Life at Ometria: Lawrence (Senior Business Development Executive)

We caught up with Lawrence to find out what it’s like to be a Senior Business Development Executive at Ometria.

Tell us a bit about your role?

My role is to identify prospects that may be in the market to buy a platform like Ometria. I reach out to them by email, telephone and LinkedIn, and then book discovery and demo sessions to help uncover the challenges that Ometria may be able to address. 

Compared to other Business Development positions I’ve held in the past, in this role I have more responsibility to guide the deal until the prospect is ready to start talking about the commercial contract.

I work closely with the Business Development Manager (BDM) to build a business case that extends beyond the demonstration phase. I interface with other stakeholders in the company and participate in the technical scoping discussions. As I work closely with the BDM, I get a much better understanding of the sales process in preparation for when the time comes to start closing deals myself.

What does a typical day in your role look like?

In our CRM we are assigned 200 accounts, and at the beginning of each week I identify 40 accounts and two corresponding stakeholders from each company to focus on. As a first step, I typically make contact by phone; however due to COVID-19, I now use email more to make initial contact and follow up by phone.

In the afternoon, I schedule all emails to go out first thing the next morning, then I can spend all the next morning making calls. 

Aside from outreach, I schedule two to three discovery sessions a week which can take approximately an hour to prepare for and a half-hour for the call.

Our team also has an internal revenue meeting and a Business Development Executive meeting every Monday where we talk with our manager, Luke, about the opportunities we’re working on and any challenges or difficulties we’re experiencing.

What are you targeted on?

I’m targeted on the number of sourced opportunities per month, and we have a couple of metrics on how to get there. Typically, if I do 200 touches a week (call, email or LinkedIn) that should generate two to three discoveries a week, which should lead to four demos a month.

What’s an opportunity at Ometria?

At Ometria we use BANT, a framework that is used to determine qualified prospects, and an opportunity is defined as somebody that wants to onboard Ometria in the next three to six months or a client that has sent a request for proposal (RFP).

You started as a Business Development Executive and moved into the Senior BDE role, how has your role changed?

When I was a BDE, I had targeted accounts that only had 30 to 40 employees. I would speak to someone on Monday, and by Friday I could easily have a qualified opportunity on the board because there were less people to sign off on the decision.

In my current role, the retailers I work with are larger organisations that take longer to make decisions because there are far more people to speak to and you need a real breadth of knowledge. Two weeks ago, I was in a discussion with the Head of Marketing, Head of IT and the Head of eCommerce for one large retailer. In their respective roles, they all care about different things, so you need more time to prepare for each call. Further, there are always other people in the background you don’t know about so it makes the conversations much more complex.

What do you enjoy about the role?

In this role, I have learnt so much more about retail than ever before. You have to be knowledgeable in all of the different industry verticals; for example, a company that sells flowers operates much differently than one that sells furniture. There is also a high level of expertise in the team and when we share information and talk about opportunities and deals, everyone learns.

Thanks for telling us a bit more about your role Lawrence!   

If you’re interested to learn where a career in sales at Ometria could lead you, check out our careers page https://ometria.com/careers