Business Development Manager, Direct Markets

JD Power powers auto-related decisions through proprietary data, advanced analytics, industry expertise, and workflows that connect insight to action. The Business Development Manager, Direct Markets is a quota-carrying sales professional responsible for developing new business, managing customer relationships, and representing the JD Power Dealer Solutions portfolio across automotive dealers, dealer groups, auctions, and related market segments. The role focuses on consultative selling, pipeline management, account expansion, market feedback, and cross-functional coordination.

Responsibilities:

• 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

Requirements:

• 3-5 years of successful quota-carrying B2B sales experience
• Equivalent experience, training, and demonstrated success in a related field will be considered
• 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
• Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the country where employment is offered
• JD Power does not provide employment sponsorship for this position
• Bachelor's degree
• preferably in automotive retail, dealership technology, SaaS, data, F&I, digital retailing, inventory, marketing, or dealer-service-provider solutions
• 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