Brand and Business Development Manager

Are you the sort of person who sees an opportunity, makes the introduction and keeps things moving until something happens?

Jane Leonard is looking for a proactive, commercially minded and highly organised person to help grow Jane Leonard and PIECE by Piece into a more visible and regularly booked speaking and performance brand. 

The role can largely be managed remotely, with occasional in-person meetings, filming days or attendance at speaking engagements where useful. Based on a 65 hour month: £1,200 per month fixed fee + 10% commission on paid speaking fees directly generated through the role.

Jane's background spans elite sport, the military, endurance challenges, coaching and speaking. She represented England at rugby and has rowed across the Pacific Ocean, giving her a powerful story around performance, resilience, challenge and making the next move. PIECE by Piece is the next chapter, helping people make their next move, one piece at a time. There is already a strong story, a clear message and proven speaking experience. The opportunity now is to turn that into a consistent pipeline of speaking engagements and build the systems and relationships needed to support continued growth.

You will have plenty of autonomy to shape the approach, identify opportunities and play a meaningful part in developing the brand.

The Role

The main focus of the role will be business development and generating speaking opportunities. You will identify and approach schools, academies, businesses, sports teams, universities and other organisations that could benefit from hearing Jane speak.

You will build relationships, create opportunities, follow them up consistently and help turn conversations into confirmed bookings.

You will not be starting completely from scratch. Jane already has existing contacts, previous clients, schools, organisations and warm leads. Part of the role will be to bring these together into a more organised system, build a proper database or CRM-style process and then grow the pipeline significantly through new outreach and relationship-building.

Once a speaking opportunity is secured, you will also help organise the engagement, making sure Jane and the client have everything they need for the event to run smoothly.

Your responsibilities will include:

Identifying suitable organisations, audiences and speaking opportunities
Bringing existing contacts and warm leads into one organised system
Building and maintaining a database of relevant contacts and opportunities
Carrying out personalised outreach by email, LinkedIn and phone
Helping turn enquiries and conversations into confirmed speaking bookings
Coordinating speaking engagements, including dates, timings, venues, briefs and key requirements
Keeping track of leads, meetings, bookings, fees and next actions
Managing Jane's speaking pipeline and ensuring opportunities do not get missed
Helping grow the visibility of PIECE by Piece
Creating and managing a simple LinkedIn and Instagram content plan
Spotting stories, testimonials and content opportunities
Sourcing and coordinating photographers and videographers when required
Turning speaking engagements into future content, introductions and further opportunities

Who Could This Suit?

Your exact background is less important than your ability to create opportunities, build relationships and stay organised.

You could come from business development, recruitment, account management, events, marketing, PR, talent management or another relationship-led role.

Someone from an events or event management background could be particularly well suited, as the role combines generating opportunities with organising the practical details around speaking engagements.

You will need to be:

Proactive. Organised. Confident. Commercially minded. Persistent. Creative. Excellent with people.

You will also need to be organised enough to take an opportunity from the first conversation through to a successfully delivered speaking engagement.

This role will suit someone who naturally thinks:

"This is what we need to do next."

The Opportunity

This is an opportunity to become closely involved in growing a speaking and personal development brand at an exciting stage.

Rather than simply being handed a fixed process to follow, you will have the freedom to help shape how opportunities are identified, approached, managed and converted.

Speaking fees vary depending on the event, audience and level of involvement, but a typical keynote fee is around £1,000-£1,500 plus expenses. 

The Arrangement

The role will initially be offered as a three-month freelance trial.

The role is based on an expected minimum commitment of around 15 hours per week, approximately 65 hours per month.

It is designed to be flexible rather than based around fixed working hours, so some weeks may require a little more or less time depending on speaking opportunities, meetings and activity.

If the first three months are successful, there is significant scope for the role to develop alongside Jane Leonard and PIECE by Piece