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’s (LR) functions, ensuring each role contributes to creating customer value: embed ‘client centricity’.
Whilst also optimising profitability, reducing the cost to serve, focusing on broader engagement through value creation and solutions-based selling, 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 our key clients meet their strategic objectives, and deliver increased value for the client and LR.
Building and delivering tailored strategies for LR’s largest clients with the biggest market influence and largest future potential to develop and grow LR’s business through bespoke and strategic alignment. Guiding the business to design solutions aligned with client needs and to create lasting value as a trusted advisor to LR’s key clients. Working closely with teams and individuals across LR to provide a high-quality customer experience, KAM builds close relationships with key accounts, conducts thorough account planning, and provides specialised service.
What We Offer You
- The chance to join an organization with a clear purpose, guided by its values, that supports colleagues’ professional and personal growth through diverse development programs.
A permanent contract, full-time employment
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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, which will lead 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 deliver on jointly agreed objectives.
- To 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 that relationships are developed and deepened across all functions and executive levels, to manage and mitigate supporters, blockers, decision-makers, and gatekeepers, to remove single points of failure, build contingency, and to ensure the right level of contact is taking place in a managed and timely way.
- Build, maintain, and communicate a Strategic Key Account plan, including a strategic vision (3-5 years) 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 true ‘win-win’ 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 a key account(s).
- Monitor, report on, upload to SFL and disseminate as appropriate all client meetings and visits, as well as all aspects of competitor activity for client and general client activity. Understand the analysed patterns of client meetings and develop strategies to act on them.
Leverage and incorporate the insights provided by the Insight and Segment teams to improve understanding of the market context, the strategic context, and the changing landscape, which may affect key account objectives positively or negatively.
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What You Bring
- Significant knowledge and understanding of business strategy and goal setting and implementation.
- Demonstrable experience in managing Key Accounts; developing Key Account plans and strategies, building and maintaining client relationships, customer focused mindset.
- Ability to research and analyse market dynamics, interpretation of data, and determination of 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 our organization and outside of 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. Ability to develop strategic action plans based on input from key persons.
- Collaborative team spirit. Demonstrate professional people skills and promote a team working environment across all areas of LR.
- Clear sense of purpose, direction, and leadership.
- Demonstrate motivational skills in directing colleagues to meet business objectives.
- Willing to adjust role as the position develops and grows.
- Crucial relationship leader and manager with the client, an experienced individual, capable of complex engagement at C suite level and through the myriad operational levels of the Global account.
- Evidence of being the Voice of the Customer; interpreting and delivering to client needs.
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