The role
The Business Development Lead is a quota-carrying role that owns the top of our sales funnel. You turn outreach, events and inbound interest into discovery meetings and qualified opportunities for our Account Executives.
Our buyers are Communities, Schools, Hospitals and Nonprofits. Deals involve many decision-makers, and take 12 to 24 months to close. You open those conversations, earn trust early and hand off opportunities that are ready to move.
You'll work closely with our Account Executives, Marketing, and the Funding Strategy team.
What you'll do
- Research prospects and use real signals (new funding, grant awards, program launches, public announcements) to write personalized outreach
- Run calls, emails, LinkedIn and sequences across our core segments, and book discovery meetings
- Lead first conversations: understand each organization's goals, decision process, timing and likely funding path, then qualify before handing off to an Account Executive
- Follow community and organizational protocols, and listen more than you pitch
- Keep relationships warm with consistent, thoughtful follow-up over long cycles
- Keep CRM accurate: activity, stages, next steps and stakeholder notes
- Use AI tools to research and scale outreach, and to analyze what's working so you keep improving
- Represent Growcer at conferences, farm tours and events, and turn event contacts into pipeline
- Respond to inbound inquiries and connect people with the right next step
What success looks like
You carry a monthly quota of discovery meetings booked and qualified opportunities accepted by our Account Executives.
- First 30 days: learn our offer, segments and sales process; shadow live discovery calls and community meetings.
- By 60 days: run your own outreach sequences and book your first discovery meetings.
- By 90 days: lead discovery conversations with confidence and hit your monthly quota.
Who you are
Experience. One of these describes you:
- some experienced carrying a quota as an SDR, BDR or similar, ideally selling B2B software to mid-market or enterprise buyers
- A recent graduate with real proof of drive: you led Enactus or a student association, placed in a business case competition, ran a student franchise, or started a business
What we look for
- Customer-first: you follow through, and you care what happens after the meeting is booked
- Coachable: you ask questions, take feedback and put it into practice quickly
- Integrity: you'll tell a prospect when we're not the right fit yet
- Driven: you set goals, chase them and solve problems without waiting to be asked
- Humble and a good listener: you treat every community as a partner, not a market segment
- Patient: you keep momentum on deals that take a year or more and involve many people
- Organized across many conversations at once
- Comfortable with AI tools and current on modern prospecting
- Experience with Indigenous communities, schools, nonprofits, higher education or healthcare is an asset
- Strong spoken and written English; French is an asset
The details
- Location: Ottawa, ON. Hybrid from our Ottawa office; you live within commuting distance of Ottawa-Gatineau.
- Compensation: OTE of $120,000 CAD in year one, with earnings growing with performance and a path to an Account Executive role.
- Travel: about 30% for conferences, farm tours, community visits and events.
- Language: English required. Bilingualism (English and French) is an asset.
- Must be legally able to work in Canada and hold a valid driver's licence.
How we hire
This role puts you in front of prospects from day one, so we'd like to see you in action early.
- Intro call with our team.
- Outreach exercise: write a short cold message to a realistic Growcer prospect.
- Mock discovery call: we'll give you one piece of feedback, then run it again. We care more about how you adjust than how the first run goes.
- Final conversation with leadership and references.
