About the job Business Development Manager/ Assistant Manager - OD
Job Description: Business Development Manager / Assistant Manager – OD Vertical
Role overview
Arthan is looking for a Business Development Manager / Assistant Manager to work closely with Nandita, OD Lead, to strengthen the lead pipeline, improve conversion quality, and grow revenue for the Organization Development (OD) vertical. The role will focus on identifying opportunities, building client trust, understanding organizational people and culture challenges, and positioning OD solutions as a business-critical need that adds value through stronger people, culture, leadership, and organizational effectiveness.
The role is suited to someone with a strong consulting mindset and sharp sales instincts. The ideal candidate may come from the impact sector, consulting firms, HR advisory, OD, talent, or DEI consulting environments, but must be able to understand customer psyche, diagnose client needs, and translate ambiguous organization challenges into relevant advisory and consulting solutions.
Reporting line - This role will work closely with Nandita, OD Lead, and collaborate with internal consulting, delivery, and leadership stakeholders to drive business growth for the OD vertical.
Location - Delhi / NCR, with flexibility for travel based on client and business needs.
Purpose of the role
The purpose of this role is to build and convert a strong OD business pipeline by engaging prospective clients, understanding their organizational context, and shaping compelling solutions across people, culture, leadership, HR, and DEI-related needs. The role combines consultative selling, relationship management, market scanning, proposal development, and commercial closure to support revenue growth for the OD vertical.
Organization Development at Arthan focuses on solving organization-level challenges. This includes working with leadership teams on alignment, helping organizations navigate scale and transition, strengthening team effectiveness, and addressing culture and role clarity issues that affect performance. Our work sits at the intersection of people, strategy, and execution, particularly within social sector organizations where structure, leadership, and funding dynamics are constantly evolving.
Key responsibilities
1. Business development and revenue generation
- Build a high-quality pipeline of prospective clients for the OD vertical through outreach, referrals, partnerships, networking, and account mining.
- Takes initiative in building conversations from cold or ambiguous entry points, rather than relying only on structured or inbound leads
- Drive end-to-end lead management from prospecting and qualification to proposal, negotiation, closure, and handover for delivery.
- Own revenue targets of INR 2.50 Cr for the OD vertical and contribute actively to quarterly and annual business growth goals.
- Track lead stages, conversion ratios, opportunity value, and revenue forecasts through disciplined sales reporting and CRM hygiene.
- Take complete ownership of client onboarding and BD operations.
2. Consultative client engagement
- Understand client context deeply, including business challenges, leadership dynamics, culture issues, talent concerns, team effectiveness gaps, and change priorities.
- Lead structured discovery conversations with prospective clients to surface both stated and unstated organizational challenges.
- Engage CXOs, founders, CHROs, HR leaders, and business heads in problem-framing conversations that surface explicit and latent OD needs.
- Position organization development not as a standalone intervention, but as a strategic lever for business performance, culture building, leadership alignment, employee engagement, and organizational effectiveness.
- Co-create solutions with clients, translating ambiguous challenges into clear, relevant OD interventions rather than pitching pre-defined offerings.
- Develop persuasive narratives, concept notes, and proposals that connect client pain points with Arthan's OD, HR, people, culture, and DEI offerings.
3. Market intelligence and solution shaping
- Conduct market research to identify sectors, client segments, and emerging people-and-culture priorities that can translate into business opportunities.
- Build a nuanced understanding of OD, HR, leadership development, team effectiveness, culture transformation, capability building, and DEI consulting opportunities relevant to Arthan's clientele.
- Work with the OD Lead to shape customized solutions, commercial models, and go-to-market approaches for different client archetypes.
- Gather client feedback and market signals to strengthen service positioning, messaging, and business development strategy.
4. Relationship management
- Build strong, trust-based relationships with prospective and existing clients to improve repeat business and cross-sell opportunities.
- Maintain ongoing engagement with warm leads, partners, and ecosystem stakeholders to keep Arthan visible and relevant in OD and people consulting conversations.
- Represent Arthan in external meetings, webinars, roundtables, and networks where organization development and people strategy needs may emerge.
5. Internal collaboration
- Work closely with Nandita, OD Lead, to prioritize opportunities, refine pitch strategy, and improve conversion effectiveness.
- Coordinate with Snehal and Vani from the delivery teams to ensure proposals are realistic, differentiated, and aligned with delivery capability.
- Support creation of business development collateral, case examples, credentials decks, and capability notes for the OD vertical.
- On a monthly basis, review with Arthan's Leadership Team on what is working well and where we need to improve ourselves. Give a vertical overview of BD through monthly check-in with the Leadership Team.
Ideal candidate profile
The ideal candidate is a go-getter with a strong bias for action, strong commercial ownership, and genuine passion for organization development. This person combines empathy and business acumen, understands how decision-makers think, and can convert people-and-culture challenges into credible consulting opportunities.
The person need not necessarily come from the impact sector, but should bring a solid consulting background and comfort working in an advisory-led, solution-selling environment. A strong fit will be someone who enjoys speaking with people, reads organizational cues well, and can balance relationship depth with sales discipline.
Required experience
- 4–8 years of overall experience for Manager level; 2–5 years for Assistant Manager level, with meaningful exposure to business development, consulting sales, or solution sales.
- Prior experience in OD, HR, talent, leadership, culture, L&D, or DEI consulting sales is strongly preferred.
- Experience in consultative selling, especially where client needs are diagnosed rather than sold through a standard product pitch.
- Demonstrated track record of building pipelines, converting opportunities, and contributing to revenue growth.
- Experience engaging with senior stakeholders and preparing proposals, pitches, and commercial discussions.
Required competencies
- Strong understanding of customer psychology and the ability to uncover stated and unstated client needs.
- Strong relationship-building and stakeholder management skills.
- Ability to understand people, culture, and organizational effectiveness issues with sensitivity and insight.
- Strong verbal and written communication, including proposal writing and presentation skills.
- Strong commercial acumen, negotiation capability, and closure orientation.
- Ability to work independently, manage multiple leads, and maintain momentum across long sales cycles.
- Market research and account planning ability.
- High ownership, resilience, energy, and follow-through.
Educational background
Bachelor's degree required. A postgraduate qualification in management, HR, organizational psychology, social sciences, or a related discipline would be an advantage.
What will make someone stand out
- Has sold advisory or consulting-led solutions rather than transactional products.
- Understands the language of leadership, culture, capability, and organizational transformation.
- Can hold credible conversations with founders, CEOs, HR leaders, and leadership teams.
- Brings both warmth and sharpness: people-first in style, target-driven in execution.
- Is genuinely interested in how organizations work and how people and culture drive
performance.