Job Description
Business Development Manager
We are an ambitious Plant, Tool and Event Hire company operating out of 3 depots along the M40 corridor, looking to grow our hire business and seeking an experienced business development manager to bring in new clients.
Job Title: Business Development Manager
Reporting To: Chief Executive Officer
Primary Location: Wheatley Depot (Head Office), with extensive travel across Greenplant’s depots and customer territory
Hours: A normal working week of 40 hours, ordinarily worked Monday to Friday. The role requires flexibility, including occasional evening and weekend working (for example, attending events), and the salary is inclusive of all hours reasonably necessary to carry out the role; no overtime is payable.
Job Description
Business Development Manager
Job Title: Business Development Manager
Reporting To: Chief Executive Officer
Primary Location: Wheatley Depot (Head Office), with extensive travel across Greenplant’s depots and customer territory
Hours: A normal working week of 40 hours, ordinarily worked Monday to Friday. The role requires flexibility, including occasional evening and weekend working (for example, attending events), and the salary is inclusive of all hours reasonably necessary to carry out the role; no overtime is payable.
Remuneration: £30,000 base salary with company car (negotiable), plus competitive bonus system with uncapped ceiling for bring in new business
Purpose of the Role:
Greenplant is investing in growth, and the Business Development Manager is the role that drives it. You will be the face of the business in the marketplace — out winning new hire customers, deepening existing accounts, and making sure Greenplant is the first name local contractors, councils, schools and events organisers think of when they need plant.
This is a proactive, customer-facing sales role. Our marketing and communications function produces the materials, manages the website and generates awareness; your job is to convert that into signed accounts and live hires. You will own the sales pipeline from first contact through to a trading customer, and you will be measured on the new revenue and accounts you bring to the business across all depots.
This role complements the selling already done at depot level. Greenplant’s depots continue to serve their local and trade customers directly. The Business Development Manager focuses on winning new business the depots are not already reaching, on larger and cross-depot accounts, and on the more formal procurement, framework and events opportunities that sit beyond day-to-day depot trading. New accounts won are handed to the relevant depot for ongoing service, with the Business Development Manager remaining the relationship lead only on the larger strategic accounts. Depot teams are partners and a valuable source of leads and local knowledge — not competitors.
Key Responsibilities:
1. New Business Development
Winning new customers is the core of this role.
- Proactively identify, target and approach prospective customers across Greenplant’s key sectors — building and construction contractors, local authorities, schools and the wider education sector, events and entertainment companies, facilities management, groundworks, utilities, and related trades.
- Generate your own leads through cold and warm outreach, site visits, networking, referrals and follow-up of marketing-generated enquiries.
- Build a strong, well-qualified pipeline and progress opportunities through to open, trading hire accounts.
- Set up new credit accounts in conjunction with the accounts team, ensuring the correct onboarding and account-opening process is followed.
2. Sector-Specific Selling
Different customers buy in different ways, and you will be expected to flex your approach accordingly.
- Trade and construction: build site-level and buyer-level relationships, win repeat hire, and become the contractor’s default hire partner.
- Local authorities and schools: navigate public-sector procurement — approved supplier lists, frameworks, tenders and pre-qualification (PQQ) processes — and build relationships with procurement, estates and facilities teams. Manage the longer sales cycles these accounts involve.
- Events: develop a seasonal, project-led pipeline, understanding the access, power, welfare and equipment needs of events organisers and responding quickly to time-sensitive requirements.
3. Account Development and Handover
- Focus your account-growth effort on the new and strategic accounts you bring in, and on larger or cross-depot accounts — rather than the local trade customers the depots already manage.
- Once a new account is won and established, hand day-to-day servicing to the relevant depot, remaining the relationship lead only on the larger strategic accounts.
- Identify and reactivate significant lapsed accounts, coordinating with the relevant depot rather than cutting across it.
- Gather and feed back customer requirements that may inform fleet investment decisions — for example, recurring demand for equipment Greenplant does not currently own.
4. Quoting and Commercial Discipline
- Prepare and present quotations using the in-house hire software within agreed pricing and margin parameters, working with depot managers on availability and specification.
- Understand Greenplant’s fleet, rates and the economics of a hire deal well enough to sell on value and service — not simply on price.
- Maintain pricing discipline: never commit below agreed floor pricing without authorisation, and escalate where a customer expects rates that fall outside agreed parameters.
5. Working with Marketing and Operations
- Work closely with the Marketing and Communications Manager — using the campaigns, collateral and digital presence they produce, and feeding back market intelligence, customer insight and content ideas from the field.
- Coordinate with depot managers and operational staff to ensure that what you hire can be delivered, and that customers receive the service standard Greenplant promises.
- Work alongside depot teams so that business development activity complements, and does not cut across, the sales relationships depots already hold; keep depot managers informed of activity in their area and treat them as partners.
- Support the launch of new depots, including building a pre-launch sales pipeline ahead of opening so that new branches trade strongly from day one.
6. Market Intelligence and Reporting
- Monitor competitor activity — national hirers and local independents alike — reporting on their pricing, fleet and tactics in your territory.
- Maintain accurate, up-to-date records of activity, pipeline and accounts in the company’s systems.
- Report at least weekly to the CEO on pipeline, wins, lost opportunities, and progress against targets, with clear recommendations.
7. Representing Greenplant
- Represent the business professionally at customer premises, sites, trade events and networking opportunities.
- Act at all times as a positive ambassador for Greenplant’s reputation, values and service standards.
Person Specification
Essential
- Experience in plant and tool hire.
- Knowledge of plant and equipment.
- A proven track record in business-to-business field sales or business development, with a demonstrable history of winning new accounts and hitting targets.
- Full UK driving licence.
- Confident relationship-builder, able to engage credibly with everyone from a site foreman to a council procurement officer.
- Commercial acumen — comfortable with quotes, margins and the basics of how a hire deal makes money.
- Self-motivated, well-organised and disciplined about pipeline management and record-keeping.
- Willingness to travel extensively across the territory and to manage your own diary effectively.
Desirable
- An existing network of contacts among contractors, local authorities, schools or events companies in the Oxfordshire and wider Thames Valley region.
- Familiarity with common plant and equipment and the ability to talk knowledgeably about the fleet.
- Experience of public-sector procurement, tendering and framework processes.
- Experience using a hire management or CRM system.
Pay: £30,000.00-£60,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- Company car
- Company pension
- Free parking
Experience:
- Plant and Tool Hire: 2 years (required)
Work Location: On the road
