About Thrive®

Thrive equips teaching staff to help children and young people understand and manage their emotions, so they feel safe, supported, and ready to learn.

Over 50,000 staff in 2,600 schools and settings have received Thrive training, ensuring that 600,000 children and young people aged 0-25 have access to the Thrive Approach.

Thrive offers training, online assessments, and expert strategies for working with pupils to improve attendance, behaviour and attainment.

Thrive is part of Supporting Education Group, a fast-growing group of companies with a mission to improve and enhance education for all, thrive commercially and create fulfilling work and opportunities for staff

About you and the role

As Head of Business Development, you will...

• Inspire, motivate and empower the Business Development Team to achieve our ambitious growth plans.

• Help Thrive reach 1.5 million children and young people by delivering significant growth in customer numbers to embed Thrive in over 6000 nurseries, schools and colleges.  

• Ensure income generation is in line with the Thrive business plan and budget.

Organisational leadership

This is a strategic role working as a member of the Senior Leadership Team. You will have the opportunity to contribute to the design and implementation of Thrive strategy, applying your knowledge of the education market, government policy, and funding opportunities.

• Design and deliver the Thrive business development strategy, with a strong emphasis on growth, income generation and EBITDA.

• Contribute to the annual Budget and the 3-5 year business plan with input on growth aspirations, targets and performance.

• Work with Product Team to feedback customer insights, design and deliver products that solve customer problems and equip them to better support children and young people.

• Raise the profile of Thrive and work with colleagues to build cross sector relationships and partnership opportunities. Work with Marketing Team to promote Thrive on the web, in collateral, in bids, and at events.

Business Development and Sales

As Head of Business Development you will create a culture of positivity, energy, aspiration and confidence, combined with commercial good sense and professional sales management.

You will proactively identify opportunities for Thrive across the education market, including Local Authorities, Multi Academy Trusts, International and Independent School & Nursery Groups, as well as individual schools and settings.

• Inspire, manage and grow an effective Business Development Team, with clear allocation of territory/opportunities, regular team meetings and 121s, professional development, and accountability for achieving sales targets.

• Implement a robust sales and retention plan that is embedded into the CRM system. Ensure all opportunities are captured on the CRM system and that the CRM works as a ‘single version of the truth’ for sales and pipeline reporting, performance at national, regional and individual level.

• Own and monitor performance against national, regional and individual targets and KPIs.

• Champion the work of business development across the business, engage all colleagues to support growth.

• Implement a clear gated bid winning process. Ensure the correct bid tracking licenses are in place so that no opportunity with central, local government and schools is missed. Equip and lead colleagues to work collaboratively on bids. Quality assure and set standards for proposals.

• Report on performance to the Thrive Senior Leadership Team, Managing Director and Supporting Education Group (SEG).

• Manage partners and suppliers.

Here’s a taste of what you’ll be involved in on a day-to-day basis:

• Building strong relationships with strategic clients. Coaching and supporting the Business Development Team to build similarly strong networks of prospective customers within their regions.

• Reaching out to potential new clients in creative and scalable ways, understanding their challenges and introducing Thrive solutions at the right time.

• Representing Thrive at education sector events and using your standout networking skills.

• Collaborating with marketing to deliver targeted national and local campaigns that generate sales and sales opportunities.

• Using a scientific and data -driven approach to sales to work out what is working and what is not.

Benefits

You'll benefit from:

• Flexible working

• Performance related bonus

• Access to professional development & training

• 28 days holiday + additional 1 day for every year of service up to a maximum of 33 days

• Up to 3 days education based volunteering days (matched by employee holiday)

• Eligibility for a sabbatical up to 12 months long after 5 years service

• Enhanced maternity, adoption and shared parental leave.

• Group life assurance

• Pension

Next steps

To get started, pop your email in the top right of this page.

You’ll answer some questions that are related to your day-to-day job. After the job closes, your answers will go through our sift process: all answers will be anonymised, randomised and then reviewed by a panel of reviewers.

If you are shortlisted, we’ll invite you to the next step, which includes an interview on the 22nd or 28th November (please keep these dates free in case you are successful).

Expected duration of the initial application process: 4 weeks

Thrive is an equal opportunities employer

Thrive is committed to a policy of Equal Employment Opportunity and determined to ensure that no applicant or employee receives less favourable treatment on the grounds of gender, age, disability, religion, belief, sexual orientation, marital status, or race, or is disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable.

We are striving to make our team more representative of the young people we serve, so applications from diverse candidates are warmly welcomed.