Director of Business Development, Dealer Growth (Automotive)

Pinnacle is the national brand agency behind 14 Super Bowl commercials, and we've built something the automotive industry has never had: national brand-level creative paired with a dedicated automotive practice, including One:One, our data-driven customer marketing platform for dealerships.

As Dealer Development Director, you'll own the front of our dealer growth engine for your region. You'll research the dealerships worth talking to, lead with a genuinely useful digital readiness assessment, run your own discovery calls with decision-makers, and stay in the room for every presentation our senior team delivers.

This isn't a volume SDR seat. No dial quotas, no scripts, no handing off a meeting and never seeing the account again. This seat exists because we believe the standard SDR playbook is beneath the dealers we want to work with, and beneath the people we want to hire. You own the relationship, the research, and the region.

Compensation

• $60,000 base salary
• On-target earnings (OTE): $175,000
• Uncapped commission on closed business you sourced
• Guaranteed variable for your first three months

The short version: you are one of the better outbound sellers in automotive right now, you are good at the part most people skip (the research and the writing), and you are tired of handing your best meetings to someone else. This is the seat where you keep them.

Pinnacle is a national brand agency with a dedicated automotive practice, including One:One, our first-party data platform for dealerships. We are hiring two directors, one East and one West, to own the front of our dealer growth engine.

Why this seat is different

You run your own discovery. You are in the room for every presentation you set. You stay on the account through close, and you get paid on it.

You will never be measured on dials, sends, or meetings booked. There are no scripts. There is a published conduct standard that says in writing what we will never ask you to do: no breakup emails, no fake reply threads, no routing through the switchboard, no re-touching a dealer who told you no.

If you have been trying to level up, this is the seat

The best SDRs right now are trying to become something bigger than a meeting booker. They are learning Clay and the modern enrichment stack, building signal-based plays instead of blasting lists, teaching themselves discovery on their own time, and pushing to own an actual number. Most of them are doing all of that inside a system that still only pays them for meetings booked.

This is the other side of that. You will use the modern go-to-market toolkit, signal-based account selection, enrichment, multi-channel sequencing, and AI where it genuinely helps, and you will point it at a short list of accounts that matter instead of a long list that does not. Then you run the meeting yourself. If you have been doing GTM engineering work inside an SDR title, or growth work inside a dealership BDC, this is the seat where that becomes the job description instead of the extra credit.

How we think about AI and tooling

We are a data company as much as an agency, and we are not precious about tooling. Use AI to find the signal, research the store, and pressure-test your thinking. Never to write the email. Dealers can tell, and so can we. The research is where leverage belongs. The writing is where you belong.

What you will actually do:

Research the dealerships worth talking to. Named accounts in your region, built from real signals: technology stack, leadership changes, market conditions, store count. Not a list someone handed you.

Write your own first touches. Every opener leads with something specific and true about that store. This is the job, not a step in the job.

Lead with something useful. Our automotive digital readiness assessment is your entry point. You run it on a store before you ask for time, and for priority accounts you deliver it printed and in person.

Hold your own discovery. With dealer principals, GMs, and marketing directors. Qualify honestly against our ICP standard, and score every conversation for both One:One fit and full-service agency fit.

Set the pitch and stay in it. Qualified discoveries convert to presentations delivered by senior account leadership, with you in the room. You carry the account through close as the relationship originator.

Own your region's calendar. 20 Groups, state dealer association events, regional industry gatherings. We build meetings before events, not booths at them.

What we need from you:

• 2+ years in outbound sales, sales development, or dealership BDC and internet sales leadership
• Automotive fluency. Retail (a store or a dealer group) or vendor side (dealer software, dealer media, dealer services). This one is not negotiable.
• Evidence you can hold a real conversation, not just book one. Discovery you ran, demos you gave, deals you carried yourself.
• Writing. Your outreach is hand-written and it shows. You will be asked for a sample you wrote yourself, at the application stage.
• Comfort on camera and on the phone with senior dealership decision-makers
• Fluency with the modern GTM stack. CRM discipline, sequencing platforms, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, enrichment and data tooling (Clay, Apollo, ZoomInfo or equivalent), and AI-assisted research. We care that you think in signals and systems, not that you have used our exact tools.
• Roughly 25% regional travel

We are most interested in:

• The top-performing SDR or BDR at an automotive technology or media vendor who is ready to own the whole funnel
• The SDR who has quietly become their team's GTM engineer, building the signal plays and enrichment everyone else runs on, and now wants to run the conversations too
• A dealership BDC director or internet sales manager making the jump to the vendor side
• Anyone with real relationships in their region: dealer principals, 20 Groups, state associations

We are probably not the right fit for: high-volume SaaS SDRs with no automotive background, account managers looking to move into sales, anyone whose outreach reads like it came out of a sequencer, or anyone who wants to spend the day building GTM systems and never talk to a dealer. This is a selling seat that uses modern tooling. It is not a tooling seat.

What you inherit

This is a new seat, not a cold start.

• A scored national prospect database with a five-dimension ICP model
• A live digital readiness assessment, the strongest meeting driver we have
• A defined coverage model and a published conduct standard that protects you from ever burning a relationship for a number
• Senior account leadership presenting on every pitch you set
• A certification track for product, discovery, and over time, presenting

Where it goes

Year one you own your region's funnel end to end. Beyond that, the path is a senior regional title with full-cycle ownership, prospect to close, on the strength of your track record. We would rather promote you than replace you.