WHAT DOES A GLOBAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT MANAGER DO?
Reviewed under Editorial Standards by Lam Nguyen

Updated: Jan 23, 2026 - 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
Editorial Process

Lamwork content is developed through structured review of publicly available job postings and documented hiring trends.

Editorial operations are managed by Thanh Huyen, Managing Editor, with research direction and final oversight by Lam Nguyen, Founder & Editorial Lead. Content is periodically reviewed to reflect observable labor market changes.