Business Development Associate Team Leader

The role

We're looking for a Business Development Associate Team Leader to join our sales team in EMEA.

This is an on-site role from our London office. 

Working at WGSN
Together, we create tomorrow 

A career with WGSN is fast-paced, exciting and full of opportunities to grow and develop. We're a team of consumer and design trend forecasters, content creators, designers, data analysts, advisory consultants and much more, united by a common goal: to create tomorrow. 

WGSN's trusted consumer and design forecasts power outstanding product design, enabling our customers to create a better future. Our services cover consumer insights, beauty, consumer tech, fashion, interiors, lifestyle, food and drink forecasting, data analytics and expert advisory. If you are an expert in your field, we want to hear from you. 

Role overview 

We are looking for an experienced BDR Team Manager to be the driving force behind a high-performing team of Business Development Associates (BDAs). The team creates new-business pipeline by opening conversations with exciting companies, booking high-quality introductory and discovery calls, and connecting the right prospects with our sales teams.

Our geared focus is on larger organisations, particularly companies with more than $100m in annual revenue. This is a true people-management role rather than a player-coach position: you will not carry an individual prospecting target. Your job is to propel the team, raise performance, improve the quality of opportunities created and help every BDA perform at their best.

Key accountabilities

• Team leadership & performance: Lead, motivate and manage the BDA team against clear individual and team KPIs, with a strong focus on quality meetings, discovery conversations and pipeline creation.

• Coaching & development: Run regular 1:1s, call coaching and structured feedback. Use Gong to review conversations, identify coaching opportunities and embed best practice across the team.

• Outbound strategy: Work with sales and marketing leadership to shape and execute prospecting strategies, account priorities, messaging and campaigns for high-value target organisations.

• Performance management: Use data to understand what is working, where performance is falling short and what action is needed. Create clear plans that help individuals and the wider team improve.

• CRM discipline & reporting: Drive excellent Salesforce hygiene and ensure activity, opportunities and outcomes are accurately captured. Provide clear reporting and insight on team performance and pipeline health.

• Prospecting excellence: Help the team make effective use of LinkedIn Sales Navigator and other data and prospecting tools to identify the right accounts, stakeholders and buying groups.

• Lead quality & handoff: Maintain a high bar for qualification and ensure meetings and opportunities are handed to the sales team with the context required for productive discovery.

• Cross-functional collaboration: Partner closely with Head of Sales, Marketing, Account Management and other stakeholders to align targeting, messaging, campaigns and feedback from the market.

• Process improvement: Continuously improve team workflows, outreach approaches, coaching practices and use of technology to increase efficiency and conversion.

• Hiring & onboarding: Support the recruitment, onboarding and ramp-up of new BDAs as the team develops.

This list is not exhaustive and there may be other activities you are required to deliver.

 

Skills, experience & qualifications required

• Approximately two years of experience leading, managing or formally supervising a BDR/SDR/BDA team, ideally in a B2B, SaaS, subscription, data or insights-led environment.

• A strong track record of coaching outbound sales teams and improving performance against measurable goals.

• Comfortable and confident using Gong and Salesforce as core tools for coaching, performance management, pipeline visibility and CRM discipline.

• Experience using LinkedIn Sales Navigator for account and contact research.

• A data-led management style: you can interpret activity and conversion metrics, diagnose performance issues and turn insight into action.

• Excellent coaching, communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to motivate different personalities and experience levels.

• A strong understanding of outbound prospecting, account prioritisation, lead qualification and effective discovery handoffs.

• Commercial confidence working with larger, complex organisations and supporting outreach into multiple stakeholders and functions.

• Comfort working in a collaborative, fast-moving environment and partnering across Sales, Marketing and Account Management.

• Experience with Lusha, ZoomInfo or similar prospecting/data-enrichment platforms is ideal.

• Experience selling or prospecting into enterprise or upper mid-market organisations would be beneficial.

• Familiarity with MEDPICC sales approaches is preferred.

• Experience in trend intelligence, data, research, SaaS, media, information services or another subscription-led business is ideal but not required.