Grade: Principal

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company, listed on the London Stock Exchange. With over 100 years of engineering excellence and employing close to 3,000 employees in more than 20 countries, we provide exceptional levels of expertise in delivering leading-edge and innovative cross-sector sustainable products and solutions. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

Clean Energy and Environmental Solutions (CE&ES), one of Ricardo plc’s four operating business units, is a leader in sustainability consultancy, solving complex environmental challenges through industry-leading analysis, advice and data. With more than 40 years of heritage in addressing air quality, environmental and sustainability issues, our customers value us for our deep understanding and breadth of services covering the entire value chain from evidence, policy and strategy to implementation. CE&ES has six technical practices, and the role will work with the practices to grow our profitable revenue from the Asian Development Bank.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a regional development bank, which is headquartered in Manila, Philippines. The bank also maintains 31 field offices across the Asia Pacific region and represents 49 developing member countries to promote social and economic development in Asia. ADB is Asia and the Pacific’s climate bank, with a program to invest $100 billion in climate finance between 2019 and 2030. ADB is already a key customer for Ricardo’s International Development portfolio, and we are looking to expand our revenue with ADB as part of Ricardo’s 5-year growth strategy.

The key objective of this role is to provide exceptional account management to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) at their Headquarters in Manila. As a result of this, you will maximise the client relationship, understand and identify business challenges across the technical sectors and service offerings Ricardo provides, identify key market and competitor insight, and seek opportunities to cross-sell our services, whilst growing our portfolio of technical assistance and consultancy to ADB.

This role will form part of Ricardo’s wider Sales Team, reporting to the Director of International Business Strategy who has responsibility for growing our global international finance institution (IFI) and development bank portfolio.

Key responsibilities

• Relationship Development – the Key Account Manager (KAM) will develop and expand the relationships we hold with ADB across all six practices in CE&ES. The purpose is to work with all business areas that have a mandate to grow revenue from ADB and be the key point of liaison with existing and future customers within ADB.
• Visibility - the role will involve raising Ricardo brand awareness and visibility, focusing in particular on practice areas where we have limited visibility at present, expanding our market share and building a network of key contacts through which we can secure contracts. It will require regular visits to the ADB headquarters and other offices to have in-person meetings with ADB staff.
• Account management – the KAM will ensure client satisfaction and efficiency of delivery, communications and service management. There will be an emphasis on external communications in order to raise the profile, and leverage cross sell/up-sell opportunities
• Engagement – the KAM will identify key market insights, including market trends, regulatory challenges and competitor activity. They will input into the business development strategy internally which ensures we are demonstrating our value and differentiation versus our competitors, whilst identifying new product development opportunities. They will engage with teams within Ricardo to secure support for business growth with ADB. They will also promote Ricardo participation at key ADB events, including annual conferences, business opportunities fairs and expert meetings.
• Wider partnerships – the KAM will build on their expertise with ADB to support other company initiatives, for example with other clients in Asia, and with other International Financial Institutions (e.g. World Bank) and donor organisations (e.g. GIZ and FCDO in Manila)
• Managing risk - they will act on any issues affecting prompt payment, satisfaction, long-term retention, etc. recognising, and where possible, preventing any risks arising from non-standard delivery, working with the respective teams.
• Guidance – the KAM will liaise with internal teams whose roles relate to service delivery, e.g.: consultants, customer services, product delivery team and sales teams to advise and provide guidance on elements of account management, enabling others to deliver a high-quality service.

Key competencies and experience

The successful candidate should be able to demonstrate the below criteria:

• Broad experience of Key Account Management sales and retention best practice
• Demonstrable experience of quickly establishing relationships within accounts and leveraging relationships to achieve personal and business objectives.
• A track record of strong performance against individual account management development and retention targets
• A professional, organised and disciplined individual who has a proven track record of effectively and efficiently managing a large customer base.
• An awareness of how to make effective decisions in a complex delivery environment, balancing the business development objectives with the client’s requirements.

Desirable

• Experience of working within a sales environment, for example within a consultancy, or similar environment.
• Experience in working within a policy, strategy, economics, energy or environment business area and liaising with technical teams in a consulting environment.
• Experience working with a CRM system, especially MS Dynamics
• A working knowledge of the Asian Development Bank and relevant contacts within the organisation.

Skills and behaviours

• An organised, commercially aware, target focused Key Account Manager professional who appreciates excellent customer service and client relationships
• A team player able to work with a wide range of stakeholders both inside and outside of the organisation, being confident working with clients to ensure they are getting value from our services, and seeking further support opportunities
• Committed to continuous improvement of the business, the service delivery, and the clients risk management.
• Enthusiastic about sharing knowledge and expertise on ADB and their consulting opportunities across the sales and technical teams to encourage improvement in the function of our customer service
• Comfortable working in a dynamic operational environment, occasionally involving elements of quick decision-making
• Willing to embrace Ricardo’s values (https://www.ricardo.com/en/who-we-are/our-culture) and aim to lead others towards high standards of behaviour and performance.

Working here

Ricardo is an exciting and rewarding place to work and you have the opportunity to make a difference. You will work with teams of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. Alongside having a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalised approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Wellbeing and work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that's working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We're happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential. Our People are important to us, and we take pride in our wellbeing programmes and policies that support individuals including flexible working, carers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance programme.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion statement

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person's potential, and we'll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and pro-actively with all our employees and ensure a culture of inclusivity, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident' employer.

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