Global Business Development Leader

Overview

You'll run Piano's global business development function targeting healthcare and BFSI (banking, financial services, insurance) verticals. Piano's platform does customer data integration, personalization, and analytics—historically sold to media/publishing companies. You're opening new markets where the buyer, use case, and sales motion aren't proven yet. You'll hire a team, build the go-to-market playbook, and likely close early deals yourself to figure out what works.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Growth-stage private company (773 employees suggests Series C/D+ or PE-backed)

Size: 773 employees globally

Growth: Mature enough to verticalize, but still expanding GTM org

Market Position: Established in media/publishing, unproven in healthcare and financial services. Competing against analytics platforms, CDPs, and personalization tools that already have vertical traction in these markets.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 90% Outbound - You're building lists of healthcare systems, insurance companies, and banks that might have use cases for Piano's platform. No warm leads waiting for you.
• 10% Referrals - Existing Piano customers or partners who know someone in these verticals.

SDR/AE Structure: You'll likely build this. Probably start with hiring 1-2 senior AEs who can hunt, then add SDRs once you validate the motion.

SE Support: Shared SE pool. You'll compete with the core media/publishing team for technical resources. Healthcare and BFSI deals often require custom demos or security/compliance discussions, so expect some friction getting SE time.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Likely competing against Segment, Adobe Experience Cloud, Salesforce CDP, and vertical-specific analytics tools that healthcare/BFSI companies already use.

How They Differentiate: Piano has real-time personalization and analytics capabilities. The challenge is proving the ROI in industries that don't think like digital media companies.

Common Objections:

• "We already have [analytics tool] and [CDP]—why do we need this?"
• "Our compliance/security team won't approve a new data platform."
• "This sounds like it's built for publishers, not us."

Win Themes: Multi-channel customer data integration, real-time decisioning, and revenue optimization use cases. You'll need to find healthcare/BFSI equivalents to Piano's media success stories.

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Hiring & Team Building (25%) | Active Deal Work (35%) | Strategy & Playbook (25%) | Internal Stakeholder Management (15%)

Key Activities

• Building the team: Write job descriptions, screen candidates, hire 2-5 people in year one. You need people who can hunt in undefined markets, which is hard to find and expensive.

• Running early deals yourself: Prospect into target accounts, run discovery calls, figure out what resonates. You're validating the ICP and sales pitch before you can train others on it.

• Defining the vertical playbook: Document buyer personas, pain points, objection handling, and demo flow for healthcare vs BFSI. This doesn't exist yet—you're creating it from scratch.

• Internal alignment: Convince product, marketing, and the core sales org that these verticals are worth investing in. You'll spend time in meetings justifying your budget and headcount when deals take longer to close than expected.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• No playbook exists: Piano's success has been in media/publishing. Healthcare and financial services buyers have completely different pain points, procurement processes, and compliance requirements. You're figuring this out as you go.

• Long, uncertain sales cycles: Enterprise deals in regulated industries (healthcare/BFSI) involve legal, compliance, security, and procurement. Expect 9-12 month cycles minimum. Deals will slip quarters repeatedly.

• Resource competition: You're running a BD motion for new verticals while the core sales team is hitting their numbers selling to media companies. When you need marketing support, SE time, or product prioritization, you're the low priority.

• Hiring pressure: You need to hire people who can work in ambiguity, handle rejection, and build pipeline from nothing. Those people are expensive and hard to find. If your first 1-2 hires don't work out, you're 6-9 months behind plan.

What Success Looks Like

• Close 3-5 logo deals in healthcare or BFSI in year one that validate the use case and can be used as reference stories.
• Build a team of 3-5 reps with defined territories and a repeatable outbound motion by end of year one.
• Create documented sales playbooks (buyer personas, pitch decks, demo scripts, objection handling) that new hires can ramp on.

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Chief Digital Officers or VPs of Digital at healthcare systems (hospital networks, insurance companies)
• Chief Data Officers or heads of analytics at banks and financial services firms

What They Care About:

• Patient/customer engagement and retention (healthcare)
• Personalized digital experiences that drive conversion (BFSI)
• Data privacy, security, and regulatory compliance (HIPAA for healthcare, PCI/SOC2 for financial)
• Proving ROI in a risk-averse, highly regulated buying environment

Requirements

• 7+ years in B2B SaaS sales, with at least 3 years managing teams
• Experience opening new verticals or markets (not just running an established sales org)
• Track record selling enterprise software into healthcare or financial services (regulatory/compliance fluency is critical)
• Comfortable doing individual contributor work (prospecting, running deals) while building a team
• Willingness to relocate to Philadelphia or Amsterdam (onsite role)
• Global sales experience (you're managing reps across time zones and geographies)