Business Development Manager - Government

With eleven offices across the United States, 450+ professionals and 350+ business professionals, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP (www.manatt.com), is a multidisciplinary, integrated national professional services firm known for quality and an extraordinary commitment to clients. The firm’s groundbreaking approach—bringing together legal services, advocacy and business strategy—differentiates Manatt from its competitors and positions the firm to provide a distinct and compelling value proposition.

The Opportunity

This role within the team provides the opportunity to serve as the business development lead for our Government Advocacy & Contracting business unit, which also includes our lobbying arm, Manatt Government Strategies, LLC.  Reporting to the Associate Director of Business Development, this Business Development Manager works with business unit and group leaders to develop and build client relationships, expand business development opportunities, and launch new products and services to drive revenues and achieve financial growth. In addition, this position serves as the centralized lead on the business units’ capabilities and experience and will work across the platform both to understand and promote our related capabilities. This position offers high visibility with the marketing leadership team and with partners, managing directors and consultants.

This is an ideal time to join our dynamic and growing business development and marketing team. We are looking for a team player who will work closely and collaboratively with our BD and marketing team as well as our legal and consulting professionals and can make a difference from day one.

Responsibilities:

• Work with the business unit and group leaders and individual professionals to develop and execute business development plans and initiatives to drive growth, expand business development opportunities, identify new revenue opportunities, improve cross-selling.

• Develop and project manage winning client proposals, pitches and RFP responses. Collaborate with practice management team to develop competitive fee proposals. Track wins and losses in Salesforce.

• Develop and manage project plans and budgets to ensure business development initiatives are implemented on time and within budget, and expenses comply with Firm policies and procedures.

• Research and evaluate the business case for speaking, sponsorship and membership opportunities. Negotiate proposed sponsorship agreements and execute deliverables in close coordination with the events team.

• In coordination with the events team, plan and execute effective webinars, seminars, conferences, and other Firm-sponsored and hosted client events. Ensure appropriate pre- and post- event follow-up is in place to maximize related business development opportunities.

• Track experience within assigned groups and across the platform and work with the team to promote related client wins. Ensure representative experience and case studies are captured and updated to support proposals and ranking submissions.

• Draft and manage compelling Chambers, Legal 500 and other ranking directory submissions.

• Work with research services team to conduct competitive intelligence research, analyze trends and identify opportunities with target clients.

• Analyze competitors and their service offerings and identify opportunities to raise the profile of the practices and partners.

• Manage the publication of related thought leadership, including white papers, newsletters and client alerts in coordination with the marketing technology and communications teams.

• Assist in integrating new lateral attorneys, managing directors and consultants into the Firm.

• Provide direction, supervise, manage, coach, train and mentor junior business development team members.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a related field; a J.D. is a plus.

• Minimum of 7 years of experience in business development within a law firm or similar professional services environment.

• Deep understanding of business development core competencies, including market research, competitive intelligence, pitch and proposal responses, and client development and sales strategies.

• Substantive experience supporting a government relations or lobbying practice a plus.

• Experienced team leader with demonstrated success driving high-performance collaboration. A minimum of three to five years of supervisory experience is preferred.

• Forward-thinking, results-oriented, deliverables-driven strategic thinker and self-starter with the ability to balance long-term strategic vision and effective day-to-day execution.