Business Development Manager (f/m/d)

As a Business Development Manager, you work closely with Founder Sebastian Seifert to identify, develop, and scale strategic, high-impact partnerships across industries such as Banks & Fintechs, Retailers, HR & Payroll providers, Crypto providers, and consumer brands. Your role focuses on building a small number of highly relevant enterprise partnerships with significant long-term impact.

Your key responsibilities include:

• Owning the end-to-end business development process from initial outreach and relationship building to product demos, negotiations, and closing
• Acquiring a limited number of highly strategic enterprise partners (approximately 5–6 per year), prioritizing quality and long-term value over high-volume customer acquisition
• Managing complex B2B sales cycles of up to 6 months, involving multiple stakeholders and decision-makers on the partner side
• Proactively identifying and engaging partners with the potential to generate €10M+ in annual voucher turnover per partnership
• Developing tailored partnerships and value propositions aligned with industry specifics, partner needs, and decision-making structures
• Driving commercial discussions and deal structuring in close collaboration with the founder and internal stakeholders
• Representing Finperks in partner meetings, industry events, and on-site visits across Europe, with regular travel (approximately 2–3 trips per month)
• Building and maintaining a focused, high-quality partnership pipeline, ensuring clear prioritization, transparency, and realistic forecasting
• Continuously gathering market and partner insights to refine Finperks’ partnership strategy and growth roadmap

Must-have-requirements:

• A structured and disciplined working approach, with the ability to prioritize, plan, and manage complex sales processes over extended periods of time
• A hungry, ambitious, and goal-driven mindset, motivated by building meaningful partnerships and closing high-impact deals
• High frustration tolerance and resilience, with the persistence to continue engaging prospects despite multiple rejections and long sales cycles
• Genuine passion for working with people, building trust, and winning partners over through strong interpersonal skills
• Clear willingness to personally execute operative, hands-on sales work, including outreach, follow-ups, demos, and negotiations
• Strong commercial and negotiation skills, with the ability to structure and close partnership agreements with significant revenue impact
• Ability to work closely with founders or senior leadership, acting as a trusted sparring partner in strategic and commercial discussions
• Excellent communication and presentation skills in English, suitable for interactions with C-level and senior stakeholder
• Willingness and flexibility to travel within Europe approximately 2–3 times per month
• High level of ownership, self-organization, and accountability, with comfort operating in an early-stage startup environmen

Nice-to-have requirements:

• Several years of experience in management or strategy consulting, ideally with exposure to commercial strategy, go-to-market, or partnership-driven business models
• Several years of experience in B2B business development, partnerships, or enterprise sales, ideally in a startup, scale-up, fintech, SaaS, or platform environment
• Demonstrated ability to manage long and complex B2B sales cycles (up to 6 months) involving multiple stakeholders and decision-makers
• Experience working with high-value, low-volume deals, focusing on a small number of strategic customers rather than high-frequency transactional sales
• German language skills are a plus; the ability to conduct business professionally in German, French, or English is a strong advantage
• Work directly with the founder to build and scale Finperks’ most important strategic partnerships
• Own a small number of high-impact enterprise partnerships with significant strategic and revenue relevance
• Play a key role in shaping Finperks’ partnership and go-to-market strategy from an early stage
• Gain hands-on experience in complex B2B negotiations and long-cycle enterprise sales across Europe
• Help build processes and structures from the ground up in a fast-growing startup.
• Experience fast personal and professional growth in a high-ownership, high-autonomy environment
• Competitive compensation with performance-based upside