Client Engagement Director Maternity Cover London and Bristol

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.

We’re looking for a Client Engagement Director for a year’s maternity cover, starting at the end of November 2020. We expect that you will work across our three pods (read Giles’ blog about pods here), providing support for all three of our Experience Strategy Directors (ESDs).

Your role will be to help us to deepen our understanding of our clients’ needs, and to work with our UX consultants to develop programmes of work that transform our clients’ organisations. 

You’ll work alongside our Experience Strategy Directors (ESDs), bringing your understanding of our clients’ needs together with their knowledge about our skills and services. You’ll map out our clients’ organisations and help us to understand what makes them tick, their objectives and how we can support them to achieve their digital strategy. 

You’ll report directly to our acting Commercial Director. You’ll be part of our Client Services team, and will share best practice and professional growth with our other client services staff in Bristol and London.

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 meet your clients’ needs and expectations.

• Lead in setting the growth strategy for our established key account and new accounts. You’ll use your deep knowledge of user experience and service design to sell user-centred design projects. 
• Work closely with our 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 acting Commercial 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. 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.

Please don't be put off applying because you aren't a perfect match for our job description. If you are excited about the opportunity, and think you can achieve the outcomes we are looking for, but aren't sure if you tick every box, we'd still love to hear from you.

You’ll care as much as we do about the need to involve users in the design process - 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 will 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).
• An awareness of Government Digital Service (GDS) standards would be ideal. 

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 - and strong leadership and management skills.

You’ll be fantastic at consultative selling and influencing and will have strong negotiation skills, and great commercial awareness.

You’ll have a track record of building a sales pipeline, converting opportunities and growing accounts, and experience managing a portfolio of clients with a diverse range of client sizes/types/relationships.

You’ll have 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.

You’ll demonstrate experience developing client relationships ‘up the chain’ within a client organisation, and of managing complex groups of stakeholders.

You’ll have experience of managing and meeting financial targets, including sales and project profitability, and providing updates on progress back to the Board or senior stakeholders.

You’ll have the right to live and work in the UK.

We’re a great place to work – you’ll love the environment, the people and the way the company looks after its staff. You’ll also get a great package with a salary of between £50k - £60k if you’re based in Bristol, and £57k - £70k if you’re based in London, 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 are committed to training and run an extensive training programme which will support both your individual needs and our business ambitions.

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.