Sales and Business Development Officer/manager

**Job description**:
As a Sales and Business Development Officer/Manager for our Space Instruments your main task will be to introduce our company products and services to customers (B2B and institutional) and assess their needs for new business.

You will take responsibility for:

- developing and expanding new business and sales within the Instruments portfolio.
- selling of products and/or services to existing or new customers, to strengthen the market share and realize the set sales objectives.
- managing and writing bids and negotiating commercial aspects of the bid with our customers.

**Your key responsibilities will be**:

- Sales & account management:

- Translate the sales objectives to create a specific action plan and execute this plan to ensure contribution to the realization of the sales targets.
- Identify and contact prospects to ensure that the portfolio is further expanded and that the set turnover can be realized.
- Maintain and further build on the existing commercial contacts with customers that belong to the portfolio to ensure that the set sales is realized within the set budget and time.
- Increase the turnover of existing accounts by offering new products and services, spotting opportunities in the market and further developing them into commercial products.
- Identify and evolve these opportunities with prospects and existing commercial contacts
- Qualify these opportunities through customer interaction and maintain these opportunities up-to-date within the CRM system.
- Elaborate and draw up quotations to ensure that interesting prices and conditions are offered to the customer and the organization.
- Leading or coordinating the preparation of bids.
- Identifying, engaging, and managing representatives of relevant entities and departments to form a team for the duration of the bid.
- Obtaining management approval for the recommended bid strategy.
- Negotiate sales terms and conclude contracts with customers taking into account our existing product range, pricing, delivery times, etc., to ensure that all contracts between the customers and the organization comply with the legislation.
- Deep understanding of business, financials, products/services, the market and the needs/challenges of assigned accounts:

- Ensure you are well-informed about the evolutions and developments related to your accounts and portfolio and that your knowledge is up-to-date within the context of the evolutions to ensure your credibility can be strengthened by offering a service that is continuously based on updated knowledge.
- Have a signaling role for your hierarchical superior(s) based on experience, market knowledge and information gathered in the field to ensure that decision makers can anticipate on new evolutions to the highest level.
- Develop colleagues' and customers' understanding
- Business development:

- Perform research and analyses in markets and sectors where the organization is active to ensure that potential commercial opportunities can be identified through:

- Developing business contacts.
- Attending events.
- Analyzing publications.
- Collecting competitor's intelligence (benchmark competition).
- Analyzing market studies.
- Tracking state-of-the-art technology.
- Identifying 'ead companies/universities with state-of-the-art technology.
- Developing preferred relationships.
- Contact potential customers to ensure that our customer portfolio is further expanded.
- Think up, develop and plan actions to commercialize new products and/or services and to penetrate into new markets or regions to ensure that sales are stimulated and, thus, to contribute to the realization of the organization’s goals.
- Include and maintain contacts with existing and potential customers to ensure that commercial relations can be developed even further and to build up strategic alliances.
- Maintain good contacts with policy makers within the sector and with external experts in the industry and the authorities to ensure that we can anticipate changes or new developments and trends within the sector at any given moment.
- Actively participate in team meetings to ensure that a uniformed approach can be guaranteed and a platform is created where discussion about day-to-day issues is stimulated.
- Maintain correct administration for contracts, mails, proposals, etc.
- Maintain proper internal communication at team and company level.
- Development and maintenance of positive engagement with customers, stakeholders like BELSPO, partners, and suppliers. Provide for escalation route for project managers during project execution
- Develop and maintain strategic plan for the portfolio. Provide portfolio inputs to ISBP business plan.

**Key capabilities & knowledge**:

- Masters’ degree in engineering.
- Strong project management, planning, organizational, and communication skills.
- +5 years’ experience in the space market.
- Ability to distill future capabilities of the product out of a wide range of inputs.
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