Business Development Manager

Location: Remote / South East

Contract Type: Permanent Full Time

Hours: 37.5 hours per week Monday - Friday 

Salary: £30 - £35k

Reports To: Sales, Marketing and Business Development Director (SMBDD)

Overview:

The role will support the SMBDD to ultimately grow revenue in line with business strategy and objectives. By being customer centric and having a good understanding of the market you will work to research, identify and work with stakeholders to test, implement and review; including new markets, trends, growth areas, products or experiences that would align with our growth plans. The role requires someone who can understand consumer needs and market forces to help us define and focus the best opportunities for delivering growth.

Innovation:

Lead development of new activities, experiences and locations

• Research the industry for latest trends, preparing updates for management meetings
• Stay on top of the competition both direct and indirect, communicating this to the relevant stakeholders within the business
• Use customer insight and demographics to focus the development for the brand
• Work with internal departments (e.g. sales, customer care & marketing) to ascertain any gaps in the current offering and thus opportunities thinking customer first
• Lead on the ideation of new activities and experiences for the brand
• Use a data led approach to help identify new locations to be proposed
• Support on assessing the viability of proposed opportunities

Drive the continuous cycle of improvement of existing activities and locations

• Support the SMBDD to define the activity blueprints
• Using the activity blueprints and customer segmentation by location identify a pipeline of opportunity of improvement in our existing estate

Pipeline:

• Work with the Head of Data & Technology to identify geographical areas of opportunity
• Support the SMBDD in identifying potential opportunities for development or acquisition
• Gather data on opportunities to help support the balanced scorecard
• Support the SMBDD in creating a brief for designing new opportunities to activity blueprints to inform the Estates & Planning team
• Support the SMBDD to prepare documents to aid engagement on pipeline and new opportunities
• Work with the Estates and Planning team to utilise their historic knowledge of potential sites, planning or landlord/stakeholder constraints.
• Work with the Estates & Planning team to ensure the project is delivered in line with the brief

To succeed in this role we are looking for the following skills:

• Inquisitive and open-minded approach
• A people person who is customer centric in their thinking
• Ambitious, enthusiastic and innovative
• Commercial acumen and negotiation skills
• Ability to think strategically and solve problems
• Ability to deal with clients and co-owners at all levels
• Attention to detail and highly organised
• Confident, self-motivated and presentable
• Excellent written and oral communication
• Effective time management
• Hold a valid UK driving license and be able to travel extensively and frequently in the UK

Amazing Benefits 

• Mountain Equipment Go Ape Branded Uniform Supplied during your employment 
• Generous Holiday Entitlement 33 days plus additional end of year leave
• Expeditions & Naturally Powered Days – we arrange multiple subsidised adventure trips each year such as caving, hiking, cycling, kayaking and climbing. Join the fun closer to home in the UK or on one of our further flung Moroccan trips mountain climbing! 
• Co-owner Council - you’ll have a voice through our Co-owner council. Our council is formed of 20 representatives from across the business. They work on projects such as pay, benefits, environment & social initiatives and charity 
• Give As You Earn – donate to charity direct from salary whilst saving on tax and national insurance 
• Employee help line Free confidential advice - Family, Health, Life, Money, Work 
• Free Go Ape! Immediate family, plus one go free - everyone else 20% off 
• Pension Scheme, up to 7% Employer’s contribution 
• Retail & Leisure discounts 
• Go Ape Foundation, get involved in events to raise money our wonderful charity partners, Free to be kids and Go Beyond
• Paid Volunteering Day – you’ll have the opportunity to volunteer on local social and environmental community projects. 

Company EthosOur Values

Keeping the adventure in adventure

• Encouraging ‘I can’t to become I can’

• Do the right thing

• Zero risk equals zero development

• To challenge, surprise and excite

• Build in customer delight

• Be socially and environmentally responsible

• Create worthwhile, rewarding jobs

Always seeking to be two steps better

Our Mission

•To be the best Adventure company on the planet (where you can be home in time for tea)

Our Vision

• Creating adventures, encouraging everyone to live life adventurously

If you feel as strongly as we do about encouraging everyone to life more adventurously then this could be the perfect environment!

Join our Inclusive Tribe

Diversity, equity and inclusion matters at Go Ape. We have a working environment where we value and respect every individual's unique contribution, enabling all of our co-owners to thrive and achieve their full potential.  

Our Glassdoor rating for Diversity & Inclusion is an industry leading 4.8 out of 5.

As well as providing training, we issue a survey to our new co-owners at Go Ape to support us in monitoring equality, diversity and inclusion in the recruitment and onboarding process.

We are pleased to hold a score of 4.88 out of 5 in response to the following question ‘On a scale of 1 – 5, how accurate would you say the following statement is ‘I feel welcome at Go Ape’ (5 being very accurate)’. 

As the above illustrates, we are committed to equality of opportunity and welcome applications from individuals, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic background, religion and/or belief. 

We will consider reasonable adjustments where required, for all our roles.