Head of Asia Business Development

As the research and analysis division of the Economist Group, The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) helps leaders prepare for opportunity, empowering them to act with confidence when making strategic decisions. The EIU is the global standard in providing high quality, actionable intelligence to the public and private sector, assessing issues that impact the businesses in more than two hundred countries.

Currently we are seeking a senior selling ‘game changer‘ to help us grow our footprint and client base across the Asian markets. You are currently running a top performing team, ready to take the next step in your career and join a global leader in its field, representing a truly unique brand.

You will join us ready to unleash your impressive set of commercial leadership skills to achieve business and personal success. You will have a deeply inquisitive mind, a well-honed consultative approach to selling and unquenchable thirst for success to manage a team that sells our portfolio of macro-economic and political solutions to financial services, corporate, government, professional services and consulting sectors.

As the Head of Sales you will be a highly driven, self-starting and accomplished business development leader with extensive network across Asia, excellent presentations skills, strong consultative sales ability and an excellent understanding of B2B subscription businesses. Your natural instinct to ‘hunt’ will be key to success in this role. We are looking for an individual who thrives on relentlessly driving sales success by creating a competitive and high profile environment.

**How you will contribute**:

- Scale, develop and motivate a high performing team by mentoring, coaching, and developing frontline sales reps; Motivate them by supporting their individual and team growth and by celebrating their achievements; Provide positive as well as corrective feedback to inspire the team to stretch and perform their best
- Ultimately substantially affect the productivity of the commercial organization and be a key driver in increasing new business
- New business from the EIU’s subscription products in Asia via a growing team (currently 5 Field Sales BDMs)
- Leading from the front by personally delivering a number of large deals per annum
- Directly manage a team of field sales reps that are located across the Asia
- Shape the sales strategy as a senior member of the commercial leadership team to accelerate the EIU’s topline growth
- Own and develop the commercial plan for Asia, including sales and budget planning based on sound bottom up principles
- Weekly and monthly reporting on sales activity, pipeline development and closed business compared to targets and KPIs
- Mange the team to maintain a strong pipeline by proactively driving activity via self-generated opportunities as well as by following up on marketing leads
- Develop, manage and constantly improve lead generation in close collaboration with Marketing
- Improve conversion by analysing the performance in current target verticals and regions and make changes where necessary
- Coach individual team members to perform at their best
- Prepare regular sales reports including activity, pipeline, sales invoiced as well as monthly, quarterly and annual forecast

**The desirable skills for this role include**:

- A true sales individual that is capable to lead from the front
- Proven ability to improve BDMs’ performance through hands on coaching
- Managed a 3+ consultative sales team in the B2B business information subscription space
- Experience in managing new business reps that sold into multiple Asian markets including China is a must
- Strong background in solution selling as well as driving a more activity focused sales motion - very comfortable of managing in a KPI based commercial organisation
- Analytical mind with proven ability to optimise a sales motion based on insights gained from data