We're looking for a Sales Development Representative to join our team in London as part of our Sales function.

Your Role: You will join an extremely successful team who have played a key part in growing our digital business for many years. You will play a pivotal role in our sales and growth strategy by identifying and engaging with potential customers who are a good fit for our courses.

You will be responsible for understanding the unique needs and pain points of prospects, articulating the value of our products, and nurturing relationships to convert leads into bookings.  Your expertise will be essential in driving revenue growth and contributing to the success of our business.

Key Responsibilities

• Prospect Engagement: Proactively identify potential customers through various channels and initiate meaningful conversations to understand their requirements and preferences. Speaking with cold prospects and inbound leads primarily via telephone, following up by email and working with the Sales team to calculate where to prioritise focus to ensure we hit our global business targets.
• Value Proposition: Communicate the unique value proposition of our Lions Learning courses offerings in a compelling and persuasive manner, tailored to the prospect's specific needs.
• Needs Analysis: Conduct thorough needs analysis to identify prospects' pain points and priorities, ensuring that our solutions align with their business objectives.
• Sales Pipeline Management: Track and manage prospect interactions, leads, and opportunities in the CRM system, ensuring accurate and timely updates.
• Market Research: Stay informed about industry trends, competitor offerings, and customer preferences to enhance our understanding of the market and improve prospect targeting.
• You will work to be knowledgeable about:
  • Lions Learning portfolio and target audience for each course
  • Lions Learning Cohort dates
  • Our existing customer base to showcase who we already work with

• You are an advocate and ally for diversity, equity and inclusion

Your Experience

• Knowledge of the advertising landscape
• Excellent organisation skills
• Sharp attention to detail
• Extremely customer service oriented with a passion to exceed expectations
• Concise communication skills and enjoys talking to customers
• Ability to create presentations and proposals
• Go getter who is willing to learn and absorb ideas shared with them
• Determined, energetic, curious, can do attitude, problem solving and passion for storytelling.
• Imaginative and a passion for presenting your ideas.
• Ability to handle difficult conversations with clients, manage their expectations and leave all parties happy.

If you don't meet every single requirement, we'd still encourage you to apply. At LIONS, we are committed to creating a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you are excited about this role we would still like you to apply.

Who are we?

The LIONS brand is probably most synonymous with Cannes Lions, The International Festival of Creativity, the definitive meeting place for the global creative communications and advertising community. It’s five days of inspiration, aspiration, unlimited magic and potential. The Festival has been championing creative excellence since 1954 with the goal of providing a global destination and the definitive benchmark for creativity that drives progress.

LIONS is going through an exciting time as it’s recently repositioned as The Home of Creativity, supporting those in the business of creativity at every step of their journeys with an extended portfolio of new advisory, learning and intelligence services. Our purpose is to drive progress through creativity for an incredibly diverse and talented global creative community.

You will join a team of change makers. The team’s purpose is to champion change to create the most powerful global creative community and drive growth for the brand.

LIONS is part of Ascential plc. Ascential takes the world’s leading brands to the heart of what’s next for their industries. We do this through our events, intelligence products and advisory services. Our 700 people serve a global customer base from more than 100 countries in the large and growing Marketing and Financial Technology sectors. Ascential plc is listed on London Stock Exchange.

Why Choose Us?

Two divisions. Three continents. One great culture.

We strive for the highest standards in everything we do. But that’s not just for our customers. We want working for Ascential to be the best career move you’ve ever made.

Ascential is a people-powered company, and we’re committed to supporting each and every one of them. We publish an annual Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report that sets out our goals, commitments and progress so far. We invest in Employee Groups, empowering them to run educational events, support charities that they’re passionate about, and share experiences with colleagues. These groups include Able to Thrive, Ascential Pride, Black in Business and Empower Women's Network. And our inclusive recruitment practices and early talent programmes help us to bring curious, passionate people from every walk of life into our team.

We’re committed to ensuring that the impact of our business on our environment - and the communities we operate in - is a positive one. That means making sure that each event we run is the most sustainable it’s ever been. We also default all of our pension plans to ESG options, so that our people’s savings are invested in ways that help rather than hinder our planet.

Helping people to connect and drive progress isn’t a business-only goal. We know that the world is a better place when we all lead with heart, supporting charitable causes that make a difference. We provide opportunities to give back through Volunteer Days, our Employee Groups and our charity partner, The Prince’s Trust.

We value output, not hours. Most of our roles ask for 1-2 days a week in your nearest office. But if that’s not possible for you, let’s talk. Flexible work conversations are actively encouraged here, and always will be.

Only you know what’s most important to you. That’s why we offer benefits packages that you can tailor to your needs. These include:

• 25 days of holiday per year  - with an option to buy/ sell upto 5 days
• Pension, Life Assurance and Income Protection
• Flexible benefits platform with options including Private Medical, Dental Insurance, Critical Illness and the Ascential Shares Scheme
• Employee assistance programme, season ticket loans and cycle to work scheme
• Volunteering opportunities and charitable giving options
• Great learning and development opportunities.

We want to ensure everyone has the opportunity to perform their best when interviewing, so if you require any reasonable adjustments that would make you more comfortable during the process, please let us know so that we can do our best to support you.

If we inspire you, why not join and inspire us?  Find out  more