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Director of Business Development
Business Development
Chamblee, GA
Full Time
In-Office and Remote
The Director of Business Development will bring at least 10 years of proven experience in the event
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Business Development
Chamblee, GA
Full Time
In-Office and Remote
Apply for this role
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About PullSpark
At PullSpark, we donʼt just produce events, activations and campaigns —we create experiences that make brands easy to love and hard to forget. As a fast-growing, women-led creative agency, we are seeking a seasoned business development leader who understands the events industry inside and out and is excited to help scale our company into its next chapter of growth.
Reports to Kristen McCarter, Chief Strategy Officer.
Position overview
Role Overview
The Senior Account Lead at PullSpark is a strategic client and business leader who owns the thinking, direction, and opportunity across PullSpark’s most complex and high-profile client partnerships. While all Account Leads are responsible for ensuring the work moves forward successfully, the Senior Account Lead shapes the conversations, decisions, and strategic paths that determine where the work should go.
Serving as a trusted advisor to senior and executive client stakeholders, the Senior Account Lead quickly synthesizes complex information, identifies the underlying business challenge, and translates client needs into clear recommendations and actionable priorities. This role independently leads strategic client relationships, creates clarity in ambiguous situations, protects the financial health of the account, and identifies opportunities for organic business growth.
Internally, the Senior Account Lead creates alignment and forward momentum across multiple projects and workstreams, leads and develops more junior account team members, and partners with agency leadership to advance both client objectives and PullSpark’s broader business goals.
What Makes This Role Senior:
The distinction between an Account Lead and a Senior Account Lead lies less in the type of work they manage and more in the level at which they think, influence, decide, and lead. An Account Lead owns the successful execution of the work. A Senior Account Lead owns the thinking, strategic direction, and opportunity surrounding the work.
Senior Level Capabilities:
Strategic Client Partnership: Builds trusted relationships and advances client business objectives while creating opportunities for sustainable agency growth.
Executive Presence & Influence: Engages senior stakeholders with credibility and confidently shapes conversations, recommendations, and decisions.
Strategic Judgment & Decision-Making: Synthesizes complex information, identifies root challenges, anticipates implications, and recommends a clear path forward.
Leadership & Momentum: Creates alignment, establishes priorities, leads others effectively, and ensures complex work continues moving toward the intended outcome.
What you'll do
Core Responsibilities:
Strategic Client Partnership:
Serve as a proactive strategic advisor who understands the client’s organization, business priorities, audience, stakeholders, challenges, and long-term objectives.
Think alongside—and when appropriate, on behalf of—the client to identify solutions, improvements, risks, and strategic pivots.
Move client conversations beyond individual deliverables to address broader program, organizational, and business objectives.
Develop and steward strategic account plans that identify relationship priorities, retention risks, stakeholder engagement strategies, and long-term partnership goals.
Maintain trusted relationships across multiple levels of the client organization, including senior and executive stakeholders.
Build long-term strategic partnerships that extend beyond individual projects, positioning PullSpark as an indispensable strategic advisor to the client's business.
Stay informed on relevant industry trends, emerging technologies, and competitive activity to proactively introduce new ideas and opportunities.
Lead strategic vision-casting conversations that help clients explore new ideas, solutions, and opportunities for collaboration.
Executive Presence, Influence & Decision-Making
Confidently lead conversations with senior and executive client stakeholders, demonstrating credibility, business acumen, preparation, and sound judgment.
Shape executive conversations around the decisions, priorities, and outcomes required, navigating competing perspectives and concluding with clear decisions, ownership, and an agreed-upon path forward.
Present clear, well-supported recommendations that anticipate downstream implications, risks, and opportunities and appropriately challenge client thinking when doing so will improve the outcome.
Adjust communication style, level of detail, and recommendations based on the audience and business context.
Quickly intake and synthesize complex or incomplete information, identify the root business challenge, and create a clear recommended path forward when scope, ownership, priorities, or outcomes are ambiguous.
Distinguish between what the client requests and what the client or program strategically needs.
Client & Engagement Leadership
Provide senior account leadership across assigned client engagements from inception through completion, partnering with cross-functional leaders to establish realistic timelines, maintain budget and scope discipline, and ensure alignment with client expectations and strategic objectives.
Lead client communications and meetings at the appropriate strategic level, engaging subject matter experts where their expertise will advance the conversation or decision.
Ensure client decisions, ownership, risks, and next steps are clearly documented and communicated within 24 hours, ideally the same business day.
Ensure project budgets, timelines, scopes, SOWs, and related client documentation are accurately managed, with risks identified, communicated, and addressed early.
Develop or oversee strategic briefs, recommendations, presentations, and other client-facing materials that create alignment and advance decisions.
Model PullSpark’s core values and ensure they are evident in the client experience, team leadership, and quality of the work.
Account Strategy, Growth & Financial Stewardship
Develop and maintain an annual strategic growth plan for assigned client partnerships.
Identify organic business opportunities by understanding the client’s evolving objectives, stakeholder network, program calendar, and unmet business needs.
Introduce PullSpark capabilities when they strategically support a client objective rather than approaching growth solely as an upsell.
Qualify potential opportunities based on strategic fit, agency capability, available resources, profitability, and long-term partnership value.
Partner with the Director of Accounts and appropriate agency leaders on RFPs, renewals, proposals, and strategic growth opportunities. Contribute client insight, account strategy, solution development, presentation content, and executive facilitation as appropriate.
Own account-level forecasting, profitability, scope discipline, and financial risk management.
Protect the health of the client relationship while addressing scope changes, pricing conversations, missed deadlines, and other commercially sensitive issues.
Leadership, Team Development & Culture
Create alignment, establish priorities, and maintain momentum across complex, multi-workstream client engagements.
Anticipate and resolve obstacles before they affect the client relationship, financial health, or delivery of the work.
Mentor and develop Account Leads, Junior Account Leads, and other team members through clear feedback, coaching, modeling, and meaningful delegation.
Lead internal teams with an appropriate balance of direction, delegation, accountability, and autonomy.
Provide senior-level guidance across accounts when team members need support navigating complex client, strategic, or business challenges.
Contribute to the continued evolution of PullSpark's account management practices, tools, and standards through process improvement and cross-functional collaboration.
Elevate the effectiveness of the Account Services team by coaching others, improving processes, and modeling PullSpark's standards of excellence.
Model PullSpark’s values and partner with the Director of Accounts to strengthen account-management standards, practices, and team capabilities.
Represent PullSpark at key industry events and networking opportunities to help build the agency’s reputation and attract new business.
What you'll bring
Required Experience, Education, and Skills:
Bachelor’s Degree (BA or BS) required.
8–10 years of experience in production, event programming, content, communications, marketing, or agency environments, with a focus on client-leadership experience, including responsibility for complex, high-value client relationships.
Demonstrated success serving as a strategic advisor to senior and executive client stakeholders.
Proven ability to synthesize complex or ambiguous information and translate it into clear strategic recommendations and actionable plans.
Experience leading multiple concurrent workstreams, cross-functional teams, and high-stakes client engagements.
Demonstrated success identifying and converting organic account-growth opportunities.
Strong commercial judgment, including experience managing account profitability, forecasting, scope, pricing conversations, and financial risk.
Experience mentoring, coaching, or directly managing junior and mid-level team members.
Strong executive communication and facilitation skills, including the ability to guide decisions, navigate disagreement, and create alignment.
Subject matter expertise in live events (conference and convention experience preferred), film, production, marketing, and content development.
Ability to balance client advocacy with the responsible stewardship of agency resources and business objectives.
Comfortable discussing faith-based values and applying them to creative projects.
Compensation and benefits
The Details
Salary Range: $110K - $135K
Flexible Location: In-Office and Remote (5553 Peachtree Rd. Suite 140 Chamblee, GA 30341)
Full-time, salaried associates are expected to work 40 hours per week, Monday through Friday, with the option to work remotely up to two days per week. Extended remote work may be approved at the discretion of your direct manager based on factors including but not limited to employee performance and client expectations.
Onsite: Up to 30% travel
Agency work occasionally requires some night and/or weekend work. Employees may be eligible for Take-Back Hours/Days when working nontraditional and/or excessive business hours. Take-Back Hours/Days are intended to ensure associate rest and prevent burnout, and are allocated at manager’s discretion. Take-Back Hours/Days are intended to be used within 30 days of allocation.
Reports to: Director of Accounts
Benefits
Health benefits after 30 days
Retirement benefits after 60 days
Annual Sparky Health Challenge that promotes wellbeing
Paid Parental and Caregiver Leave
Continuing Education opportunities
Company-wide social events
Annual retreat for ongoing development
