Business Development Manager – Asset Reliability and Asset Performance (Part-Time)

About Optimal®

Optimal® is an Asset Lifecycle Performance Partner. We work with asset-intensive organisations in mining, oil and gas, nuclear, power and utilities, chemical and process, pharmaceutical and life sciences, FMCG, transport and facilities management, raising reliability, availability and production performance across the full asset lifecycle.

Our services are structured across five practice areas – Operational Readiness, Operations & Maintenance, Digital Engineering, Advisory & Optimisation and Asset Accounting & Governance – delivered through the ARaaS® framework and supported by our own software portfolio on the ARaaS® app hub. We are headquartered in Aberdeen, Scotland, with offices in South Africa and Namibia, and we are ISO 9001:2015 accredited through Bureau Veritas.

The Opportunity

We are appointing an experienced commercial professional on a part-time basis to win new clients and grow the ones we already hold, across the United Kingdom and South Africa.

This is a role for someone who sells and who can hold a credible conversation about reliability, OEE and asset performance without an engineer sitting beside them. You will not be asked to deliver the technical work – our practice does that. You will be asked to find the right conversations, qualify them properly, bring the practice in at the right moment and carry the pursuit through to a signed engagement.

Role Overview

The role has two halves of roughly equal weight.

New business. Building and working a qualified pipeline in the industries above, opening conversations with maintenance, reliability, engineering, operations and finance leadership, and converting interest into scoped, proposal-ready opportunities.

Client growth. Expanding existing accounts from a single service or a single app into a wider ARaaS® programme and holding the commercial relationship as engagements move from one phase to the next.

Key Responsibilities

Winning new work

• Build and maintain a qualified pipeline across the target industries in the United Kingdom and South Africa.
• Open and hold senior conversations with maintenance, reliability, engineering, operations and finance leadership.
• Work inbound enquiries arising from the website, the app hub demos, the wikis, the free trials and campaign pages.
• Run first meetings that establish the client's current reliability and performance position then bring the practice in for technical scoping.
• Carry the pursuit through proposal, clarification and acceptance, working to our proposal conventions.

Growing existing clients

• Expand accounts from a first bounded scope into a wider programme across the service catalogue and the software portfolio.
• Convert the outcomes of completed work into the evidence base for the next scope.
• Manage renewal and progression of managed ARaaS® service levels.
• Maintain a visible regional presence through site visits, industry events and professional networks.

Commercial discipline

• Keep an accurate, current pipeline and forecast record.
• Represent Optimal® accurately. Every claim you make is anchored in evidence or in delivered work; we do not sell on generic return-on-investment percentages.
• Note that GARPI™ is an independent industry asset performance benchmark. It sits outside the commercial remit and is never used as a qualification route or a lead mechanism.

What You Will Be Representing

You will need working familiarity with the full catalogue, not only the part you find easiest to sell.

• Reliability, maintenance & Asset Integrity: RCM studies, FMEA development, RAM modelling, asset criticality analysis, maintenance strategy, maintenance planning, defect elimination, root cause analysis, shutdowns and turnarounds, OEE and operational performance indicators. Risk-based inspection to API 580 and API 581; fitness-for-service assessment to API 579.
• Software portfolio on apphub.optimalworld.org: OptimalTREND™, OptimalOEE™, OptimalAvailability Studio™, OptimalIntegrity Studio™, OptimalSPARES™ and the ARaaS® Dashboard – each with a live demo, a wiki and a 14-day trial you can put in front of a client.
• Optimal Academy: five training programmes spanning executive briefing, maintenance and reliability certification preparation, risk-based inspection, maintenance planner training and stores competency.

Required Experience

• A proven business-to-business sales record in industrial services, reliability, maintenance, asset management or industrial software, evidenced by named wins you can talk through.
• Working fluency in reliability and maintenance language: OEE and the six big losses, availability, mean time between failures, criticality, RCM, the planned to reactive ratio and predictive analytics.
• The ability to run a first meeting with an engineering or operations leader unaccompanied, and to know precisely when to bring a specialist in.
• Comfort selling both a scoped service engagement and a subscription software model priced by operating unit.
• Direct selling experience in at least one of our industries.
• Self-direction. This is a part-time, remote appointment; you will set your own working cadence and be measured on outcomes.
• The right to work in the United Kingdom or South Africa and willingness to travel to client sites.

Desired Skills and Attributes

• A reliability or asset management credential, for example CMRP, an ISO 55001 practitioner qualification.
• Experience of a subscription commercial model priced per unit rather than per user.
• Exposure to South African public sector asset compliance under the PFMA, MFMA and GRAP.
• An established network in one or more of our target industries.
• A second language relevant to the South African market.

Engagement Model

• Part-time, structured as a monthly retainer plus commission on closed business. Both elements are agreed in writing before the engagement begins.
• Primarily remote, with travel to client sites and to our United Kingdom or South Africa offices as specific project phases require. Travel expenses are reimbursed in line with company policy.
• Appointment terms include confidentiality and intellectual property provisions, confirmed at contracting.

How to Apply

Send your CV together with a short covering note setting out:

• Your relevant sales record, with named results.
• The industries and territories in which you hold an active network.
• Your retainer and commission expectations.
• Your availability, in working days per month.

Optimal® is an equal-opportunities employer and welcomes applications from all suitably qualified candidates.

Experience:

• B2B sales: 5 years (Required)

Work Location: In person