Business Development Manager/Director, Substance Use Recovery - Southern California

Accountable

$90K — $130K *
Healthcare
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • 5+ years in business development or outreach within behavioral health, addiction treatment, or healthcare services (Manager role)
  • Proven relationships with referral sources such as treatment centers and discharge planners
  • Ability to work consultatively, understanding client needs rather than just pitching
  • Experience logging interactions and insights in a CRM system
  • Comfortable engaging with a diverse range of stakeholders, from therapists to attorneys

Responsibilities

  • Develop and execute a strategic territory plan targeting key referral sources
  • Engage and build relationships with treatment and clinical communities including detox and outpatient programs
  • Expand outreach to legal and monitoring professionals to enhance referral networks
  • Identify and cultivate relationships with employer and community organizations when relevant
  • Conduct in-services and workshops to educate potential referrers about services
  • Ensure timely and effective follow-up on referrals to maintain a positive reputation
  • Document and share market intelligence and insights to improve outreach strategies

Benefits

  • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance
  • Generous paid time off policy
  • Mileage reimbursement for travel related to field work
  • Reimbursement for pre-approved business expenses such as parking and tolls
  • Opportunities for professional education and attendance at industry events
Full Job Description
About the level

We're hiring one person to drive referral growth in Southern California. We'll bring you in as a Manager or Director depending on what you've built and what you bring. The role, the mission, and the way we operate are the same at every level. Scope, compensation, and title move with experience. The "Who you are" section below describes each level. Apply to the one that fits; we'll confirm it during the process.

The opportunity

Southern California is the market you'll build, working in concert with our leadership team. Every day, treatment centers, clinicians, and discharge planners across the territory decide where to send someone who needs more support, whether that's after treatment, alongside it, or before things get worse. Your job is to make Accountable the first call for the people we can actually help. This is one of the densest treatment markets in the country, and it has seen more than its share of the patient-brokering we describe below. A good name here is worth more than anywhere else we operate.

Start with the treatment and clinical community: detoxes, residential, PHP/IOP, outpatient, sober living, and the people who handle treatment planning and discharge. Once those channels are producing, add legal, monitoring, employer, and community relationships where they make sense.

A dedicated payor sales team owns insurance contracting. Your focus is referral demand: the treatment centers, clinicians, discharge planners, and community partners who send people to us. This role reports to the Chief Revenue Officer.

How we operate

Something to be direct about up front: this industry has a long history of paying for patients, and some markets have seen more of it than others. We don't do it. No referral fees, no per-head arrangements, no kickbacks dressed up as marketing agreements. We earn referrals on outcomes, responsiveness, and trust, and we walk away from anything that smells like brokering. If that's the version of this job you're used to, this isn't the place. If you've built your reputation doing this work the right way, or have been waiting to do it somewhere that does, keep reading.

What you'll do
  • Build and work a territory plan with the leadership team covering your market's referral sources. Segment the market, decide together which accounts are worth deeper investment, and adjust as the field teaches you what converts.
  • Focus first on the treatment side: residential programs, detoxes, PHP/IOPs, outpatient programs, sober livings, and the discharge planners, case managers, admissions teams, clinical leaders, and alumni coordinators inside them.
  • Build the clinical side: therapists, addiction medicine and psychiatry practices, primary care, and hospital social workers.
  • Add the legal and monitoring side where it earns its place: interventionists, professional monitoring programs, drug courts, DUI and family law attorneys, probation, and parole.
  • Go after employer and community accounts when they fit the plan: EAPs, safety-sensitive employers, and recovery community organizations.
  • Sell consultatively. Learn what a referrer's client actually needs before you pitch, and be willing to say when we're not the right fit. That honesty is what earns the next referral.
  • Run in-services and lunch-and-learns. Show up at the coalition meetings, professional events, and conferences that matter in this market.
  • Stay close to every referral. Make sure the handoff is fast, close the loop with the partner, and protect the name you've built here.
  • Log activity, opportunities, and market intelligence in the CRM the same day.
  • Share what you learn. Messaging that lands, what competitors are doing, introductions, approaches that failed: bring it back to the outreach team.
  • Work within Accountable's compliance standards in every referral relationship.

Who you are

At every level:
  • You live in Southern California, hold a valid driver's license, have reliable transportation, and want a job that happens outside.
  • You speak the treatment world's language: detox, residential, PHP, IOP, outpatient, MAT, sober living, and where recovery support fits around each. If you're coming from adjacent healthcare, you'll know this cold within your first month.
  • You understand how people pay for and access care, including private pay and insurance coverage, well enough to answer a referrer's "what will this cost my client?" question honestly, correctly, and early.
  • You've carried a number and hit it, and you can explain the math underneath.
  • You can talk credibly with a clinical director at 10 a.m., an attorney at noon, and a worried parent at 2 p.m.
  • You're disciplined about CRM. Same-day logging isn't a stretch goal.
  • You're independent without being territorial. You share relationships and care how the whole outreach organization performs, not just your own number.
  • You want to be managed on outcomes. A weekly number and a monthly business review are the structure, and you want leadership in the field with you, not just on a dashboard.

Manager. You have 5+ years of business development or outreach in behavioral health, addiction treatment, post-acute, or healthcare services, and you know what a discharge planner's day looks like. You have real referral relationships in this market, or you can show us how fast you've built them somewhere else.

Director. Everything in Manager, plus: you're already a trusted presence in this market's treatment community, with relationships that can produce qualified referrals in your first quarter, not your first year. You've opened a market before, or built a territory from an early stage, and can walk us through the account math, the channels, what worked, and what you'd do differently.

Nice to have
  • Experience turning a territory strategy that worked into something other reps could run.
  • Personal or family recovery experience. Valued here, never required.

Compensation and benefits

Level is set during the hiring process based on experience, market relationships, and what you've produced in past territories.
  • Manager: $90,000-$115,000 base, plus performance bonus.
  • Director: $110,000-$130,000 base, plus performance bonus, with target total compensation of $150,000-$175,000.

All levels: medical, dental, and vision; paid time off; mileage reimbursement for field work; reimbursement for approved business expenses such as parking, tolls, partner education, and professional events. Expect some evening, weekend, and overnight travel for the accounts and events that warrant it.

Similar Jobs

More Healthcare Jobs

Find similar Business Development Manager/Director, Substance Use Recovery - Southern California jobs: