Business Development Manager

SPARK | Reporting to the Marketing Manager | Fractional or Full-Time

Location: Remote or office-based, with the flexibility to travel to our Milton Keynes office for meetings and regularly attend client and industry meetings across the UK.

About SPARK

SPARK is a tactical sales promotion agency, working in partnership with brands, media owners and creative agencies on brand activation campaigns. We provide the promotional mechanics — on-pack, digital codes, sampling, gamification, rewards — that engage and motivate customers at the point of sale.

We're long-standing members of the Institute of Promotional Marketing, and part of the Mongoose Sports and Entertainment Group.

The Role

This is a hands-on, key role working closely with the CEO and marketing team. You'll identify interesting prospects and start conversations with founders and senior decision-makers, with the goal of getting SPARK onto the consideration list for agency and brand briefs across a range of sectors.

We're hiring on attitude and aptitude, not a fixed level of seniority. Whether you come to this as a Business Development Manager or a Business Development Executive, and whether you're looking for a fractional or full-time arrangement, what matters is that you can build relationships from scratch and bring commercial curiosity to every conversation.

What You'll Own

• Pipeline generation - researching target businesses and building your own target lists
• Relationship-led outreach - reaching founders, CEOs and senior leaders with thoughtful, personalised, multi-channel outreach (LinkedIn, email, events, referrals) that earns a conversation
• Early-stage discovery and qualification - identifying genuine opportunity, understanding a prospect's operational pain and buying process, qualifying opportunities effectively so we invest time where it counts
• Long-cycle nurture - staying close to prospects, adding value, and moving relationships forward until they're ready for a commercial conversation
• Membership management - owning our third-party memberships (industry bodies, associations) and making sure we get full value from event access, directories and networking opportunities
• Industry events - representing SPARK at events, researching attendees in advance and building relationships on the ground
• Pipedrive & reporting - keeping data clean, and building and maintaining the sales dashboard and pipeline health reporting

What You Won't Own

• Final commercial negotiation, pricing and contract terms - these sit with the CEO
• Post-sale delivery
• A monthly closed-revenue target - you'll be measured on the quality and progression of the pipeline you build, not on hitting a number

About You

You're a natural relationship builder - confident and engaging when communicating with individuals and groups. You're commercially curious, comfortable opening conversations with people you don't know, and just as comfortable listening as talking.

You'll thrive in this role if you are:

• Autonomous and self-motivated, able to manage your own diary and pipeline with minimal oversight
• Comfortable with proactive business development and initiating new relationships, rather than solely managing inbound leads
• Confident building and developing your own pipeline
• Comfortable using CRM and sales engagement tools such as Pipedrive, HubSpot or LinkedIn Sales Navigator

We're open-minded about background and flexible on work pattern. If you can demonstrate the ability to build genuine relationships and open doors, we're more interested in that than a specific job title or years on paper.

What We Offer

You'll join a small, experienced agency team sitting within a major brand performance group, with real opportunity to learn, develop and shape your own role over time.

This role can be structured as fractional or full-time depending on the right candidate's availability, and salary will be set in line with the candidate's experience and time commitment. We also offer:

• Time to Recharge – 25 days’ annual leave (pro rata), plus Bank Holidays, giving you plenty of time to switch off and recharge.
• Future-Proof Pension – Enjoy peace of mind with our company pension scheme.
• Health & Wellbeing Support – Access our Medical Cash Plan, with contributions towards dental, optical, physio and more, plus an Employee Assistance Programme.
• Learn & Grow – Develop your skills and career with training and progression opportunities, plus access to The MISSION Group’s learning platform.
• Work Hard, Play Hard – Get together with the team through regular staff socials and events.

Inclusion Matters

We’re proud to be a Disability Confident Committed (Level 1) Employer. That means we’ve pledged to make our recruitment process accessible and inclusive, promote our roles widely, and offer interviews to disabled applicants who meet the minimum criteria. We also anticipate and provide reasonable adjustments where needed because supporting every candidate matters.

If you need any adjustments to take part in the process, just let us know. We are here to help.

Also a Part Of...

MISSION Group is a collective of specialist agencies delivering marketing, communications and digital services for Clients across the UK and internationally. The Group combines deep sector expertise with connected capabilities across brand, digital, customer engagement, sponsorship, media, social, technology and communications.

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