Business Development recruitment
Selling to a technical buyer is a different job to a consumer or generalist B2B sale. The credibility bar is higher, the cycle is longer, and the conversation has to hold an engineer's attention.
Deals here typically involve multiple stakeholders and a real engineering evaluation before a decision gets made, which changes what a strong business development process looks like. We screen against that.
What this covers
- New business development (technical products/services)
- Channel & partner development
- Technical / solution sales
- Sales engineering (pre- and post-sales)
- Export & international business development
- Strategic / enterprise business development
Roles we place
What makes a strong Business Development candidate
The strongest business development candidates for technical products can survive a genuine technical evaluation, not just an initial conversation, holding credibility through a multi-stakeholder sales process that includes an engineering audience, not only a commercial buyer. A track record of closing complex, technical sales cycles, rather than short, transactional ones, is a much stronger signal than raw new-business numbers taken out of context, since the sales motion for a technical product is fundamentally different from a fast-turnaround consumer sale. We also look for candidates who can speak specifically about how they handled a technical objection or a competitive evaluation, since that's usually where a technical BD hire either earns credibility or loses the deal.
Where the talent sits
Technical business development roles concentrate around London and the South East commercially, but field-based BD roles selling into engineering clients are active across the same regional technology and defence clusters as the rest of the site. These roles generally track wherever the target client base and manufacturing sites are concentrated, rather than one single hub.
Typical hiring timeline
Most briefs get a first candidate within days rather than weeks - see real timelines from past searches. Seniority, location and clearance status set the pace from there.
Business Development hiring: frequently asked questions
Hiring in Business Development?
Tell us what the role needs to do. We'll come back with questions about the work, and an honest read on what the brief will take.