Business Development Executive - (Department of Education & Human Services)
The Opportunity
As a Human Services Business Development Executive, you will be a senior leader driving Abt’s growth strategy. Experience building business in the federal human services markets and in-depth familiarity with associated Federal agencies, including DOL, SSA, USDA, Department of Education (ED), and Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and related state agencies will allow you to be grow new business and increase Abt’s impact. You should have superlative client relationship development skills and experience that includes pipeline creation and qualification, business development capture, proposal management, client buyer value and win theme definition, teaming and partnering, and competitive positioning. You will partner with Client Account Leads and other growth-focused team members to identify, qualify, assess, and win high priority business opportunities. These opportunities will include new opportunities with existing clients as well as new opportunities with new clients (i.e., ‘white space market areas’). You will meet with clients, build relationships with key partners, develop winning bid strategies, including crafting key inputs into solutioning, pricing, teaming, and staffing, and identify resources and requirements to pursue, bid and win.
Core Responsibilities:
- Identify opportunities through client engagement, client and partner networks, and market intelligence tools and data.
- Align opportunity pursuit to company criteria and strategic priorities.
- Opportunity qualification, including validated win themes and solution features, resulting in a larger qualified pipeline and higher PWin pursuits
- Partner with Client Account Leads (CAL) to execute Account Plan and Strategy; Support CAL(s), providing inputs into annual Account Plan(s)
- Secure new client relationships and expand existing relationships through creation of relationship maps and call plans and identifying client decision makers and influencers.
- Identify and support up-sell/cross-sell opportunities from existing contracts
- Support and drive the early phases of capture activities, including:
Identifying customers’ strategic priorities, goals, pain points, needs
Liaising with Abt Horizontals to identify and shape high level solutions
Defining competitive landscape and Abt positioning relative to competition
Define the initial “Why Abt” rationale, teaming strategy
Creation of materials for Division leadership, Bid Board for go-no-go determinations
Lead RFI responses - As needed, support and drive later stages of capture, including:
Supporting more detailed solutioning, pricing, price-to-win activities
Providing support to proposal management process, including providing key inputs into written response.
Participating in color team reviews
Leading/participating in Black Hat/competitive assessments - Identify and negotiate with partners and prepare input for NDAs and TAs (working with Contracts)
- Creation of client sales presentation materials and decks. Support the creation of sales/marketing material.
- Identify new opportunities for pursuit, including early identification of opportunities that go to RFP as well as “demand generation” activities that define and shape new opportunities with clients for which Abt is well positioned.
- Maintain and update opportunity management system
- Achieve and exceed annual sales goals. Grow a larger and more qualified sales pipeline, especially digital.
- Develop business development skills of key staff
What We Value:
- Bachelor’s Degree and 15 years of experience
- Minimum of 7-10 years’ experience in business development, capture, or equivalent client facing/relationship development role.
- Demonstrated success in identifying, initiating, and nurturing new or ongoing business opportunities at DOL, SSA, USDA, ED, ACF, and related state agencies.
- Preference for business development in the areas of digital, data analytics, technical assistance delivery and research/public policy.
- Previous work with DOL, SSA, USDA, ED, or ACF and strong relationships with current Program Leaders and decision-makers
- Strong working knowledge of DOL, SSA, USDA, ED, or ACF organizations, mission areas, and programs
- Deep understanding of federal human services market, including but not limited to knowledge of education access and quality, workforce development, and disability benefits.
- Communication and interpersonal skills including verbal and presentation skills to individuals and groups, internally and externally
- Writing skills to include development of content incorporating key win themes in a clear and concise manner
- Superior proficiency with Microsoft Office tools (e.g., Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Teams, etc.)
- Experience with CRM tools
Nice to have
- Experience in writing online content
- Additional languages
- Google Adwords experience
- Strong analytical skills