Senior Business Development Director

Role Overview

CORA Loyalty is seeking a highly experienced Senior Business Development Director to lead new‑business development across North America. The candidate will be responsible for building a qualified pipeline, converting enterprise opportunities, and establishing a repeatable go‑to‑market motion across the United States and Canada.

Key Responsibilities

• Own and develop a defined portfolio of target prospects across the United States and Canada, with clear accountability for pipeline creation, opportunity progression, proposal quality, and new‑logo conversion.
• Act as the senior commercial lead for named prospects, building trusted relationships with executive stakeholders across marketing, loyalty, digital, customer engagement, operations, finance, procurement, and partner teams.
• Develop and lead robust opportunity plans covering client priorities, stakeholder mapping, competitive positioning, commercial strategy, pilot structure, proposal approach, negotiation path, and close plan.
• Drive disciplined new‑business performance across the region, with clear accountability for qualified pipeline, forecast accuracy, commercial progression, and closed‑won outcomes.
• Lead discovery sessions, executive meetings, solution discussions, proposal reviews, and commercial negotiations with prospects, ensuring CORA Loyalty is positioned as a strategic partner rather than a feature‑led vendor.
• Lead with the right entry play for the right opportunity, whether enterprise loyalty modernisation, rewards marketplace expansion, B2B and channel incentives, or a managed‑services‑led wedge.
• Partner closely with product, delivery, client services, analytics, support, finance, and leadership teams to ensure opportunities are shaped credibly, solutions are commercially sound, and commitments are aligned with operational reality.
• Identify and convert selected cross‑border or partner‑supported opportunities, including those introduced through strategic relationships, alliances, and reseller routes, without losing focus on the core North American direct‑business development mandate.
• Dedicate roughly 20% of role focus to market‑building activity, including selective partner support, strategic introductions, channel relationships, and the development of repeatable North American business development assets and commercial discipline.
• Help shape how CORA Loyalty approaches the North American market, including target‑account selection, qualification discipline, proposal standards, forecast rigour, and business development process maturity.
• Support commercial negotiations, proposal development, pricing discussions, contract strategy, and close planning in conjunction with leadership and relevant functional teams.
• Maintain strong CRM discipline, ensuring every live opportunity is clearly documented with owner, stage, next step, commercial value, and expected timing.
• Work closely with Client Services and implementation teams to ensure a clean and credible handoff from close into mobilisation, without blurring accountability for post‑live account leadership.
• Represent market feedback internally, helping refine proposition, packaging, proof points, and go‑to‑market priorities based on what is landing with enterprise buyers in the region.

What Success Looks Like

• North America has a credible and well‑managed new‑business pipeline, with strong opportunity visibility, sound qualification discipline, and realistic forecasting.
• CORA Loyalty has stronger executive access and broader stakeholder coverage across target prospects in the United States and Canada.
• Opportunities are shaped with commercial rigour, competitive realism, and clear close plans rather than hopeful activity without structure.
• New‑logo wins are secured in a disciplined way, with strong internal alignment and a clean transition into delivery and client services.
• Partner and introduction‑led activity contributes sensible additional access and optionality, without distracting from the direct North American business development mandate.
• The North American business development motion becomes more structured, commercially sharper, and more scalable over time.

Required Experience And Capabilities

• 10 to 15+ years of experience in enterprise business development, commercial leadership, consulting, or related growth roles within loyalty, SaaS, MarTech, rewards, payments, commerce, incentives, or adjacent technology‑enabled services.
• Significant experience winning large, complex, multi‑stakeholder enterprise deals, ideally across both the United States and Canada or in one market with meaningful exposure to the other.
• Strong track record of originating, progressing, and closing new‑business opportunities involving long enterprise buying cycles, formal procurement processes, and senior executive stakeholders.
• Experience engaging credibly with C‑suite and executive‑level decision‑makers, with the judgement and presence to lead commercially important conversations.
• Demonstrated ability to lead opportunity strategy while coordinating product, delivery, finance, legal, support, and leadership teams in a matrixed environment.
• Experience working with complex commercial structures, including MSAs, SOWs, pilots, pricing discussions, procurement processes, security review, and contract negotiations.
• Exposure to partner, reseller, channel, or alliance‑led growth models, with the judgement to know when those routes accelerate growth and when they merely create noise.
• High commercial acumen, strong written and verbal communication, and the executive presence to operate effectively in a demanding North American market.
• Ability to operate with autonomy, structure ambiguity, and maintain clear priorities across a broad territory and a relatively lean organisation.
• Strong command of CRM, pipeline discipline, forecasting, and pipeline reporting.
• Willingness and ability to travel across the United States and Canada as required.

Preferred Experience

• Experience in loyalty, rewards, engagement, channel incentives, or customer marketing.
• Experience developing business in financial services, retail, travel, hospitality, telecoms, or other complex consumer‑facing sectors.
• Experience in a platform‑plus‑services environment, where client value depends on both technology and ongoing strategic support.
• Experience in a North America‑based role, ideally with direct exposure to both US and Canadian buyers.
• French language capability would be an advantage, but is not essential.

Personal Attributes

• Commercially sharp, but not reckless.
• Strategic in outlook, but willing to get into the detail.
• Calm under pressure, with sound judgement in difficult commercial situations.
• Credible with executives, delivery teams, and client leaders alike.
• Naturally collaborative, but comfortable taking ownership and making decisions.
• Ambitious enough to build, not merely execute against an existing playbook.

Business Unit: Carlson Marketing Solutions - Canada

Scheduled Weekly Hours: 37.5

Number of Openings Available: 1

Worker Type: Regular