Business Development Manager

We are looking for a Business Development Manager, who will work directly with the founders to turn a proven product and a warm pipeline into signed customers.

This is a builder role: you will run processes for deals from first contact to Proof-of-Value to contract, and just as importantly, you will build the commercial engine behind them together with the founders.

The CRM discipline, the ROI cases, the reference stories, and the feedback loops that connect Sales, Engineering, Customer Success and Product.

You'll get deep exposure to an industry in transformation, real ownership from day one, and a direct line of sight from your work to company revenue.

About this role

We are looking for a Business Development Manager, who will work directly with the founders to turn a proven product and a warm pipeline into signed customers.

This is a builder role: you will run processes for deals from first contact to Proof-of-Value to contract, and just as importantly, you will build the commercial engine behind them together with the founders.

The CRM discipline, the ROI cases, the reference stories, and the feedback loops that connect Sales, Engineering, Customer Success and Product.

You'll get deep exposure to an industry in transformation, real ownership from day one, and a direct line of sight from your work to company revenue.

Responsibilities

• Own the pipeline.

Research opportunities, identify the real decision-makers (owners, COOs, mill managers), become ready to run structured top-down outreach, and monitor every deal in Hub Spot.

• Drive deals end-to-end.

Support and increasingly lead discovery calls, mill visits, and offer negotiations together with the founders; coordinate Proof-of-Value projects with defined success criteria and make sure their results land with the people who sign.

• Build the business case. Work with customers' production and controlling teams to quantify ROI in their numbers, and continuously improve the ROI based on what you learn.
• Turn customers into references. Convert successful deployments into quantified case studies, testimonials and reference visits.
• Make events pay. Prepare and organize trade fairs, webinars and industry events (Zellcheming, symposiums, customer workshops), pre-book meetings, follow up.
• Close the loops.

Feed market and customer signals back into Product (Sales Engineering), make sure that signed customers are handed over cleanly to Customer Success and spot upsell opportunities (Customer Success Upselling), and keep our value story honest (Product ROI).

• Find gaps in our processes, prioritize and fix them. From CRM hygiene to meeting-notes automation to offer workflows. Identify friction and remove it.
• Work AI-native.

Use modern AI tools (e. g.

Claude workflows, automation, digitization tools) for research, drafting, reporting and process automation.

We expect you to multiply yourself with technology or be ready to learn.

Requirements

• 2+ years of experience in B2B business development, sales, consulting or a customer-facing engineering role.

Ideally with industrial technology, B2B SW or the process industry.

Experience in paper, packaging or recycling is a strong plus, not a prerequisite.

• Go-to-market experience: you understand how to build an ROI argument, communicate a vision, and lay out a credible path to get there.
• Languages: German (C1 or native) and English, both fluent. You're equally comfortable on a mill floor in Saxony and in a boardroom in Zurich.
• Tech savviness: confident with CRM systems (we use Hub Spot), digital collaboration tools, and AI-supported workflows.
• Excellent soft skills: clear, warm communication and high emotional intelligence. You build trust with plant operators, controllers and family owners alike.
• Deep curiosity: you genuinely want to understand our product and the papermaking process well enough to be credible without an engineer at your side.
• Attention to detail and reliability: follow-ups happen when you said they would; nothing falls through the cracks.
• Builder mentality and hunger for success: you want to create structure where there is none, and you measure yourself by signed customers, not activity.
• On the move: Willingness to travel. Valid driver's license.
• Nice to Have
• An existing network in the paper/packaging/recycling industry (mills, suppliers, associations such as Zellcheming).
• Experience selling via pilot/Po C-based motions with technical products.
• Additional languages (French, Dutch, Italian).
• Salary Range
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