Senior Sector Business Development Executive

A leading UK law firm with a network of offices from the South Coast to Scotland, working together as one national team. An innovative practice and the first top 50 law firm to achieve “Platinum Standard” Investors in People, our values and culture are not just words on our website but are the heartbeat of the firm. The lack of barriers between departments, a real lack of hierarchy, zero tolerance for arrogance makes Shoosmiths a fantastic place to work.

The Business Development & Marketing team takes much care of the firm’s external reputation, employing a number of tools to optimise our profile in the market.  Growing profitable income from clients and targets is the key aim of the national Business Development team, and they do this in two main ways, by:

• supporting Relationships (with existing Clients, Targets and Intermediaries)
• developing a strong brand, profile and Reputation for Shoosmiths in the UK market and overseas.

A newly created role within Shoosmiths’ Business Development (BD) team, delivering strategic advisory and tactical external marketing activity and support (mainly comms and content related) aligned to Shoosmiths’ 5 Sectors (Financial Services, Infrastructure & Energy, Living, Mobility and Technology) with the objective of raising the profile of the Sectors in the market and their ability to attract new work.

Through developing a close understanding of, and insight into, the strategic and financial priorities of the Sectors, the role will champion and channel those priorities into the central BD team’s market-facing relationship and reputational activities.

This role facilitates an interface between the Sectors and our central BD functions of relationship management, bids/new business, PR, events/ campaigns, client insight and design and digital. As well as working with our Business Development Managers (BDM) who also support on Sector activities. You will therefore work closely with and co-ordinate input from various BD team members to deliver the priorities of this role and to provide tactical delivery of new external marketing activity.

Key to success of the role is proactively building relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including the five Sector Heads, membership associations, organisations and trade bodies, and the BD team.

Strategic plans/ prioritisation

• Deploy an understanding of the Sector strategies, including an understanding of the key markets/ sub-sectors and the most effective routes to new income (i.e. what BD activity produces the most income for least effort);
• Develop a good working understanding of the key memberships, trade bodies and other organisations and associations aligned to each Sector and how to maximise the opportunities these present;
• Support the implementation of each Sector’s strategic objectives;
• Assess and agree (with the Head of Client & Market Knowledge and the Sector Heads) the key priority areas of focus and outputs required of the role for each 6 month period;

Production of content and support for external profile raising

• Proactively suggest themes / subject areas for thought leadership (with an individual Sector or cross-Sector focus), for example articles / reports / events on emergent legal challenges or trends / new legislation / industry issues;
• Work with the Events/Campaigns team, PR team and BDMs to support the delivery of initiatives in the optimum way, e.g. tracking and ensuring follow up from events;
• Provide content as required for digital lead generation and other campaigns;
• Identifying profile-raising/ speaking opportunities;
• Build and put in place an approach to maintaining a bank of Sector experience/ examples to feed into ‘At a glance’ experience flyers / case studies and credentials documents;
• Develop an awareness and understanding of Sector work and pipeline to proactively provide ‘pre-prepared’ press release drafts on major deals to assist the central PR team with timely publication;
• Work with the PR team on social media campaigns relating to Sector work/ initiatives;
• Suggest awards that would be relevant and input in drafting award submissions;
• Create/curate content for Shoosmiths’ external website, helping write and generate new material to ensure it remains up to date and relevant.

Other ad-hoc projects/initiatives

Including but not limited to:

• Assistance with measurement/ Sector reporting;
• Helping draft internal comms/ presentations relating to the Sectors/ success stories.

• Degree educated and CIM qualifications preferred;
• Experience working in one or more of our Sectors and ideally within a law firm partnership structure or the financial services sector;
• Good content writer – able to draft insights, contributions to thought leadership reports and accurately obtain and translate the details of a deal and convert it into compelling copy;
• Comfortable working to strict deadlines and in pressurised environments without compromising on quality of work;
• Ability to manage and prioritise own workload, motivated to achieve long term goals;
• Accuracy and attention to detail, and a keen commercial and business sense;
• Knowledge and application of Microsoft Office suite, Webex / Teams. SAP, InterAction, and Vuture desirable.

Key skills and behaviours

• Proven ability to advise and influence senior stakeholders;
• Commercially aware with a track record of growing existing and new business;
• Pro-active – confident with idea generation and implementation;
• Shows judgment and common sense;
• Team player, able to work collaboratively within various virtual teams;
• Diplomacy and prioritisation of requests for assistance, to ensure that requests do not exceed the bounds of central BD resource provision;
• Personable yet robust in approach;
• Highly organised, able to run multiple projects concurrently;
• Persuasive and persistent approach to co-ordinating busy stakeholders’ inputs.

Our approach to our people is underpinned by our approach to diversity, inclusion and well being. Our ambition is to build a diverse and ambitious workforce that reflects all backgrounds and talents, and a workplace that is supportive and inclusive, recognises and nurtures talent, and has a strong sense of community between colleagues.

This means that everyone who either applies to or works for the firm is treated equally, whatever their gender, age, ethnic origin, nationality, marital status, disability, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.