Strategic Business Partner

Strategic Business Partner

Lloyd’s Register

Location: Antwerp, Belgium

What we’re looking for

This role is accountable for maintaining retention and building and delivering tailored strategies for growth from assigned Strategic Key Accounts. Maintaining and growing the business with assigned Strategic Key Account(s) through aligning understanding and delivery of customer requirements across all Lloyd’s Register functions, ensuring each role contributes to creating customer value and embedding client centricity, while optimising profitability, reducing the cost to serve, and developing multi-level multi-functional contacts between the client and their LR counterparts. Acting as the Voice of the Customer within Lloyd's Register, building cross-functional teams, and leveraging internal relationships to help key clients meet their strategic objectives and deliver increased value for the client and LR.

What we offer you

The opportunity to work for an organization that has a clear sense of purpose, is guided by its values and helps colleagues to develop professionally and personally through our range of people development programmes

Full-time

The role

• Develop a deep understanding of the client's business, strategies, markets, and competitive landscape, and develop a One-LR key account strategy for the nominated client(s), including a named account team with clear delivery objectives and responsibilities.
• Craft client-focused strategies that deliver a positive impact for the client, leading to sustainable and profitable growth for LR.
• Create bundled solutions to meet express and tacit client needs for key accounts, engaging cross-company as required, to deliver real business value propositions.
• Maintain a close relationship with the key account Executive Sponsor and senior commercial leaders across LR to ensure benefits are realized and jointly agreed objectives are delivered.
• Manage and coordinate the building of multi-level relationships between LR and the client organisation.
• Develop and implement a relationship management strategy for each strategic account to ensure relationships are developed and deepened across all functions and executive levels, managing supporters, blockers, decision-makers, and gatekeepers, removing single points of failure, and building contingency.
• Build, maintain, and communicate a Strategic Key Account plan, including a strategic vision and short and medium-term delivery objectives aligned with global strategy, anchored with a cross-functional delivery team and clear KPIs and metrics.
• Identify new business opportunities and collaborate with internal stakeholders to identify and realise cross-stream business opportunities, ensuring LR is best placed to succeed.
• Develop clear commercial strategies that create a mutually beneficial outcome for all parties and lead to profitable growth in the account(s).
• Manage conflict at all levels, guiding discussions to reach mutually acceptable outcomes for everyone involved.
• Effectively lead a virtual Strategic Account Team and bring in necessary skills as the client's needs evolve.
• Deploy effective negotiating and selling strategies in the key account and internally, using other resources as required to close deals.
• Coordinate promotion and communication of LR products and services to clients directly via the KAM team, and arrange appropriate visits, presentations, and local/global seminars as required, working with the CMO team to develop a marketing strategy for key accounts.
• Monitor, report on, and disseminate all client meetings and visits, as well as competitor and general client activity, developing strategies to act on identified patterns.
• Leverage insights from the Insight and Segment teams to improve understanding of the market context, strategic context, and changing landscape affecting key account objectives.

What you bring

• Significant knowledge and understanding of business strategy and goal setting and implementation.
• Demonstrable experience managing Key Accounts, developing Key Account plans and strategies, building and maintaining client relationships, with a customer-focused mindset.
• Ability to research and analyse market dynamics, interpret data, and determine likely outcomes and associated actions required.
• Ability to communicate effectively at different levels within organizations and to persuade successfully and openly at all levels, both inside and outside the business.
• Understanding of, and capability to develop, business and financial value propositions.
• Ability to understand and assess complex and sometimes unfamiliar situations, visualize solutions, and see through to resolution.
• High-level cross-company and partner engagement skills.
• Solid commercial awareness, with the ability to develop strategic action plans based on input from key persons.
• Collaborative team spirit, demonstrating professional interpersonal skills and promoting a team-working environment across all areas of LR.
• Clear sense of purpose, direction, and leadership.
• Demonstrated motivational skills in directing colleagues to meet business objectives.
• Willingness to adjust the role as the position develops and grows.
• Experience as a relationship leader and manager with clients, capable of complex engagement at C-suite level and through the operational levels of the Global account.
• Evidence of being the Voice of the Customer, interpreting and delivering to client needs.

You are someone who

• Is keen to take accountability and ownership for delivering customer needs
• Is able to self-manage and prioritize tasks towards reaching goals
• Is effective at solving problems, troubleshooting and making timely decisions
• Is adaptable and motivated to take initiative
• Communicates in a structured way and has ability to present technical ideas in user-friendly language
• Displays a team spirit, particularly in a multicultural environment
• Responds positively to learning opportunities and is comfortable stepping out of own comfort zone

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