Business Development / Account Lead

Location:

Novi Sad

Position:

Full-time, hybrid

ABOUT THE ROLE

This role owns the commercial work between initial interest and senior-level closing involvement. It qualifies opportunities, maintains pipeline discipline, runs discovery, advances next steps, coordinates proposals, and ensures prospects don't disappear, since the CEO manages multiple relationships at once.

This is not a high-volume SDR role and not a passive account-manager role. It requires consultative selling, strong writing, commercial judgment, and disciplined follow-through across complex services and technology opportunities.

CORE ACCOUNTABILITIES

1. Own pipeline integrity

Maintain one reliable CRM record for every assigned prospect and account.

2. Qualify opportunities

Use a practical BANT/MEDDICC-style framework without turning discovery into an interrogation.

The Account Lead may disqualify weak opportunities and should protect the CEO from meetings with no defined buyer problem or plausible commercial path.

3. Run discovery and progression

For qualified opportunities:

• Prepare an account brief before the call.
• Define the call objective and required questions.
• Lead or support discovery.
• Document the buyer's language.
• Confirm the problem, impact, and decision process.
• Send a written recap within one business day.
• Secure a specific next step.
• Coordinate required internal experts.
• Maintain a mutual action plan for complex opportunities.

4. Coordinate proposals and SOWs

Translate discovery into a commercial package containing:

• Buyer problem.
• Desired outcome.
• Scope.
• Deliverables.
• Assumptions.
• Client responsibilities.
• Timeline.
• Acceptance criteria.
• Price and payment schedule.
• Exclusions.
• Change-control process.
• Proposed next step.

The role owns proposal completeness. The CEO approves positioning, pricing, and material commercial terms. 

5. Own commercial follow-up

• Respond quickly to inbound interest.
• Confirm meetings and next steps.
• Follow up on proposals and unanswered questions.
• Coordinate procurement, security, legal, and finance requests.
• Track verbal commitments until signed.
• Escalate relationship-sensitive issues to the CEO.
• Close lost opportunities with a documented reason.

6. Handoff closed work into delivery

Before a project begins, provide the Delivery Director with:

• Signed agreement and final scope.
• Commercial commitments.
• Stakeholder map.
• Required dates.
• Buyer expectations.
• Known sensitivities.
• Acceptance conditions.
• Billing schedule.
• Open risks.
• Communication cadence.

OPERATING CADENCE

Daily:

• Respond to new interests.
• Review overdue follow-ups.
• Prepare for discovery calls.
• Update CRM immediately after activity.
• Send meeting recaps.
• Advance proposals and procurement.
• Identify where the CEO's involvement will materially change the outcome.

SOFTWARE OPERATING SYSTEM

CRM: authoritative commercial record

Use one approved CRM, such as HubSpot, Zoho, or Attio, for every assigned opportunity.

Required configuration:

• Defined stages with objective exit criteria.
• Required qualification fields.
• Dated next-step field.
• Relationship owner.
• Expected close and commercial value.
• Activity and meeting history.
• Proposal and contract links.
• Lost-reason taxonomy.
• Inactivity reminders.
• Pipeline and forecast dashboards.

PROSPECTING AND RESEARCH

Expected familiarity:

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
• Apollo, Clay, or equivalent enrichment.
• Company and buyer research.
• Relationship mapping.
• Warm-introduction tracking.
• Contact and account deduplication.

OUTREACH SYSTEM

Relevant tools may include:

• Instantly or Smartlead for email.
• HeyReach for LinkedIn.
• CRM sequences.
• Calendar and meeting-booking tools.

MEETING INTELLIGENCE

Use Fathom, Granola, Otter, or an approved equivalent to capture calls. The Account Lead remains responsible for verifying notes and entering commercial conclusions into the CRM.

REQUIRED EXPERTISE

• 5–10 years in consultative B2B sales, business development, account leadership, or professional services.
• Experience selling software, technology services, healthcare services, or complex advisory work.
• Strong discovery and qualification.
• Excellent written proposals and executive follow-up.
• CRM discipline.
• Ability to understand delivery without pretending to be the technical expert.
• Commercial modeling and negotiation literacy.
• Experience with multi-stakeholder buying processes.
• High judgment with senior relationships.
• Ability to respectfully disqualify opportunities.
• Demonstrated use of AI for account research, discovery preparation, transcript synthesis, CRM structuring, proposal development, and sales-process inspection.
• Ability to build reusable context, prompt, and workflow assets instead of relying on one-off chats.
• Hands-on literacy with CRM automation, enrichment, meeting intelligence, sequences, structured data, and workflow integrations.
• Ability to evaluate AI output for factual support, commercial relevance, tone, privacy, and unintended commitments.
• Strong instinct for where human credibility, empathy, negotiation, and senior judgment must take over.



The ideal candidate is more commercially rigorous than a networker, more relationship-oriented than a traditional sales-operations manager, and able to govern AI as a force multiplier rather than delegate judgment to it.

AI-native commercial operating layer

AI should make the Account Lead better prepared, faster, more consistent, and more responsive while leaving relationship judgment and material commitments with people.

Required workflows:

1. Account intelligence:

   Build an evidence-linked account brief covering business model, current initiatives, likely pain, relevant relationships, trigger events, and a testable commercial hypothesis.

2. Relationship mapping:

   Combine CRM history, approved communication records, LinkedIn, and warm-introduction paths to identify buyers, champions, blockers, and Alex's highest-leverage involvement.

3. Meeting preparation:

   Generate a discovery plan, hypothesis tree, proof points, risks, and unanswered qualification questions before each material call.

4. Call-to-CRM:

   Turn an approved recording or transcript into proposed qualification evidence, objections, commitments, decision process, dated next actions, and missing information; the Account Lead verifies before updating the CRM.

5. Proposal assembly:

   Draft a client-specific narrative, outcome, scope, assumptions, dependencies, commercial options, and delivery handoff from approved building blocks and source evidence.

6. Follow-up:

   Prepare concise, context-specific follow-up while the conversation is fresh. External sends remain human-reviewed.

7. Commercial learning loop:

   Feed call outcomes, edits, objections, wins, losses, delivery results, and collected revenue back into ICP, qualification, messaging, proof, and proposal workflows.

8. Pipeline inspection:

   Surface opportunities with stale next steps, weak evidence, hidden delivery dependencies, inconsistent stage, or forecast risk.

PROPOSALS AND SIGNATURES

Expected proficiency:

• Google Docs or Microsoft Word.
• Google Slides or PowerPoint.
• PandaDoc, DocuSign, or equivalent.
• Pricing and scenario models in Sheets or Excel.
• Standard NDA, MSA, and SOW workflows.

Izvor: https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/4463978739/

Nivo: senior