WHAT DOES A GLOBAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER DO?
Published: Apr 23, 2025 – The Global Business Development Manager drives global pitch processes with operational excellence, ensuring timely delivery and high-quality outputs across all markets. This position leads cross-functional collaboration and proactive prospecting to identify strategic opportunities and execute innovative business development initiatives. The manager also manages end-to-end pitch materials with creativity and precision while building strong professional networks and contributing to internal reporting and global strategy alignment.
A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Global Business Development Manager
1. Global Business Development Manager Tasks
- Strategic Opportunity Identification: Identify top strategic opportunities
- Customer Profiling: Profile key prioritized customers
- Pipeline Management: Manage the given pipeline by segment and sub-segment
- Cross-Functional Coordination: Coordinate across sales, service, and technology to deliver on complex deals
- Bid Support: Support global bids on complex strategic deals
- Bid Pipeline Management: Manage the incoming bid pipeline and assignments
- Mentorship: Mentor regional sales staff to grow into cross-functional solution bid contributors
- Performance Analysis: Carry out lessons learned on wins, losses in partnership with sales
- Business Planning: Ensure the business achieves short-term/long-term business plans, strategies, and tactics to grow the business
- Target Achievement: Ensure the business achieves or exceeds annual order commitments, and implement tactics to grow the business
- Strategic Support: Assist with major corporate initiatives on strategy and business models
- Relationship Development: Grow existing and new customer relationships in all domains
2. Global Business Development Manager Roles
- Campaign Management: Develop and manage campaigns to generate new sales prospects
- Lead Qualification: Qualify and develop inbound and outbound sales leads and respond to product inquiries
- Strategic Analysis: Analyze business opportunities, insights, and develop strategic plans for outreach
- CRM Tracking: Complete, accurate tracking of communication with current and potential customers
- Pipeline Development: Take responsibility for building the pipeline, mapping around segments and regions
- Customer Needs Identification: Identify the needs and challenges of the prospective customer
- Meeting Scheduling: Schedule discovery meetings for sales representatives and prospects
- Sales Process Optimization: Establish a strong foundation and optimize the sales process, select, implement, and manage sales automation tools
- Proposal Development: Build, review, and assess the proposals with the account team/pre-sales responsible
- Cross-Department Collaboration: Work closely with the legal, marketing, and finance departments regarding bookings
- Executive Support: Support the VP of worldwide sales in terms of reviews
- Sales Forecasting: Oversee the sales funnel and perform sales forecasting
- Goal Setting: Work with sales leadership to develop organizational goals and strategy
3. Global Business Development Manager Overview
- Brand Onboarding: Connect with Brands and onboard them.
- Influencer Engagement: Connect with influencers and decision-makers involved in procuring IT/software development services
- Pre-Sales Coordination: Coordinate with the Technical team to schedule pre-sales discussions, ensuring smooth communication between the prospect and sales team.
- Pipeline Management: Responsible for setting up the pipeline and driving the revenue growth
- Client Prospecting: Research, prospect, and build a targeted client base for business development
- Lead Follow-Up: Regular follow-ups with the prospects that have been identified as potential clients and who have shown interest in using the services
- Product Presentation: Provide product information to prospective customers
- International Business Monitoring: Monitor the effective implementation of international business development activities.
- Regional Planning: Develop individual business plans for each Region assigned.
- Sales and Market Development: Administer and develop initiatives to increase sales and market development activities.
- Business Strategy Analysis: Analyze business strategies and develop improvement plans for the same to provide appropriate growth to the business.
4. Global Business Development Manager Functions
- Opportunity Identification: Assist businesses in identifying opportunities and developing strategic plans to enhance them.
- Business Planning: Design plans to achieve all objectives and develop plans for a new business.
- Staff Training: Train and guide staff members and business development issues.
- Team Coordination: Coordinate with the management team and maintain accounts, and participate in every fortnightly conference.
- Prospect Analysis: Analyze the business and review prospects for the same.
- Customer Communication: Manage all customer communication and maintain an effective relationship with all.
- Capture Strategy: Prepare and implement various capture methods for business development.
- Competitor Analysis: Review competitor plans and the effect of products and services on management.
- Strategy Forecasting: Forecasting strategies according to customer budgets and procurement methods.
- Task Ownership: Take ownership of assignments and work independently on their own to complete the tasks on time with quality.
5. Global Business Development Manager Details
- Pitch Process Management: Manage global pitch process to the highest level of operational discipline, ensuring deliverables are met on time
- Stakeholder Engagement: Engage with senior stakeholders when needed, and always ready to solve any problem with the right energy and hunger, and support game-changing local pitches
- Work Elevation: Contribute to elevating the work in markets to be Best in Class, by being proactive and resourceful
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborate across functions to bring the best of the company in pitches
- Prospecting Support: Support active prospecting globally and locally, establishing good momentum and a sense of ownership in the markets
- Strategy Execution: Support the execution of the prospecting agenda globally and with key markets, contributing to the overall strategy by identifying opportunities and innovative ways to connect
- Pitch Collateral Management: Manage the delivery of high-calibre RFIs, RFPs, pitch presentations, and all pitch collateral, with a keen eye for detail, sharp editing skills, and a creative flair to oversee the design and production of pitch theatre
- Pitch Project Management: Seamless pitch project management covering all aspects from kick off to close, building and governing workstreams to ensure all deadlines are met and work is of the highest possible standard
- Process Adoption: Contribute to and drive the adoption of the pitch WIN Process
- Relationship Building: Establish strong professional relationships with peers across the organisation, including managing the global community network
- Regional Collaboration: Closely collaborate with new business regional peers with a focus on EMEA, and new business peers at GroupM and other GroupM/WPP agencies
- Business Reporting: Contribute to all new business reporting internally and externally to WPP, COMvergence, R3, AdAge