Director of Business Development

This role is located in Chicago, IL

Job Description

BKV Group focuses on business development to add depth and efficiency to our firm’s holistic practice by addressing the first critical stage of real estate development: identification, evaluation, analysis, and owner assistance in the acquisition of a potential development site.

As Director of Business Development, your primary responsibility will be growth. BKV Group will be looking to you to connect, develop, and nurture relationships with clients and other external stakeholders by leading the business development activity and outreach for the Chicago practice site’s Development sectors (Housing, Corporate, and Hospitality). This role requires positioning and instructing our practice leaders to resonate with clients and help convert site and project opportunities to new business wins for the firm. A depth of understanding and experience within Market-Rate, Student, Affordable, and Senior housing is preferred for this role.

This role reports directly to the National Director of Marketing & Business Development, Chicago’s Development Managing Partner, and the CEO, and assumes responsibility for all business development activities including consistently arranging and coordinating meetings between our practice leaders and clients while spearheading the strategy for successful pursuit efforts. Compensation for this role is base salary plus incentivized and annual bonuses.

Communication and interpersonal skills: An effective business development leader must have effective communication skills to build long-standing and successful client relationships. You will need to adapt and develop solutions to address our clients’ needs with clear and decisive communication, and persistently initiate and maintain contact with target clients, industry partners, organizations, and companies in the sectors within the region. This is a 100% “people person” role that requires the individual to be a proactive self-starter, motivated, and competitive to pursue new business opportunities with a rapid, high-energy, sales-minded approach.
Networking and persuasion skills: You will need to be highly comfortable networking as this will help build valuable relationships as well as partnerships with new and existing clients in the Development sector. To effectively lead the Chicago regional sector leaders in establishing, implementing, and maintaining the business development short and long-range plans, you need to be persuasive. You need to convince others to see the value in BKV’s portfolio, ideas, values, and holistic design platform, and take action.
Research and strategy: To successfully land clients, this individual needs to be invested in research. You need to understand the services, needs, and goals of the client, which means researching the organization, their funding mechanisms, their partnerships, their pain points, and their growth ambitions, collaborating with the marketing team and thought leaders to direct the research.
Business intelligence: Alongside knowing your client’s goals, a successful person in this role works with their teams to continually understand and reevaluate BKV’s business offerings. What are the services offered to other, similar clients? What do our competitors offer? How can you create a solution that fits your client’s needs while being cost-effective, innovative, sustainable, or more? This is essential in developing what BKV is offering and positioning our firm against our competitors.

Qualifications

Bachelor’s Degree in Business, Marketing, or Finance from an accredited college or university required. Master’s Degree is a plus. Real estate license or broker’s license is a plus.
Professional expertise demonstrated through 7+ years of proven ability to drive results that meet revenue and profitability goals through successful lead generation/follow through, market research, customer relations, pursuit development, and client management in the A/E/C industry.
Experience in the commercial real estate, real estate development, economic development, and/or project management is preferred, in addition to experience supporting the marketing department in the development of proposals, presentations, and additional marketing collateral.
Ability to build extensive and reputable relations with clients, strategic partners, and community members within Dallas, the larger metro area, and region.
Driven and passionate personality; exceptional self-motivation, customer service orientation, communication, writing, and presentation skills.
Strong leadership, mentoring, problem solving, negotiation, and quick decision-making skills. Must work well with a team and a variety of personalities.
Excellent time management and organization skills with the ability to become involved in and remain current on issues relating to several concurrent opportunities in various stages.
Active leader and member of varied professional and community organizations (i.e. CCIM, BOMA, CORENET, IFMA, AIA, DBIA, SMPS, ASHE, ACHE, etc.)
Microsoft Office Suite experience is required. Adobe Creative Suite experience preferred. Experience with a Customer Relationship Management tool is required. Experience with Unanet CRM is a plus.

BKV Group has a 40+year history of design excellence, winning more than 190 regional and national awards to date. We are passionate about how innovation and creative design can shape communities for the better – enhancing the economic, aesthetic, social, and environmental context. As a holistic national design firm, we bring a full complement of architecture, interior design, urban design, engineering, landscape architecture, and construction administration services together to collaborate from project kick-off to closeout. The diverse perspectives formed from this collaboration help us make better design decisions and are the keys to our success. We value being open, honest, genuine, and thoughtful with each other, our clients, community stakeholders, and consultants.

With excellent benefits, competitive salaries, a hybrid work schedule, and continuous opportunities for growth, we give you the tools to achieve your goals. We believe in a collegial, engaging, opportunistic, and fun working environment and are always interested in connecting with talented individuals who share our passion for enriching lives and strengthening communities. Sound like a fit? We want to hear from you!

BKV Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer (EOE)