Business Development Manager, Forums

Full-time position

What’s the job?

Where do I work?

Tortoise Head Office, London (22 Berners Street) plus some flexibility to work remotely 1-2 days per week (pending Covid regulations).

Why are we here?

We’re building a different type of newsroom, for a slower, wiser news. Now more than ever it’s important to have calm, clear journalism you can trust. We’re not chasing breaking news, but revealing what’s driving it. Built to cover stories not as they happen, but when they’re ready. Where everyone has a seat at the table. Tortoise sets out to bring people together to try and make sense of the world. We’re here to build journalism that lasts.

At Tortoise, we don’t take ads. We don’t chase eyeballs or sell data. Instead, we work with partners to build bespoke products and communications solutions built on Tortoise’s code of journalistic values of organised listening, independence and openness.

We work with responsible and courageous leaders across all industries willing to back a new form of journalism, enable the public debate, share their expertise and communicate their point of view.

What’s my personal contribution?

We are building membership-driven business networks for C-suite executives and policy leaders. Our Forums are already attracting some of the highest profile CEOs who run the world’s most influential organisations. Supported by world-class industry research, our members pay to access peer-to-peer discussion forums, networking dinners and roundtables. We are quickly building a reputation for providing distinctive and influential events that attract extremely high calibre members.

Your role will be to take a lead on shaping our proposition as we expand into new industries and markets. This will involve a combination of taking brand new products to market, as well as longer-range planning to ensure that our proposition continues to be distinctive and deliver value to our members. Success will be defined by our ability to build a highly engaged membership that renews year-on-year.

Day-to-day your role will be varied, ranging from front-line business development, to developing marketing materials, to working closely with our editors and founders to identify strategic growth opportunities. As a member of the partnerships team we are principally charged with revenue growth, but we also play a central role in product development and delivery. You will be working within a group which is extremely collaborative, hands-on and measured as a team effort.

What are my responsibilities & accountabilities?

Work with editorial, delivery and commercial stakeholders to develop new products that deliver our editorial and commercial objectives
Own the ‘go-to-market’ effort for newly launched products, taking a lead on the development of member and partner revenues, as well as the delivery process
Work with the Head of Business Networks and wider partnerships team to build a pipeline of member and partner revenues
Lead business development conversations with senior stakeholders at target organisations and create persuasive proposals that secure long-term relationships.
Develop associated marketing materials (website; programme; video content)
Manage the relationship with commercial partners and delivery partners
Work closely with the operations and logistics teams to deliver our roundtables, dinner and Forums (though this would be managed by the ThinkIn team)
Work closely with the membership managers to drive year-round member engagement, renewals and retention.

What do I show? Essential behaviours

Fluency with the end-to-end creation and delivery of events and publishing products
Confident communicator with strong verbal and written skills
A track record of developing new business and negotiating with senior stakeholders
Excited about being in a high growth start-up environment, and building new product and propositions from scratch
Experience working in a creative environment with multiple teams balancing different priorities (commercial and delivery)
Experience working closely with Exec-level stakeholders
Multi-tasker – able to keep track of multiple projects at one time
Highly organised – able to keep track of progress across the business
A sound knowledge of currents affairs
Proactive – able to take an initial idea, and run with it
Positive attitude – able to handle changing goals / targets
Unflappable under pressure – work with tight turnaround time

Salary and benefits

Competitive salary + bonus (team and individual)
28 days annual leave
Pension
Private Healthcare

Apply now

To apply, please send your CV and cover letter to Chris Howells (chris.howells@tortoisemedia.com) by 12 August.