Business Development Representative - Full-time / Part-time

Are you an entrepreneurial candidate with some experience in sales and strategic business development, who also has a background in art, design, or communications? Do you look forward to generating new leads and closing new business at a fast-paced startup? Illustria is a creative agency, with a mission of making design accessible to growing companies, via monthly or annual subscriptions.

Illustria's Business Development Representative starts conversations with Illustria’s potential new clients, which we refer to as Potential New Members, and directs them to our strategic value for their business. We work primarily with growing tech and tech-enabled companies, with existing market traction (not just funding), so experience or interest in the startup community is ideal.

You understand how design and high-quality digital creative drive transformative business results. You are highly personable, polished, and persistent. You love getting on the phone to call C-suite leaders. You get excited when you consistently generate new leads, interest, and conversations.

You are a strategic thinker. You are skilled at talking to people, and drawing out a growth business’s needs, and you look forward to learning more about the startup and tech/tech-enabled communities. You are proactive in identifying creative engagements that address our Potential New Members’ core business needs. You successfully explain to Potential New Members why Illustria’s solutions and approach add value for them. You know how to challenge and persuade at the same time. You are organized and can juggle multiple ongoing conversations at once. You are confident and believable; you have excellent presentation and communication skills.

You’re ready to own new business as a relationship-starter and revenue-grower. You’re a team player, and will connect new business to the full Illustria studio. Join our business team at this exciting time as we bring an innovative model to the market, changing the way creative is engaged with across every industry.

Illustria partners with businesses to unleash their creativity. We are committed to understanding our Members' deepest needs and making their ideas a reality. We're a creative agency that makes design accessible to Member companies, on a monthly or annually-based subscription account system. Founded in 2013, we're a team of 20+ people who work in the heart of Washington, DC.

If you were working with us, here are some of the things you would have done last week:

• Generated leads and new conversations with C-suite executives and VPs in our target market, growing tech and tech-enabled businesses
• Listened to, explored, and understood our Potential New Members’ business objectives and critical strategic needs
• Connected those critical strategic needs with potential engagements with Illustria
• Presented Illustria as a unique creative solution tailored to address their pain points, complete with success stories about similar companies in similar situations who are Illustria Members
• Set up follow-up meetings for yourself or a Design Consultant hereCurated and sent off relevant samples from our portfolio. Worked with an Account Strategist to identify the points of our proposals that will add the most value for the PNM
• Closed PNMs and guided them through the membership joining process
• Gathered feedback about our current Members and engagements, and evaluated how your actions contributed to these dynamics. Received team feedback, and considered how you could improve your contribution to dynamic and sustainable Member relationships
• Shadowed a designer, traded ideas with our marketer, listened to a call with a Member, chatted with our account strategists, or discussed an article with our CEO, to learn the ins and outs of our business
• Found and attended a networking event after work, to meet people in the startup / tech communities
• Drew on the chalkboard wall, participated in our office riddle, or contributed to our team's Instagram

If you want to be challenged while investing yourself in your company’s growth, then we're interested in talking to you. Must be local or looking forward to relocating to the Washington, DC area for full-time work.