Business Development Manager

Overview

You sell AI-powered contact center and BPO services to enterprise companies in Poland and internationally. Your buyers are operations directors, CX leaders, CFOs, and CTOs at mid-to-large companies who need to outsource customer service, technical support, or back-office operations. You're selling consulting engagements and long-term service contracts - this is not transactional software.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Established/Growth (365 employees)

Size: Mid-market BPO provider

Growth: International expansion focused, building out BD team

Market Position: AI-enabled challenger in a crowded BPO space competing against larger players and offshore providers

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 70% Outbound - Cold outreach to target accounts in finance, eCommerce, healthcare. You're building lists, researching companies looking to outsource or switch providers, and doing cold LinkedIn/email campaigns
• 20% Referrals/Network - Existing client introductions, partner referrals
• 10% Inbound - Website inquiries (rare for enterprise BPO)

SDR/AE Structure: Self-sourcing. You own the full cycle from identification to close. No SDR team feeding you leads.

SE Support: Solution architects and delivery team get involved mid-cycle for scoping and proposals, but early discovery is all you.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Large BPO players (Teleperformance, Concentrix, Genpact), offshore providers (India, Philippines), regional Polish providers, in-house operations teams

How They Differentiate: AI-powered tools (their proprietary bots and microservices), nearshore Poland location for European clients, consultative approach vs pure body shop

Common Objections: "We handle this in-house", "Offshore is cheaper", "We tried outsourcing and it failed", "Your team won't understand our business", "What's your AI actually doing?"

Win Themes: Cost reduction with quality maintenance, AI automation reducing headcount needs, flexible scaling, European time zones and cultural fit

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (35%) | Active Deals (40%) | Proposals/Internal (25%)

Key Activities

• Account Research & Outreach: Identify companies with large customer service operations in target verticals. Build lists of directors of operations, CX VPs, COOs. Send cold LinkedIn messages and emails. Most don't respond. You're trying to get 3-5 discovery calls per week.
• Discovery & Scoping: Multi-call process to understand their current setup (how many agents, what channels, what systems, what's broken). You're mapping stakeholders and figuring out if there's a real project. Many of these go nowhere - they're "just looking" or timeline is 18+ months out.
• Stakeholder Management: Once there's interest, you're coordinating demos with solution architects, involving delivery managers, doing site visits. Deals have 5-10 people involved on their side - operations, IT, finance, procurement, legal. You spend a lot of time chasing people for next steps.
• Proposal & Negotiation: Working with internal teams to build detailed SOWs - pricing per FTE, technology costs, SLAs, KPIs. Then rounds of redlines with their legal and procurement. Deals slip quarters regularly because "they're not ready" or budget got frozen.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Deals take forever. You'll have 8-15 active opportunities at various stages, but only 2-3 will actually close in a given quarter. Rest push right or die.
• Buying decision is complex and political. Operations wants you, IT is skeptical about integrations, finance is comparing you to cheap offshore options, and someone in the C-suite may kill it because they don't trust outsourcing.
• You're often competing against "do nothing" - they complain about their current setup but decide to just hire more internal staff instead.
• BPO has a reputation problem. You'll hear stories about failed outsourcing projects. You're constantly reassuring buyers this won't be another disaster.
• Quota attainment is lumpy - you might close $1M in Q2 and $200K in Q3 because deals move on their timeline, not yours.

What Success Looks Like

• Close 3-5 new enterprise contracts per year worth $2-4M in total annual recurring revenue
• Build a pipeline of 15-20 qualified opportunities at $5M+ potential value
• Get referenced by existing clients who are happy enough to take calls with your prospects
• Maintain 60-70% of your deals year-over-year (retention/expansion is a big part of account management after initial sale)

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Director/VP of Customer Operations (day-to-day pain owner)
• CFO or Head of Finance (cost reduction buyer)
• CTO/Head of IT (integration and tech stack concerns)
• COO or CEO (strategic decision maker on build vs. buy)

What They Care About:

• Cost per contact/ticket vs. internal team: They're modeling FTE costs and comparing your pricing to hiring internally
• Quality and SLAs: CSAT scores, first response time, resolution rates - they've been burned before
• Integration complexity: Does this plug into Salesforce, Zendesk, their IVR? How long to onboard?
• Flexibility: Can they scale up/down seasonally? What if their product changes?
• Risk mitigation: What happens if your team underperforms? Exit clauses, performance guarantees

Requirements

• 5+ years B2B sales experience selling services, outsourcing, or technology solutions (not just software)
• Direct experience in financial services, eCommerce, or healthcare verticals preferred
• Proven track record managing 6-12 month enterprise sales cycles with multiple stakeholders
• Comfort with consultative selling - you need to diagnose their operations before pitching
• Experience navigating procurement, legal, and complex contract negotiations
• Polish language fluency and English proficiency for international clients
• Self-starter who can build pipeline without inbound lead flow
• Existing network in target industries is a major plus