Associate Director, Business Development

Overview

Certara is a growing company that provides a dynamic and exciting place to work. Our purpose is to assist in accelerating the development of meaningful medicines that make an impact on our society and the people that need them most. Innovation and creativity are highly valued, and everyone is given the opportunity for training and continuous development. Our portfolio spans the discovery, preclinical, clinical and post-marketing phases of drug development, working with 1,200 commercial companies, 250 academic institutions, and numerous regulatory agencies.

As an integral member of Certara's business development team, your work as an Associate Director, Business Development will involve identifying and building relationships with key decision makers both internally and externally. In this role, you will engage with potential drug development executives across the entire drug development continuum, and other key executives to illustrate the competitive advantage that Certara brings to help advance the clients program(s).

This is a highly consultative role requiring the Associate Director to uncover customer needs through a deep understanding of their corporate, program-specific, and personal goals and design a customizable solution. The role can represent the entire range of Certara Services solutions to pharmaceutical, biotechnology and medical device companies within a designated region. This individual will be responsible for "landing and expanding" across the CDDS portfolio of strategic business in deliberately targeted existing accounts and will partner with the Business Development Team Leaders and with world-class expert drug development consultants in client engagements and be supported during the Business Development process by required expert teams. The successful candidate has a passion for our industry, is solution-oriented, a creative problem solver, and has a tenacious desire to identify and close deals. This role can be based in multiple locations and will support Certara's Drug Development Solutions (CDDS) unit.

Responsibilities

• Identifying, qualifying and pursuing strategic business within existing accounts:
• Understanding their internal resource expertise, capabilities and capacity, corporate objectives
• Understanding their development program(s) focus, objectives and priorities
• Understanding their critical decisions and challenges and service outsourcing strategies.
• Facilitate and maintain mutual CDA and MSA contract execution for all accounts identified by Associate Director/ Director Business Development or scientific consultants.
• Present and refresh Certara capabilities overview to all existing accounts.
• Develop the appropriate strategy for discovering existing business opportunities to inform proposal creation.
• Actively engage with existing account decision makers in closing all CDDS business opportunities.
• Informs Commercial leadership on proposal and price quotation development efforts that best address the prospect's needs, while coordinating the involvement of all necessary personnel.
• Within guidelines established by the Head of Business Development, delivers and negotiates proposals and other legal agreements required to achieve sales targets while maintaining appropriate margin levels for each opportunity.
• Presents new/expanded solutions options to prospects by identifying best-fit opportunities for Certara DDS solutions against the prospect's Need-to-Buy, and by developing strategies to communicate an appropriate, compelling message to the prospect.
• Coordinates the seamless transition of newly contracted agreements within existing accounts to the CDDS teams respectively.
• Proactively assesses, clarifies, and validates assigned prospects' needs on an ongoing basis.
• Proactively informs the team as to progress against monthly, quarterly and annual performance objectives, financial targets, and critical sales plan milestones.
• Coordinates the involvement of Subject Matter Experts, including Regulatory, and Drug Development Services, Works closely with Proposals and Contracts team, and management resources, in order to meet sales performance objectives and prospects' expectations.
• Represent the Company at trade symposia and other professional associations, to promote services, engage with clients and prospects, and collect competitive intelligence.
• Work with the CDDS team to engage subject matter expertise in the pre-sales process leading up to closure, post-close project delivery, and larger account management.
• Coordinate across other Certara businesses including Software, Simcyp, and, Evidence and Access to leverage the Certara's relationships and solutions globally.

Qualifications

• Minimum 3-5 years of outside sales experience in a consultative business-to-business sales environment.
• A seasoned and well-rounded biopharmaceutical executive is required with minimum combined business development experience of 3-5 years in a consultative business-to-business sales environment, representing the life sciences vertical, ideally with pharmaceutical drug development experience.
• Demonstrated "Hunter" track record for identifying and developing strategic business in new accounts and "Farmer" track record for expanding the portfolio of business with current clients.
• Able to lead strategic business planning process based on an understanding of industry trends and opportunities and effectively solve strategic challenges.
• Proven ability to lead initiatives: work collaboratively with teams to achieve objectives. Achieves organizational focus on key priorities. Provides clear direction, delegates, actively communicates. Superior project management skills.
• Proven success in working collaboratively with cross functional commercialization teams with a strong business orientation and ability to view issues from multiple functional perspectives.
• Experienced and adept in a variety of negotiating settings. Able to engage effectively; establishes a clear negotiation strategy and manages a tight process. Proven experience in identifying, evaluating, and pursuing business development opportunities within new and existing key markets.
• Experience with developing business cases to recommend and rationalize investments and other strategic actions.
• Demonstrated ability to gain credibility through successful leadership in a matrix environment, across a range of functions, position levels and geography.
• Understanding of pharmaceutical service organizations and their revenue drivers is strongly preferred.
• Strong communication and influencing skills.
• Ability and willingness to travel, domestically and internationally. This position will require frequent travel across the US, Canada, and possibly Europe (candidates must have a valid passport and driver's license).
• Fluent in English. Additional language skills are desirable.

Personal Attributes

• High ethical standards and personal integrity.
• Highly energetic individual who welcomes accountability, a solid work ethic, and a commitment to quality while constantly looking for ways to contribute.
• Strategic thinking and ability to constructively challenge and influence the decision-making process.
• Establishes clear expectations and priorities, drives initiatives to completion. Sets goals and consistently delivers against objectives. Monitors progress and proactively addresses issues and obstacles.
• Ability to effectively translate overall strategies into actionable operational plans and assure implementation.
• Ability to simplify and convey complex concepts and strategies orally and in writing and influence key decision makers.
• Strong analytical skills with a data-driven focus.
• Ability to create and share a vision based on corporate mission.
• Flexible and able to adapt to a quickly changing environment.