Reporting to Global Product Director
Purpose: The Client Partner will play a pivotal role in the organisation, serving as the primary point of contact for our clients, driving business growth, and ensuring the successful execution of research projects. This role requires a blend of project management skills, sales acumen, and a deep understanding of market research methodologies. The purpose of the role is to effectively manage, retain and grow a portfolio of existing clients to achieve the agreed growth targets through, building sustainable relationships, identifying opportunities, and ensuring exceptional service delivery to achieve overall client satisfaction and extrapolate future business.
Key Performance Areas:
Client Retention & Growth:
To build and manage working relationships with various stakeholders (internal & external) for various Key Accounts to achieve the retention and growth strategies for the company on an ongoing basis.
To understand and define the client’s business problems through ongoing collaboration, identify and action business opportunities including proposing premium client solutions and other cross selling initiatives in support of the growth strategies of the company.
Client Portfolio Management:
To constantly keep abreast of all media and industry trends to effectively and proactively engage with key accounts to support the growth and retention strategies set.
To be experienced as a trusted advisor/thought leader in the industry to support the company and reputation. This is achieved through continuous development, having a learning mindset, and sharing powerful insights with key accounts in various forums.
To develop a well-defined and actionable roadmap for each existing client in the allocated portfolio by conducting a thorough SWOT analysis and determining action plans accordingly.
To effectively action each client roadmap according to the agreed plan, through regular engagement (f2f and other) thereby ensuring client growth and overall profitability.
Proposal Support:
To support the BID Office with various proposals by providing accurate and relevant information required to compile costings (e.g. resources, time allocation and outputs etc.) to enhance the conversion rate and improve the alignment of forecast vs actual in the delivery of work, resulting in the achievement of profitable project delivery.
Commercial:
To achieve the agreed sales growth target per client and/or industry per quarter in support of the overall company strategic objectives.
Operational Profitability:
Ensure projects are delivered within budgeted costs while maintaining the profit margin agreed upon with the client. This entails providing accurate input into costings, effectively managing project costs, optimizing resource productivity, and upholding quality standards to minimize rework and maximize profitability.
Together with finance, monitoring and evaluating allocated expenditure, mitigate risk, minimize overspend and maximize profitability for the business.
Project Delivery:
To effectively lead and manage multiple research projects by taking accountability of allocated projects ensure overall client satisfaction (quality), timeous delivery within budget.
To liaise and provide ongoing expert advice, information, and feedback to all stakeholders (internally & externally), thereby ensuring the effective flow of information to support the achievement of clients’ projects in line with budget and timeframes, resulting in project profitability and client growth. (e.g., statisticians, clients, field, research)
Proactively identify and address any barriers to client satisfaction, ensuring timely resolution of issues and maintaining high levels of client engagement.
To achieve the clients’ objectives by reviewing and co-presenting the final research reports and outputs (i.e., Researcher and/or Statistician) to the client in a professional manner within the agreed deadline. This includes:
Receiving and reviewing the final report
Reviewing recommendations and elevate where needed through professional analysis.
define next steps and identify cross selling opportunities.
To design and facilitate various workshops and other management consultant engagements in a professional manner ensuring overall client satisfaction.
Data Integrity: To take responsibility for the overall integrity of report outputs moving through the department thereby ensuring superior quality of outputs and achieving the client's needs and supporting sustainable growth for the company.
People Management:
To manage people resources allocated to various projects by defining and directing activities, monitoring performance, and developing employees to ensure that the objectives and timelines of the projects are achieved on an ongoing basis.
To ensure that all management duties and administration associated to the role are managed in accordance with company policy and procedures. This includes but is not limited to accurate capturing; completing storing and submitting relevant document within the agreed deadline such as HR documentation, leave, work from home, reports, timesheets etc.