Head of New Business Development Germany (d/f/m)

Job Description

Head of New Business Development (across Industries)

Location: Germany, all locations

What makes Cognizant a unique place to work? The combination of rapid growth and an international and innovative environment! This is creating many opportunities for people like you — people with an entrepreneurial spirit who want to make a difference in this world.

At Cognizant, together with your colleagues from all around the world, you will collaborate on creating solutions for the world's leading companies and help them become more flexible, more innovative and successful. This is what defines our purpose – “We engineer modern businesses to impact everyday lives”. This is your chance to be part of the success story: we are looking for head of new business development to build and lead a team of Account Executives and accelerate our growth in the German Market.

Position Overview

The primary responsibility of head of new business development is to discover, assess, and implement policies that support the expansion of the business for Cognizant in the German Market.

This role offers a possibility to work across all industry segments and give representation to all the departments that support and make up the new business. Cognizant has a hunter and farmer model for business development and this position is of hunting and will have a team of Account Executives reporting into the role.

This position requires you to draw out a long-term business plan and bring new initiatives when the need arises. If you are excited and motivated by creating network, building relationships then this is the right position. Based on the technical and domain know-how the position also offers opportunities to represent Cognizant in various leading industry and technology forums. It also gives an opportunity to build relationship in established Chambers of trade or equivalent organizations that can help to build network and win new business for Cognizant.

Cognizant has a vast partner ecosystem and has strategic partnerships with leading technology companies like Microsoft, SAP, AWS, Google, Salesforce, IBM, Dell Technologies, Oracle, among others and you will have opportunities to develop joint go-to-market strategy with these partners for your target prospects to increase win chances by ensuring a professional coalition and cooperation is achieved with partners.

Cognizant has an attractive compensation plan for Head of New Business Development that is good balance between Sales %age commission and fixed bonus. You also have a chance to further enhance your earnings by closing large TCV (Total Contract Value) deals.

Responsibilities of the role include:

• You are expected to develop key insights into market segment, target client’s organization structure, business and IT strategy
• Work closely with different teams in Cognizant to create winnable value proposition in order to win new business
• Involved end-to-end in the tender process including negotiations and closure especially in case of large deals
• To build and manage relationships across various levels in the client organization, particularly in the C- Level/ Executive Management Level and create a stakeholder map to position Cognizant team and senior management
• Update Cognizant’s CRM system – Winzone with the latest and participate in any internal review meetings and also conduct review meetings for the team based on Winzone reporting
• Active involvement in deal reviews, developing solution, proposal responses, creating executive summary, as required, and ensure timely submission with appropriate internal approvals
• Make contingencies for expansion plans, and prepare to take the initiatives as need arises.
• Make calculations on the customer base and make plans to increase it
• Investigate the expected challenges and research on ways of mitigating the
• Review the target account list across the industry segments and align with client partners and service line leaders on a regular basis to keep the list current and relevant in the current market situation
• Achieve the annual ACV and TCV quota as agreed

Candidate Key Requirements:

• Proven track record in closing new business, building, scaling and managing large account(s) in the assigned industry sector
• Overachieving annual sales quote (minimum of €10mn / annum)
• Existing network with senior buyers in the target prospects in the assigned segment
• Understanding of IT Services portfolios including Digital Transformation, IT Strategy definition. Understanding and selling Business Process Outsourcing will be a plus
• Experience of leading and closing large deals in managed services (multi-million $ and multi-year contracts)
• Network with third party influencers like Third Party Advisors like ISG
• A deep understanding of marketing principles

Other needed skills/ abilities

• German (native speaker level) and English (fluent business level) language skills
• Strong communication, interpersonal and management skills
• Creative writing and eye for details
• Highly organized and structured way of working whilst being able to cope with a dynamic and fast moving international environment
• Flexibility to travel
• A positive attitude
• Negotiation skills
• Ability to lead and coordinate a team
• Good human relation skills
• Proficiency in business supervision
• Quick and fast decision making ability