Director of Business Development and Marketing

Pearl Pathways

Pharmaceutical and device companies need to navigate through many hurdles as they develop drugs, devices, and diagnostics that improve and save human life. Pearl Pathways supports companies in their development, manufacturing, and marketing of these products. Our mission is to ensure our clients successfully navigate the highly regulated life science environment by balancing risk, speed to market, and cost to achieve their business goals. Versiti, a national leader in blood health innovation, announced the acquisition of Pearl Pathways in November 2023.

Pearl Pathways’ service offerings include:

Position

Director of Business Development and Marketing

Job Description

The Director of Business Development and Marketing is responsible for establishing and articulating the long-term pipeline strategy of the company to deliver strategy and a sustainable financial future. This position will operationally manage the development and growth of a large pipeline of business. This position will organize, coordinate, support, and help direct the commercialization efforts for the company including business development and marketing functions within the organization. This position will report to the Chief Marketing Officer of Versiti to assist in the creation of and drive and monitor strategic growth, new business opportunities, and marketing initiatives. This role will work closely with the legacy Versiti Marketing and Business Development team, along with the members of the Pearl Pathways management team. We are looking for a motivated professional with strong business acumen and strategic, execution, and follow-through skills who will help develop and implement strategic growth initiatives, manage the entire sales cycle, lead client-facing activities and initiatives, and implement marketing plans.

Responsibilities include:

Business Development (BD)

• Direct and manage work and development BD and Marketing personnel
• Participate in scoping calls, develop proposals, and/or guide more complex proposal development as needed to drive a solutions-oriented approach, offset capacity constraints, and ensure response time goals are met.
• Identify strategic risks and help to reduce these risks
• Provide research support to identify, qualify, and generate new lead prospects (e.g., external database reporting, lead identification via social media and related web-based entities, industry/market landscape analyses, etc.)
• Ensure the timely provision of responses to RFPs and generate proposals; assume ownership of the proposal and change order processes (management of the pipeline and deal flow)
• Develop innovative approaches to lead generation
• Enable the BD and marketing team through training, tools (e.g., CRM, etc.), focus, and goals
• Develop and monitor pricing, fee schedules, and profitability
• Lead and/or facilitate Key Account and Client Retention programs
• Support client satisfaction initiatives and continuous improvement of processes to gain client insights/feedback, optimize client journey, and exceed client expectations
• Support BD Dashboard and key metric generation, including ensuring appropriate and timely data entry into CRM
• Participate in strategic growth initiatives and business development-related special projects as assigned by Chief Marketing Officer of Versiti
• Participate in key organizational strategy initiatives (including scenario planning, future mapping, and forecasting)
• Work with members of the Pearl management team and Financial Analyst to develop predictive financial models to support strategic business initiatives and decision-making
• Support the company’s overall Business Plan and development, implementation, and continuous review of the Business Development Strategic Growth Plan

Marketing

• Support, implement, and continuous nurturing of our marketing strategy and plan (includes building brand awareness, positioning, content management, value proposition, targeted client profiles, etc.)
• Provide fundamental marketing support of company’s growth initiatives
• Direct and manage work of marketing personnel (in-house and external consultants/vendors)
• Drive measures to ensure a customer-focused culture and provide customer service coaching
• Perform competitor analyses
• Oversee and implement marketing plan tactics: planning and implementation of event marketing, website/blog, email marketing, online media, pay-per- click Google Ad words, social media footprint, trade association involvement, sponsorships, and public relations
• Oversee or perform the role of webmaster in creating new content, blogging, and designing case studies and white papers for www.pearlpathways.com and www.pearlirb.com
• Direct development of social media content
• Direct development, determining the timely cadence, and communication method of newsletters, blogs, white papers, etc. and coordinate with the service delivery teams to generate content
• Manage and grow company database and CRM processes; provide data and analytics (e.g., for KPI/metric reporting, marketing asset ROI, sales forecasting, trends, etc.)
• Manage and/or direct coordination of event marketing and PR efforts for company
• Manage trade show and event marketing planning, implementation, follow-up, and metrics

Skills and Competencies:

• 4 to 6 years of business development-related experience in the life science industry
• 2 to 4 years experience working for a biopharmaceutical company or CRO in a relevant product development functional area (e.g., clinical research/ops, regulatory, etc.)
• Thorough working understanding of the entire biopharmaceutical and/or medical device product development lifecycle
• Minimum of a bachelor’s degree (business and science preferred)
• Master’s degree / MBA preferred
• 2 to 4 years of marketing experience preferred
• Applied business acumen to assess and foster partnerships with companies of varied lineage (startups to large pharma)
• Keen financial/business intelligence to provide and support key organizational strategy initiatives preferred
• Able to assimilate new information and understand complex topics and strategies
• Well-developed leadership and project management skills, including demonstrated cross-functional communication and influence and change management skills
• Exceptional written and verbal communication and interpersonal skills
• Proven relationship builder capable of developing and maintaining client relationships
• Good negotiation skills and assertiveness
• Critical thinker with solutions- and customer-service orientation
• Able to effectively interface and communicate with clients and personnel at all levels and from diverse backgrounds
• Able to work independently and collaboratively in a fast-paced and dynamic environment
• Flexibility and adaptability
• Strong tactical execution skills
• Solid planning, analytical, and critical thinking abilities
• Strong experience with Microsoft Office suite of products (i.e., Excel, Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint)

Effort required:

• Indianapolis-based, salaried, full-time position

• Occasional networking events evenings/weekends

• Travel up to 25% of time for trade shows, client visits, and other events

Company Description

Pearl Pathways is a comprehensive life science regulatory, quality compliance, and clinical services consulting company and CRO. Every day our nimble and flexible team of experts strives to provide top quality service, unyielding ethics, and efficient services while accelerating lifesaving products to market. Pearl Pathways supports diagnostic, medical device, and biopharmaceutical companies as well as life science service providers to bring products to market sooner. Our full-service central IRB supports all aspects of human research. Founded in 2010, Pearl Pathways is headquartered in Indianapolis and was acquired by Versiti in November 2023