Business Development Manager

Job Description:

Rakuten International oversees 7 businesses with over 4,000 employees globally. The brand is recognized for its leadership and innovation in e-commerce, digital content, advertising, entertainment and communications, bringing the joy of discovery and access to more than 1 billion members across the world. Our teams deliver on the company’s mission to delight merchants and customers through innovation, optimism, and teamwork.

Rakuten Advertising provides advertising technology and consumer insights to the world’s leading brands and retailers. Working with agencies and brands around the world, Rakuten Advertising unites technology, client strategy and consumer insights to deliver advertising experiences that drive increased brand awareness and marketing performance. With access to Rakuten’s diverse media properties and audiences, combined with an award-winning performance network and proprietary consumer research, Rakuten Advertising creates the right conditions to reach new customers and sustain long-lasting loyalty.

Job Summary

The role will focus on new customer acquisition for Rakuten Affiliate Network. By providing a consultative sales process to top international brands and marketing agencies. A highly organized, proactive, experienced digital marketing sales professional with excellent written and verbal communication skills, with a proven track record of success, will have access to the uncapped commission scheme in addition to a competitive basic salary.

You will leverage your experience in affiliate marketing sales, market, industry and competitor knowledge to build and managing a pipeline of Affiliate New Business, winning and closing new business deals. You will be accountable for an annual revenue target, regular pipeline reporting and achievement of objectives defined by the Head of Sales.

Your focus will be on winning EMEA wide affiliate deals for the travel vertical plus German focused deals within other target verticals and agency groups.

Roles & responsibility

Key responsibilities:

• Seek out and build relationships with agency and advertiser contacts for new business (brand/client) opportunities
• Build relationships with existing clients in other markets to develop opportunities in new markets.
• Produce a high volume of sales related activity, (cold outreach, presentations, proposals)
• Represent Rakuten Marketing at trade shows, seminars and industry events
• Provide weekly reports on pipeline movement
• Formulate and present strategic presentations
• Sell major new accounts in timely sales cycle while maintaining an active pipeline
• Meet and exceed all sales and revenue targets.
• Understand strategic plans for team in order to advise and influence
  
  

Key Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

• Minimum of 3 years of selling experience
• Experience selling affiliate or publisher based solutions to CMO or VP of Marketing at Fortune 1000 companies
• Agency sales experience would be an advantage
• Knowledge of Affiliate marketing within the Travel Vertical would be an advantage
• Knowledge of e-commerce and Online Marketing
• Proven record of success in a consultative selling environment
• Proven record of generating new revenue and exceeding sales quota
• Detail-orientated
• Analytical and Strategic Marketing: Demonstrate success in measuring results and setting, meeting, and exceeding aggressive quantitative goals
• Excellent negotiation and closing skills
  
  

Qualification /skill Requirements

• Degree Educated ideally
• Fluent in English and German (business level), both written and verbal.
• Highly organised, self-motivated, good time-management, able to prioritise
• Think creatively, Proven ability to problem solve in complex situations
• Proactive - continually looking for ways to grow and improve within own role
• Work well under pressure and to tight deadlines
• Strong customer services skills: Negotiation, diplomacy, able to translate client requirements into technical specifications
• Excellent written and verbal communication
• Confident interpersonal skills
• Results focused: Proof that you can set and surpass KPI targets
• Inquisitive approach to continuously learning on the job
• Responsible for achieving individual quarterly and annual sales targets plus contributing to team targets
• Understand how own sales targets contribute to collective annual revenue goal
  
  

Technical / functional expertise

• Proven knowledge of CRM systems and Microsoft product suite
• Experience with CRM tools such as SalesForce
• Familiarity with outreach tools such as SalesLoft would be an advantage
• Experience with tools such as Slack, Jira, Teams would be an advantage
  
  

Personal effectiveness

• Can work in fast-moving environment to achieve clarity and solutions
• Organised and proactive approach to leading and closing sales deals
  
  

Teamwork

• Collaborative, inclusive and integration skills with team and wider business
• Confidently and effectively partner with internal stakeholders to produce best outcomes through proposal, contracting and client launch process
  
  

Understanding of the business

• Strong commercial awareness, thorough understanding of Rakuten Advertising product
  
  

Five Principles for Success

Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviors that make Rakuten unique and united across the world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.

Always improve, Always Advance - Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen

Passionately Professional - Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined to be the best

Hypothesize - Practice - Validate – Shikumika - Use the Rakuten Cycle to succeed in unknown territory

Maximize Customer Satisfaction - The greatest satisfaction for our teams is seeing their customers smile

Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! - Always be conscious of time - take charge, set clear goals, and engage your team