Middle Business Development Manager, Direct Markets

Job Description:

Job Title:  Business Development Manager, Direct Markets

Location: Remote | USA - Southeast Region
Reports to: VP, Sales

Employment Type: Full-time

About the Role: The Business Development Manager, Direct Markets is a quota-carrying individual contributor responsible for driving new business growth across automotive dealers, dealer groups, auctions, and related direct-to-dealer market segments. This role is designed for an experienced sales professional who can independently develop opportunities, manage an assigned book of business, and represent the full JD Power Dealer Solutions portfolio in customer-facing conversations. The Direct Markets team supports franchise and independent dealers, regional and national dealer groups, auctions, and other dealership-adjacent customers by representing the full JD Power Dealer Solutions portfolio. Operating with a One J.D. Power mindset, this role partners consultatively with customers to help improve dealership performance through solutions spanning digital retailing, F&I, inventory, marketing, customer experience, data and analytics, operational workflows, and business decision support. This individual will connect customer needs with portfolio capabilities, drive awareness of the broader Dealer Solutions value proposition, gather market insights, and translate evolving business priorities into effective account strategies and field execution.

In this role, you will:

• Prospect, develop, and close new business across assigned Direct Markets territories, dealer groups, independent dealers, franchise dealers, auctions, and related dealership-facing customer segments.
• Manage assigned opportunities, accounts, dealer groups, and customer relationships within the Direct Markets channel.
• Build consultative relationships with dealer principals, general managers, F&I leaders, variable operations leaders, fixed operations leaders, marketing leaders, digital retailing leaders, and other dealership decision-makers.
• Conduct discovery to understand dealership business needs across F&I, digital retailing, inventory management, lead generation, vehicle acquisition, customer experience, marketing, compliance-minded workflows, reporting, and operational performance.
• Position JD Power Dealer Solutions as a connected portfolio of capabilities, clearly explaining how the broader offering helps dealers increase profitability, improve process efficiency, strengthen customer engagement, and support operational decision-making.
• Deliver compelling product positioning, discovery, demonstrations, proposals, and executive-level presentations tailored to dealer needs, market conditions, and account strategy.
• Identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities across existing accounts and create account plans that expand customer relationships beyond a single product sale.
• Maintain disciplined pipeline management, CRM hygiene, opportunity documentation, activity tracking, and forecast accuracy.
• Coordinate with Product, Customer Success, Professional Services, Marketing, Finance, Legal, Revenue Operations, Sales Operations, and Executive Leadership to support account strategy, pricing, contracting, implementation readiness, launch readiness, billing readiness, portfolio messaging, and customer success.
• Represent JD Power professionally at dealerships, dealer group meetings, trade shows, industry events, partner meetings, and virtual customer engagements.
• Provide market feedback to leadership and Product teams regarding competitive activity, dealer buying behavior, customer objections, capability gaps, launch readiness, roadmap priorities, emerging opportunities, and field adoption barriers.
• Support informal mentoring, onboarding, solution knowledge sharing, and best-practice development with newer sellers or adjacent sales teams.

Required Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree preferred but not required. Equivalent experience, training, and demonstrated success in a related field will be considered.
• 3-5 years of successful quota-carrying B2B sales experience, preferably in automotive retail, dealership technology, SaaS, data, F&I, digital retailing, inventory, marketing, or dealer-service-provider solutions.
• Proven ability to manage complex sales cycles involving multiple stakeholders, longer decision timelines, larger revenue opportunities, and consultative solution selling.
• Strong understanding of automotive dealership operations, including sales, F&I, digital retailing, inventory, service, marketing, customer experience, and dealership profitability drivers.
• Demonstrated ability to prospect, qualify, build pipeline, negotiate, close, and expand customer relationships.
• Excellent presentation, communication, discovery, business writing, and executive relationship management skills.
• Ability to learn and credibly represent a broad Dealer Solutions portfolio, including dealership software, workflow, data, analytics, retailing, inventory, marketing, customer engagement, operational performance, and decision-support capabilities.
• Strong CRM discipline, forecasting accuracy, account planning, and ability to operate independently in a field-based sales environment.
• Ability to travel to dealerships, dealer group offices, industry events, internal meetings, and customer-facing engagements as needed.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience selling directly to automotive dealers, dealer groups, auctions, or dealership decision-makers.
• Background with dealership technology, retail operations, F&I, inventory, marketing, reporting, digital customer experience, marketplace, or dealer workflow solutions.
• Existing relationships within automotive retail, dealership groups, OEM field teams, F&I agencies, auctions, or dealer technology providers.
• Experience building territory plans, account strategies, campaign follow-up, and multi-product growth plans.
• Comfort working in a fast-changing product environment where seller feedback helps shape go-to-market strategy, enablement, and future roadmap priorities.

Travel Expectations: This is a remote / hybrid remote and field-based role that requires regular customer engagement. Travel may include dealership visits, dealer group meetings, industry events, trade shows, internal sales meetings, product training sessions, and other business needs as defined by Sales Leadership.

Compensation and Benefits: This position has a Total Target Compensation (TTC) range of $90,000 USD - $110,000 per year, inclusive of base salary and target incentive opportunity. This position has uncapped earnings potential based upon sales commission plan achievement. This is the range we reasonably and in good faith expect to pay for the role at the time of posting. An employee’s compensation within the range is determined by a number of factors, including relevant skills, education, qualifications, experience, performance, business or organizational needs, and geographic location.

Eligible employees may participate in medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance, retirement savings programs, paid time off, wellness programs, and other company-sponsored benefits. Benefits vary by country and employment status.

Why Join JD Power

JD Power powers auto-related decisions through proprietary data, advanced analytics, deep industry expertise, and workflows that connect insight to action. Operating across North America, Europe, and Australia, we help customers make better decisions and achieve better outcomes.

As a virtual-first company, we offer flexible work arrangements, opportunities for learning and development, and a culture centered on the Values that guide how we work every day.

·       We power our customers’ success. Everything we do is focused on helping customers make better decisions and achieve better outcomes.

·       We are innovative, collaborative, and grounded in data. We combine advanced analytics with human expertise to deliver insight that holds up in the real world.

·       We make things easy. We turn complexity into clarity so teams can act faster and with confidence.

·       We get it done. We focus on execution, accountability, and results.

·       We start with trust and prove it every day. Independence, integrity, and credibility are the foundation of our work.

Equal Opportunity & Accommodations

JD Power is committed to employing a diverse workforce. Qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, veteran status, or disability.

Data Privacy

JD Power does not disclose your personal data to unauthorized third parties. However, as a global corporation consisting of multiple affiliated companies in various countries, JD Power has international sites and JD Power uses resources located throughout the world. JD Power may from time to time also use third parties to act on JD Power’s behalf. You agree to the fact that to the extent necessary your personal data may be transferred and/or disclosed to any company within JD Power group of companies as well as to third parties acting on JD Power’s behalf, including also transfers to servers and databases outside the country where you provided JD Power with your personal data. Such transfers may include for example transfers and/or disclosures outside the European Economic Area and in the United States of America. If you are a California or United Kingdom resident, additional disclosures about the information we collect and how we use that information can be found by clicking here.

Applications

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the country where employment is offered. JD Power does not provide employment sponsorship for this position.

To all recruitment agencies: JD Power does not accept unsolicited agency resumes and we are not responsible for any fees related to unsolicited resumes.