstrable track record, gained within the digital transformation industry, of identifying and progressing large, complex pursuits (including RFP-led opportunities).
• Analytical skills and experience undertaking thorough market analysis, opportunity identification and optimal brand positioning.
• Excellent stakeholder management skills in order to work with client and internal senior management.
• Experience using CRM systems and structured and disciplined approach to pipeline management, reporting and follow-through.
• Strong commercial acumen and experience of assessing, validating and prioritising opportunities effectively to focus effort on high-potential pursuits.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills in English including the ability to shape clear, compelling opportunity narratives and brand positioning.
• Strong collaboration skills to bring together cross-functional bid teams across sales, alliances, consulting and delivery stakeholders.
• Strong written and oral communication skills in Swedish are desirable.

Company Description

Publicis Sapient is a digital transformation partner helping established organizations get to their future, digitally-enabled state, both in the way they work and the way they serve their customers. We help unlock value through a start-up mindset and modern methods, fusing strategy, consulting and customer experience with agile engineering and problem-solving creativity. United by our core values and our purpose of helping people thrive in the brave pursuit of next, our 20,000+ people in 53 offices around the world combine experience across technology, data sciences, consulting and customer obsession to accelerate our clients’ businesses through designing the products and services their customers truly value.