The Leadership Advisory Services (LAS) Practice is an exciting, vibrant, and dynamic practice within Spencer Stuart. Operating in partnership with the Firm’s market-leading Executive Search business, LAS professionals provide advice and partnership to clients navigating a range of key leadership and talent issues including: aligning culture and talent strategy with business strategy; maximizing team effectiveness; merger integration support; executive assessment; and talent development and transition support. LAS provides expertise in leadership assessment and development, which is a critical component to CEO succession. Furthermore, LAS is the engine that drives our capabilities and culture models, which are employed during CEO Succession engagements to ensure clients take a multi-faceted approach towards their leadership decisions.

THE ROLE

Spencer Stuart is investing in our approach to business development, with a focus on more effective client targeting, improving the quality and impact of our interactions with potential clients, and creating a more competitive approach to business development.

The primary role of the Client Development Manager (CDM) in LAS is to partner with consultants on strategic ‘hands on’ business development and content-creation in support of business development and client pitches. The CDM will work in close collaboration with consulting teams and other cross-functional teams to enable world-class business development and opportunity pursuit. They will facilitate the development of BD materials and client-interaction approaches that build our firm’s reputation as the preeminent global leadership advisory firm.

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

Reports to

EMEA LAS Practice Leader
LAS Chief Operating Officer

Team

NA LAS Client Development Manager
NA and EMEA LAS Client Development Analysts

Other key relationships
LAS Consultants and Associates
Executive Search Consultants
Corporate Marketing Team

Location

Any city with a Spencer Stuart office; with a preference for locations in Amsterdam or within Central and Eastern European time zones

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Business Development and Opportunity Pursuit
• Serve as go-to resource and the “face” of client development for the Global LAS Practice—particularly in EMEA—partnering with consultants on regional/local BD efforts
• Partner closely with LAS consultants to design pitch strategies and create supporting materials
• Facilitate and support pursuit teams in preparing for client meetings, ensuring preparation and rehearsal meetings are scheduled, meeting objectives and timelines are shared and well understood, and content-plan is co-created in a manner that satisfies the internal stakeholders and ultimately the external stakeholders
• Create insightful, customized qualifications packs and pitch materials for new business development opportunities, and orchestrate regular updates of key materials
• Partner closely with LAS Consultants to develop content/material for specific Strategic Client situations/meetings (e.g., pitch, annual/quarterly review, relationship-building)
• Identify opportunities to leverage knowledge/insights/data/analytics to enable BD and pursuit activities —while also fostering connectivity with other LAS teams and client support functions globally, to bring the best of LAS and SSI to local teams and pitches

Content Creation, Sharing and Management
•In partnership with Practice Leadership, redefine and continuously improve the LAS go-to-market narrative – incorporating new service lines and evolving solutions
• Translate and tailor firm-level intellectual capital strategy/themes being driven by Marketing, ensuring dots are connected
• Gather learnings from pitches and business development to share internally to ensure we are continuously refining and improving our processes, responsiveness, and pitch effectiveness
• Actively contribute and participate in the global community, by sharing and leveraging others’ insights, ideas and best practices with fellow CDMs
• Create approach and lead analyst team to maintain, curate, and regularly update pitch content/materials on Connect Site
• Create and identify best-practice pitch content/materials to regularly share with Practices and Firm
• In close collaboration with fellow CDM, develop communication strategy for syndicating pitch content to/across Practice and Firm

Practice Operations
• Develop approaches, leveraging Pipeline tools as possible, to assess and analyze “win rates”
• Work with initiative teams to leverage new technologies and processes

Team Leadership/Management
• Provide oversight to and develop Analysts when partnering with them on tasks and/or projects
• Guide Analysts as needed on creation of BD deliverables
• Direct Analysts in creating and maintaining current data/statistics in the areas of relevant engagements lists/case studies, BD target lists, win rates and other key BD related KPIs

DESIRED OUTCOMES

Desired outcomes will be developed and refined in partnership with LAS Leadership. Some initial priorities for the first 12 months include:

• Established fluency in writing complex proposal decks, bringing the firm’s breadth of offering to client situations
• Proposed process-design and best practices for opportunity identification, work intake and assignment, and content development/management
• Enabling the team’s capacity and capability to support LAS specific projects and pursuits to keep pace with the practice’s current and growing volume and scope of work
• Develop and lead a strong team of Analysts who are able to meaningfully contribute to deliverables and initiatives

The ideal candidate will be a bright problem solver with a balance of creativity and strong analytical skills. They will have a proven track record of creating compelling, insightful content and the agility to imagine new and innovative ways of approaching insight creation. They will be a strong relationship-builder with a relentless client service orientation, the confidence and maturity to be a credible trusted partner to a sophisticated internal client base, and the drive to collaborate effectively with peers and cross-functional teams.

IDEAL EXPERIENCE

• Approximately 5-7 years’ experience in professional services and/or executive search experience, with a focus on proposal support and/or business development; knowledge of leadership advisory services a plus
• Has managed business development and has experience with content-creation activities and processes
• Has managed operational activities and processes; ideally with experience managing a small team of analysts
• Undergraduate degree is required; master’s degree a plus