Business Development & Marketing Manager

What to know

Help us build relationships with our dream clients — and yours. We are seeking an organised and flexible team player to work across a diverse portfolio of activities, including business development, marketing and executive support. The ideal candidate will be organised, flexible and able to think on their feet. You will be juggling a range of proposals, requests, and inbound leads, helping to ensure teams working across business development and marketing know what they need to be doing and by when.

This is a rare opportunity to join a growing team and work to develop relationships with a client base that spans across nonprofit, advocacy, corporate, and political sectors. If you want to help drive real change and learn how to support some of the biggest organisations in the world — from UNICEF to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Plan International, Save The Children or the ONE Campaign — this might be the position for you.

Day to day you will collaborate closely with our leadership team & Executive Director to respond to inbound enquiries, juggle new business opportunities and help develop and manage a sales pipeline and marketing materials such as blog posts, reports and events. You will work across the agency with cross-discipline teams, providing structure and logistical support for proposals and contracts, supporting the team proactively with scheduling for internal and external meetings and collaborating with teams to prepare for pitches and presentations.

Business Development 

Manage the business development process - including proposal development, pitches, inbound leads and outbound efforts: 

• Help the leadership team sell Blue State’s offerings and services to brands, nonprofits, advocacy organisations through organising meetings, development of memos/proposals and/or marketing materials and content.
• Project manage internal teams producing memos, proposals, pitch decks, and related collateral in collaboration with creative, strategy, and technical teams, delivering first-rate materials that target an audience of C-Suite executives.
• Manage the sales lifecycle for all opportunities in London - from brief review meetings, to logistical and admin process management in Salesforce — from the proposal and pitch process through contracting.
• Effectively communicate and strategise with internal teams to help meet prospective clients’ goals and their organisational objectives, timelines and budgets - pulling in experts and leadership input as required. 
• Collaborate with the marketing team in planning events, preparing proposals for conference speakerships, developing lead generation content, and supporting related activities to drive new client acquisition.

Marketing, PR & Contact Management

Help build, manage, and continually develop a sales pipeline to achieve new business targets:

• Work with senior staff to bring in new leads across targeted sectors through traditional and creative approaches to outbound sales
• Conduct research on potential leads, prospects, and clients, and clearly communicate findings to senior leadership
• Develop Blue State collateral, proposals and case studies and collaborate with leadership and the marketing team to generate awareness of Blue State and our offerings - coordinating multiple stages from ideation to copywriting, design to publishing on digital channels.
• Project manage award submissions, conference talks, events and/or webinars and their collateral and any other relevant events and materials as directed.
• Qualify and manage inbound leads, including multiple portals where opportunities are published.
• Manage the pipeline of new opportunities through Salesforce & support the leadership team with ad-hoc reports as required.

Executive Support

Support the leadership team and the Executive Director in building relationships through the following:

• Assist with diary management and scheduling meetings with current and prospective clients to discuss new opportunities.
• Support as appropriate on follow-up actions from business development meetings for any next steps
• Support the preparation of any proposals, scopes of work or case studies required to progress conversations
• Coordinate logistic considerations for meetings and pitches - where required book rooms, travel, accommodation, refreshments, and other considerations as appropriate. 
• Draft internal and external communications on behalf of the leadership team as appropriate.

The company

Blue State is the purpose-driven creative and tech agency for brands and causes looking to inspire people to take action and drive create real change. With clients including the UNHCR, Google, Amnesty International, UNICEF, Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) and Oxfam, Blue State cultivates and mobilises communities, raises money and influences policy, builds platforms, and transforms how organisations engage their most important people. Led by some of the most creative and analytical minds from the political, nonprofit, and brand worlds, Blue State is an independent agency and has 150+ employees in the US and London.

The team

The London team is formed of 20+ individuals, working across accounts and project management, creative & design, strategy & insights and media. We are a group of people motivated to create change in the world, working together to drive progress for the things we care about. 

The Partnerships team drives Blue State’s growth. We are the face of Blue State to prospective clients. We build new and deepen existing client relationships. We help prospects see opportunities more clearly, and we help Blue State understand the challenges our prospects face. We inspire teams to find solutions to complex business challenges. And we work with our colleagues to persuasively articulate creative, strategic, and technical solutions to executives and practitioners alike.

What we offer

• Unlimited time-off (inclusive of sick, personal, and vacation days)
• $1,000 annually in professional development funds (local equivalent)
• Fully subsidised health and dental insurance for employees (subject to tax)
• Generous pension match via salary sacrifice
• Generous paid holiday schedule
• Parental leave policy for up to 32.5 week of coverage at full pay, inclusive of all genders and supporting a range of family structures
• Group Income Protection (GIP)
• Group Life Assurance (GLA)
• Optional holiday travel insurance
• Pre-tax season ticket loans
• Cycle to work (up to £2000)

We approach in-office working with a hybrid model, with presence in our Old Street office required at least two days per week (Usually Tuesday and a minimum of one other day).

Some things we're looking for 

• Minimum of 3 years of professional experience, ideally in business development, marketing, project or account coordination within an agency, consulting, or communications firm - or directly comparable experience relevant to the tasks above
• Entrepreneurial, self-starter mentality — driven at all times to meet and exceed goals
• Excellent communication, collaboration, problem-solving, and relationship-building skills
• Desirable - experience working within the nonprofit, advocacy, or brand marketing
• Highly organised and thorough with exceptional attention to detail - including and especially for fast turnaround tasks.
• Ability to adapt to new situations, solve problems on the fly, and communicate with those around you. Teamwork and scrappiness are required.
• Comfortable working collaboratively in a team-driven environment across countries alongside colleagues with complementary skills and experience
• Comfortable with a high volume of client interaction, both in-person and through phone, email, slack and Zoom. 
• Impeccable ethical standards and professionalism, including confidentiality for client briefs and business challenges.
• Humble in victory, constructive in defeat. We champion and expect empathy, communication, collaboration, and respect.

At Blue State, diversity is a necessity, not a nice-to-have. We encourage those from underrepresented communities — women, people of colour, LGBTQIA+, immigrants, those with disabilities and people at all the intersections in between — to apply. Even if you don’t think your current skill set checks every box below, but this role seems to align with your strengths, we want to hear from you.

Blue State is committed to creating an inclusive and accessible application and interview process. If you would like to request a reasonable accommodation for a disability - including the use of AI tools throughout the interview process, which we review on a case by case basis - please contact us at [email protected] with the subject line: Accommodation Request to get started.