Client Development Director, Global Leadership Advisory Services

Position Summary

LEADERSHIP ADVISORY SERVICES PRACTICE

The Leadership Advisory Services (LAS) Practice is an exciting, vibrant, and dynamic practice within Spencer Stuart. Operating synergistically alongside the Firm’s market-leading Executive Search business, LAS professionals provide advice and partnership to clients navigating a range of key leadership and talent issues including: aligning culture and talent strategy with business strategy; maximizing team effectiveness; merger integration support; executive assessment; and talent development and transition support. LAS provides expertise in leadership assessment and development, which is a critical component to CEO succession. Furthermore, LAS is the engine that drives our capabilities and culture models, which are employed during CEO Succession engagements to ensure clients take a multi-faceted approach towards their leadership decisions.

THE ROLE

Spencer Stuart is investing in our approach to business development, with a focus on more effective client targeting, improving the quality and impact of our interactions with potential clients, and creating a more competitive approach to business development.

The Client Development Director will serve as a strategic thought partner to global LAS leadership and consultants, helping build a proactive, programmatic commercial engine for LAS and leading a global team. This role will translate practice priorities into targeted market activation, repeatable go-to-market plays, and high-impact client engagement across the full LAS portfolio. The Director will widen the funnel by identifying priority opportunities, curating differentiated insight, and equipping consultants with the materials, messaging, and programs needed to create demand, strengthen client conversations, and expand advisory opportunities across service lines.

The base compensation range for this position is $170,000-210,000 per year. The actual base compensation offered within this range will be dependent on the individual’s skills, experiences, and qualifications. This position will be eligible to participate in our annual discretionary bonus program.

Spencer Stuart also offers a competitive benefits package, which includes:

• Retirement savings plan with discretionary profit sharing contribution and employer match;

• PTO (minimum 15 days per year, increases with tenure), paid sick time (10 days per year), company holidays (12 days per year), and paid leaves of absence when applicable;

• Comprehensive health benefits, including medical, dental, and vision insurance, and healthcare flexible spending account;

• Life Insurance, and short-term and long-term disability insurance;

• Wellness benefits, including an employee assistance program, virtual mental health program, and mindfulness program; and

• Voluntary benefit options, including supplemental life insurance, identity theft protection, and whole life insurance with long-term care and critical illness coverage.

KEY RELATIONSHIPS

Reports to

NA LAS Practice Leader

NA LAS Operations

Regional LAS Leadership

Team

Analysts

Other key relationships

EMEA LAS Practice Leader, Linda Ruiter

LAS Consultants and Associates

Executive Search Consultants

Corporate Marketing Team

Client Development Team

Position location:

Any city in the U.S. with a Spencer Stuart office; preference for central and eastern time zones

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Business Development and Opportunity Pursuit

• Serve as strategic client development partner to consultants and the “face” of client development for the global LAS Practice, partnering with consultants on BD efforts

• Partner closely with LAS consultants to design pitch strategies and create supporting materials

• Quarterback pursuit teams in preparing for client meetings, ensuring preparation and rehearsal meetings are scheduled, meeting objectives and timelines are shared and well understood, and content-plan is co-created in a manner that satisfies the internal stakeholders and ultimately the external stakeholders

• Curate high-impact insights, credentials, case examples, data points, and market themes that help consultants bring a sharper point of view to client conversations. Partner with Practice Operations and Marketing to connect LAS campaigns, thought leadership, convenings, and service-line priorities to practical BD activation

• Identify opportunities to leverage knowledge/insights/data/analytics to enable BD and pursuit activities

• Develop and activate repeatable BD plays that help consultants open conversations earlier, position LAS more strategically, and widen the funnel beyond active pursuits.

Content Creation, Sharing and Management

• In partnership with Practice Leadership, redefine and continuously improve the LAS go-to-market narrative – incorporating new service lines and evolving solutions

• Translate and tailor firm-level intellectual capital strategy/themes being driven by Marketing, ensuring dots are connected

• Gather learnings from pitches and business development to share internally to ensure we are continuously refining and improving our processes, responsiveness, and pitch effectiveness

• Actively contribute and participate in the global community, by sharing insights, ideas and best practices with fellow CDT colleagues

• Create approach and direct analyst team to maintain, curate, and regularly update pitch content/materials

• Create and identify best-practice pitch content/materials to regularly share with Practices and Firm

• In close collaboration with Practice Operations Leader, develop communication strategy for syndicating pitch content to/across Practice and Firm

Practice Operations

• Develop approaches, leveraging Pipeline tools as possible, to assess and analyze “win rates”

• Work with initiative teams to leverage new technologies and processes

Team Leadership/Management

• Lead a dedicated global team who are aligned by industry practice

• Provide oversight to and develop Analysts when partnering with them on tasks and/or projects

• Guide Analysts as needed on creation of BD deliverables

• Direct Analysts in creating and maintaining current data/statistics in the areas of relevant engagements lists/case studies, BD target lists, win rates and other key BD related KPIs

DESIRED OUTCOMES

Desired outcomes will be developed and refined in partnership with LAS Leadership. Some initial priorities for the first 12 months include:

• Established fluency in writing and shaping the narrative for complex proposal decks, bringing the firm’s breadth of offering to client situations

• Proposed process-design and best practices for opportunity identification, work intake and assignment, and content development/management

• Enabling the team’s capacity and capability to support LAS specific projects and pursuits to keep pace with the practice’s current and growing volume and scope of work

• Develop and lead a strong team of Analysts who can meaningfully contribute to deliverables and initiatives

• Improved consultant access to highly curated, client-ready insight and commercial materials.

• A more consistent feedback loop from market activity to content strategy, practice specific priorities, and future BD programming.

• Synthesize complex practice offerings, market themes, and client needs into clear, compelling commercial narratives

• Partner with LAS leadership to continuously refine the practice narrative, ensuring it clearly articulates how LAS helps clients address their most important leadership, succession, culture, team, and transformation priorities.

Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate will be a bright problem solver with a balance of creativity and strong analytical skills. They will have a proven track record of creating compelling, insightful content and the agility to imagine new and innovative ways of approaching insight creation. They will be a strong relationship builder with a relentless client service orientation and the confidence and maturity to be a credible trusted partner to a sophisticated internal client base. The strongest candidates will bring judgment about what matters commercially: which insights are distinctive, which materials will help a consultant open a better conversation, which client moments create real opportunity, and how to package the practice’s expertise in a way that is compelling, relevant, and easy to use.

IDEAL EXPERIENCE

• Approximately 8-10 years’ experience in professional services and/or executive search experience, with a focus on proposal support and/or business development; knowledge of leadership advisory services a plus 

• Has managed business development and has experience with content-creation activities and processes

• Has managed operational activities and processes; ideally with experience managing a small team of analysts

• Experience leading a global team and/or working globally

• Undergraduate degree is required; master’s degree a plus

CRITICAL CAPABILITIES FOR SUCCESS

Project Managing for Results

• Works to achieve business development goals for the Practice while overcoming obstacles and/or planning for contingencies

• Tenacious, with a track record of working successfully to steer self and team through complex situations

• Proactively seeks to be involved in many diverse projects

• Shows strong sense of urgency about reaching deadlines for pursuit opportunities and agreed-upon reactive and proactive business development projects/targets

• Checks work of self and others to ensure business development deliverables are continuously improved, distinguished and against required quality standards; can give and receive feedback constructively

• Demonstrates excellent project management skills, outlining key tasks and reviewing performance and progress on projects/pursuit deliverables on a regular basis to ensure the team is achieving results

Collaborating and Influencing

• Takes initiative to create and foster enduring relationships with senior leaders, practice members and team members

• Invites and uses the opinions, perspectives and best practices of others in the Practice and other stakeholders, to influence, drive engagement and share the way forward

• Demonstrates strong influencing toolkit; is able to drive for consensus in a collaborative and efficient manner; able to challenge in a non-confrontational manner

• Credible and mature with the ability to support their point with both factual evidence and experience-based opinion

• Engages team members in a dialogue to gain commitment and bring them “on board” to business development initiatives, linking their perspective to the intent

• Adapts own approach to the audience, anticipating impact of words and actions, preparing for possible resistance and responding in an appropriate style, using a range of influencing styles and a strong client-service orientation

• Operates in a highly engaged and hands-on way, resolving conflicts by discussing individual issues with each person

Leading People

• Engages closely with direct reports, explains what to do and the reasons why; communicates the link between current tasks and longer-term goals

• Works with LAS Leadership to set specific business-development support goals for the team; maintains general awareness of progress over time

• Delegates tasks with close supervision, ensuring team members have stretch learning opportunities with quality oversight

• Evaluates task performance and provides timely, learning-oriented feedback

OTHER PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS

• Excellent presentation, writing, PowerPoint and Excel skills

• Spoken and written fluency in English

• Experience leveraging AI enabled tools and emerging technologies