Director of Client ServicesClimate Bonds Initiative

Director of Client Services

Reporting to: Executive Director

Responsible for: Head of Certification, Head of Training, Head of Partnerships, and the Head Capability Building

The role

Please note this is a client facing role with responsibility for our commercial activity and revenue generating teams.

The Climate Bonds Initiative has experienced extraordinary growth in the last 5 years, a testament to its success in helping to drive the development of the green bonds market, but more importantly, its tireless role in mobilising global capital towards climate action. We are entering into a very exciting new phase of growth, whereby we are graduating our systems, capabilities, expertise, and offerings to be more strongly rooted in professionalism, excellence, and impact.

To advance these goals, we require strong leadership and management. As an integral part of the Senior Management team, this role will support the Executive Director and SLT in facilitating and promoting the growth of the sustainable debt market by providing stakeholders with the necessary products and services to optimise our impact.

Furthermore, to achieve our objectives and meet current and future demand for our services, we must actively develop our technical assistance and advisory services.

The Director of Climate Services will have primary responsibility for growing the commercial success of CBI to fund future expansion that supports the mission of the organisation. This role will accelerate CBI to achieve its strategic priorities by identifying and defining its commercial value to increase revenue streams and build new partnerships globally.

The Director of Climate Services manages client relationships and ensures that the board and senior leadership team are informed of market opportunities and business development. On the management side, this role will provide leadership to the Global Climate Services-related activities, being the certification scheme, training and partnership programme. The Director will also conduct market research and analysis to create plans for identifying new commercial opportunities, developing new client relationships, and driving new business that propels our impact.

In addition the post holder will lead CBIs newly established Capacity Building and Technical Advisory Services function as a stand-alone product/service offering to complement and enhance our achievements across regions.

What you'll be doing...

Commercial Strategy

• Ensure sufficient pipeline of commercial opportunities that support CBIs planned growth and financial health, collaborating with other SLT members and all teams to identify new revenue opportunities and build new partnerships, increasing commercial awareness and acumen across CBI
• Evaluating new partnership and growth opportunities, determining our commercial value and implementing innovative approaches that incorporate vigorous and robust pricing methodology to ensure CBI accurate positioning within the market
• Overseeing high-quality product design and development, ensuring optimal pricing to balance profit with customer/client satisfaction, and directing marketing operations.
• Support CBI in maintaining a consistent trajectory of growth, while future-planning for obstacles/challenges that may arise due to market conditions.
• Lead commercial negotiations and negotiate client and supplier contracts, influencing the form of contract to ensure the risk/reward mechanisms are appropriate for all parties.
• Oversee and manage our risk and commercial exposure at both pre- and post-contract stages
• Develop budgets, objectives and goals, and work with the Director of Finance to ensure seamless and proficient reporting to all stakeholders
• Global coordination of all sales efforts and implementation of functional reporting lines in accordance with CBI’s new operating model
• Representation of the organisation at high-level meetings with stakeholders.
• Attend relevant conferences/events and where possible present the work of CBI.
• Explore and initiate collaborative working with relevant partners and stakeholders.

Operations and Leadership

• Embed Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning strategies to ensuring ongoing product development.
• Develop in depth understanding of existing TA services to review, propose, develop, and implement new services or enhance existing ones.
• Support the capacity and skills development of relevant team members across the organisation to cultivate commercial opportunities, prepare high-quality partnership proposals, and foster a culture of continuing learning and relationship management
• Management of commercial teams to increase revenue for report sales, data sales, partnership income, training, reports and sponsorship events
• Managing performance of the commercial related teams and facilitate success in line collaboration with the Director of Strategy to ensure gaols align with KPI’s and organisational objectives