Business Development Advisor

About the role

Team Description

ILS is a small, vibrant, risk management company dedicated to supporting aid agencies, academic institutions, and campaign groups to develop their resilience and to meet their duty of care even in the most challenging environments.

Founded by aid workers in 2010, the company has grown to become a global leader in the development and implementation of people-centred risk management solutions.

As a values-driven company, we place emphasis on our own principles and values, and those of Agenda2030.

Role Summary

Our Commercial Team is a new and growing part of ILS, and the newly created Business Development Advisor post has been newly created to manage the development of high-quality bids and proposals for our clients.

We are looking for a creative and strategically minded individual, with a passion for the humanitarian and international development sector, who is able to identify and develop bids for commercial opportunities that link to our business strategy.

The Business Development Advisor is an 80-100% FTE role that sits within the broader ILS Commercial Team, working closely with the Commercial Manager, the Digital Operations Advisor and the Managing Director on proposal and bid development, and other marketing activities.

Key Responsibilities

• Managing all aspects of the bidding process.
• Develop and manage the process of identifying appropriate bidding opportunities.
• Co-ordinating the preparation and submission of key proposals.
• Monitor and improve the bidding process.
• Ensure ILS’ quality assurance standards are consistently met on all proposals and bids.
• Contribute to ILS’ marketing activities.

Specific Duties:

Proposal Development

• Develop and manage the process by which ILS identifies bidding opportunities.
• Project management of all aspects of new business bidding processes including managing timelines and deadlines.
• Ensure that all proposal tenders comply fully with client requirements.
• Research, prepare, and manage all necessary information required for the tender, supported by ILS Technical Leads and subject matter experts.
• Develop exciting and innovative proposal content, in collaboration with other teams.
• Take ownership of the bid response, style and format and steward the process through to completion.
• Monitor tender processes, collate and manage feedback from all tenders and ensure that learning is fed into future bids.
• Maintain the ILS library of bid records and archives.
• Maintain the ILS proposal performance database.

Marketing

• Support implementation of ILS’ marketing strategy and workplan.
• Support ILS’ event and conference strategy
• Work with the Digital Operations Advisor to ensure the website is well managed and effective.
• Collaborate with internal teams to gather stories, testimonials and data to create compelling marketing materials.

General

• Represent ILS and network at meetings, conferences, and events where funders/clients may be present.
• Any other aspect of business development work considered reasonable.
• You will undertake other work commensurate with the responsibilities and scope of your role.

Person Specification

Essential Skills and Experience

• Experience of working in business development, preparing technical and financial tenders, ideally within the international development sector.
• Ability to translate service delivery impact into powerful and persuasive written documents.
• Excellent written English copywriting skills and the ability to adapt written materials to different audiences.
• Demonstrated experience in ensuring that quality standards and processes are applied.
• Proven project management skills including ability to manage and prioritise multiple workstreams and deadlines.
• Excellent administrative and organisation skills with strong attention to detail.
• Skilled in using digital technology and a passion for discovering and utilising new tools.
• Excellent time management skills and ability to prioritise a varying workload.
• Strong commercial acumen.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills and the ability to work across multiple teams.

Desirable Skills and Experience

• Educated to degree level or equivalent professional experience within the aid sector.
• Experience of working with donors or multi-lateral organisations and with an awareness of different donor compliance requirements.
• Demonstrated experience in qualitative and quantitative data analysis and the ability to translate this into persuasive and impactful proposals.
• Experience of using and maintaining a fundraising database.
• Additional language skills.

We know there are great candidates who may not meet all the above criteria, or who have important skills that we have not mentioned. If this is you, please do not hesitate to apply and tell us why this opportunity excites you and how it fits with your skills and experience.

Compensatory package and Benefits

• Starting salary £38,000 – £41,000 depending on experience, with clear salary progression scheme.
• Generous annual (discretionary) bonus scheme
• Employer pension contributions
• Free access to psychological support service
• Generous Time Off In-Lieu (TOIL) policy
• Personal development plans
• 36 days of annual leave (formulated as 25 days standard leave + 3 days additional Christmas leave + 8 days of bank holidays).
• Further leave allowance accrued with length of service.

Working Locations:

• The position is based in ILS office in the UK, very close to Haywards Heath railway station.
• We adopt a hybrid working policy, whereby staff are expected to attend the office 60% of their working hours.