Client Engagement Director London

We’re an internationally renowned experience design consultancy working with some of the biggest brands, making a difference to millions of people around the world.

Our London office needs a Client Engagement Director who can help us to deepen our understanding of our clients’ needs, and work with the consultancy team to develop programmes of work that transform our clients’ organisations. It’s a chance to join a growing team and play a key role in taking it to the next level.

You’ll work within our London Financial Services pod alongside the Pod Lead, Principal Consultant and Senior Project Manager, bringing together your understanding of our clients’ needs with their knowledge about our skills and services. You will lead the relationship with our established key account (a large insurer) alongside supporting new business activities and sharing best practice and professional growth with our other client services staff.

You’ll also work collaboratively with our Project Managers, UX Consultants, Designers and Front-End Developers to shape projects, and to make sure that the skills and time allocated to your projects are sufficient to meet your clients’ needs and expectations.

• Lead in setting the growth strategy for our established key account and new accounts.
• Work closely with Strategists & Consultants to build a pipeline of work from both existing clients and new clients, shaping opportunities, creating proposals and converting these into sales.
• Develop a client vision, account development plan and roadmap per account. To do this, you’ll need to maintain a deep understanding of the issues facing our clients’ sectors and their individual businesses.
• Work with the Client Services team and our Marketing Director to create marketing plans and lists of target clients, and to triage leads.
• Manage the pipeline of work, ensuring we have a good understanding of each client's sign off process and what is required to get work started. To do this, you’ll need to build strong, open, and mutually beneficial relationships with new and existing clients.
• Achieve a monthly and quarterly sales target.
• Develop and negotiate high value commercial arrangements with our clients.
• Work closely with our Project Managers to ensure projects are scoped and costed effectively to deliver profitable programmes of work.
• Support our new business team, working closely with one of our two founders. Particularly, support the pitch / RFP process to ensure that the pitch team has a strategy for winning, and that documents and presentations meet our standards and fit our vision and values.

Our clients are based in the UK, Europe, and beyond, so you’ll need to be able to travel to them and spend time working at their offices.

• You’ll care as much as we do about the need to involve users in the design process and be passionate about supporting your clients to become more customer-focussed - for us this is essential and not a ‘luxury’ that can be cut when budgets are tight.
• You’ll be an evangelist for user centred design.
• You’ll have experience working on user centred design projects - where user research was used to identify opportunities and refine the emerging designs.
• Ideally, you be able to counter objections to involving users in the design process by referencing examples of successful work.
• You’ll be able to demonstrate an awareness of the UX field (key themes, agencies, individuals).
• You’ll understand that great relationships are about building a sense of trust and honesty - so you won’t be afraid to have the difficult conversations that bring about long-term success. And you’ll have the emotional intelligence to understand how to have those conversations sensitively and how to develop solutions in collaboration with diverse teams.
• You’ll have great communication skills - the ability to listen, and to articulate complex ideas clearly, vividly, and concisely.
• You’ll have gravitas - outstanding presentation, written, verbal and persuasion skills with the ability to ‘hold the room’ and tell a compelling story.
• You’ll have strong leadership and management skills, and great commercial awareness.
• You’ll be fantastic at consultative selling and influencing and will have strong negotiation skills.

• A minimum of 3 years’ experience in a similar role, with evidence of your success.
• A track record of building a sales pipeline, converting opportunities and growing accounts.
• Experience managing a portfolio of clients with a diverse range of client sizes/types/relationships.
• Experience working with the financial services or other regulated sectors, and an active interest in this area.
• Experience of working with senior level clients to identify opportunities, set a vision for change, shape projects and set a shared vision for those projects. This should include leading pitch teams, proposal writing and articulating a detailed understanding of client needs.
• Experience developing client relationships ‘up the chain’ within a client organisation, and of managing complex groups of stakeholders.
• Experience of managing and meeting financial targets, including sales and project profitability, and providing updates on progress back to the Board or senior stakeholders.
• Degree level education.
• The right to live and work in UK.

We’re a great place to work – you’ll love the environment, the people and the way the company looks after its staff. We are committed to training and run an extensive training programme which will support both your individual needs and our business ambitions. You’ll also get a great package with 25 days holiday, benefits including a smartphone, a cash-back healthcare scheme, a pension plan to which we’ll contribute, a MacBook and other kit as needed.

cxpartners is made up of an incredible, diverse range of people. We're an equal opportunity employer and prize diversity as a strength. We’re keen to ensure we’re designing products and services that work for everyone, so we particularly encourage applications from different underrepresented demographics. We do not discriminate based on race, ethnicity, colour, ancestry, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability or any other legally protected status.

If you’d like to apply, please email tamlyn.driver@cxpartners.co.uk with a brief CV.