Business Development Manager

The Business Development Manager owns the top of the Casualty Loss funnel and is accountable for one number above all: qualified first meetings held. This person works outbound activity and referral follow-up, qualifies each lead, and delivers the lead into a booked first meeting that the Sales team runs. It is not a closing role; the sales cycle and the close stay with Sales, while this seat owns everything that moves a qualified prospect to that first meeting.

It is a player-coach seat by design: the BDM carries a personal first-meeting number while managing the team’s execution. As one of the first and most structural hires in the division's buildout, this role turns a founder- and referral-driven pipeline into a repeatable, systematized first-meeting engine. Strong familiarity with personal tax returns, proven experience building and enhancing a referral network with Centers of Influences (COIs), and a deeply empathetic consultative sales approach define top candidates. This role requires the ability to work onsite in our San Diego office.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Leverage your understanding of individual, trust, and business tax returns and how strategies flow through them to qualify leads and act as a resource to prospective clients
• Deliver qualified leads into booked first meetings, owning the number of first meeting held at both a personal and team level
• Build and enhance a COI network as a referral engine for qualified Casualty Loss and Wealth Management leads
• Architect and manage how the Business Development team uses the CRM (currently Salesforce), and drive team adoption of that workflow
• Set and enforce top-of-funnel activity targets, including outbound volume, referral touches, and meetings booked
• Direct team members' time and priorities toward the highest-leverage activity, treating the team as a resource pool rather than a fixed set of individual quotas
• Own referral follow-up and outbound activity upstream of the sales cycle, handing qualified opportunities to Sales for the close
• Diagnose funnel breakdowns across messaging, list quality, timing, and follow-up cadence, and act on them
• Support the hiring, onboarding, and ramp-to-productivity of Business Development team members
• Perform other duties as assigned, contributing to a collaborative and high-performing team environment

Knowledge, Skills and Abilities:

• Knowledge of individual, trust, and business tax returns and how strategies flow through them
• An existing COI network of Wealth Management and/or Tax Advisory professionals
• Metrics discipline, setting, tracking, and defending top-of-funnel KPIs
• Coaching and accountability, holding others to a standard without quietly doing the work for them
• Personal execution, remaining a producer and comfortable carrying a personal outbound number
• Prioritization and delegation, treating teammates as a resource pool against the best opportunities
• Diagnostic and forecasting fluency across the funnel, including basic conversion-rate math
• Clear, professional written and verbal communication
• Comfort operating in a fast-paced, high-growth, referral-driven environment

Minimum Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in business, marketing, or a related field
• Five or more years of sales or business development experience of professional services, including managing a team's activity
• Three or more years of experience working with personal, trust, or business tax returns typically found in a prior public accounting role
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)
• Experience with Salesforce or comparable CRM
• Ability to work onsite in our San Diego office

Competencies:

• Accountability
• Communication
• Influencing Others
• Adaptability
• Client Orientation
• Emotional Intelligence
• Relationship Building
• Organizational Skills
• Grit

Expected salary range: $160,000 - $180,000.