Head of New Business

About Us

Founded in 2008, Absolute Digital Media is the UK’s leading digital marketing agency, specialising in regulated and competitive industries including iGaming, financial services, legal, healthcare, adult content, and cryptocurrency. We’ve won 175+ industry awards and maintain a 97% client retention rate.

We’re not a generalist agency. We focus exclusively on sectors where compliance, technical expertise, and aggressive competition demand specialist knowledge. We’re pioneers in LLM optimisation and AI SEO, positioning ourselves as the agency built for where search is going, not where it’s been.

The Role

As Head of New Business, your job is to win new clients for Absolute. You own the new business number: you build the pipeline, run the pitch and close the deal. As the role beds in, more and more of our new retainers should be signed without the CEO or MD needing to be involved at all.

You’ll be selling multi-channel digital (SEO, PPC, Digital PR) to marketing directors and founders at scale-ups and enterprise businesses, many of them in regulated sectors. They need an agency that understands their world, and they need to hear it from someone who can talk commercially about what each channel will and won’t do for them.

This is a closing role. It is not a marketing role, an account management role or a delivery role.

How You’ll Be Measured

•    Signed new MRR against quota. New monthly recurring revenue from contracts that are signed.

•    Win rate. The share of qualified opportunities that become signed clients. We’d rather you qualify hard and win more of fewer pitches than chase everything.

•    Average retainer value. The average monthly value of the retainers you sign. We want long-term, multi-channel retainers at the right price, not a long tail of small projects.

•    Pipeline coverage. Qualified pipeline in our CRM set against the quota still to close, so we can see the next quarter coming as well as this one.

What You’ll Own

Pipeline

•    Own every opportunity in our CRM from first contact to signature, with stage, value, probability, close date and next action kept up to date at all times.

•    Report on new opportunities, stage movements, expected close dates, and any risks or blockers.

•    Forecast accurately enough that the leadership team can plan resourcing around your numbers.

Pitching and closing

•    Run the full sales cycle yourself: discovery, pitch, proposal, negotiation and close.

•    Sell consultatively, starting from the prospect’s business and commercial goals rather than our capabilities deck.

•    Bring in our Heads Of for specialist depth when a pitch needs it, while you lead the room and own the outcome.

•    Stay close to regulatory developments and market news in our target verticals, and use them to position Absolute as the informed, specialist choice.

Outbound

•    Own Absolute’s outbound activity, including our outbound partner.

•    Set the target account lists, the messaging and the bar for what counts as a qualified meeting. Outreach should be personal, insight-led and tailored, not spray-and-pray.

Partnerships and referrals

•    Build referral and reseller partnerships with complementary agencies, consultants and platform providers in our target sectors.

•    Use your own network to open warm conversations with senior decision-makers at target brands.

•    Work industry events, conferences and forums (particularly in iGaming and finance) as a source of introductions and meetings.

•    Track every partner and referral source in AgencyMindHub so we know which channels produce revenue.

Proposals and pricing

•    Own the quality and turnaround of every proposal: specific to the prospect, commercially sound and clearly differentiated from the competition.

•    Price within agreed rates and margins. Discounts and non-standard terms are signed off before they reach the client.

•    Only scope what delivery can deliver well and profitably, agreed with the relevant Head Of before the proposal goes out.

•    Hand every new client over with a clear brief, agreed KPIs and a realistic scope from day one.

Who We’re Looking For

•    Five years or more selling agency services (SEO, PPC, content, digital PR or multi-channel digital) to marketing directors and founders.

•    Named retainers you closed yourself. Expect to talk us through the clients, the monthly values, how you won them and how long they stayed.

•    A background as an agency-side New Business Director, a Commercial Director at a boutique agency, or a Senior BDM who is ready to step up and own the number.

•    Closing is required. You’ve taken deals from first call to signed contract yourself, not generated leads and handed them on.

•    Pipeline discipline: a CRM you keep current, forecasts that hold up, and follow-up without being chased.

•    Enough command of the channels to speak with authority about what SEO, PPC, content and digital PR can and can’t do.

•    The credibility to hold a room with a founder or marketing director and earn their trust quickly.

Preferred

•    Regulated sector experience: selling into iGaming (operators, affiliates, platform providers or software suppliers), financial services and fintech, legal or healthcare, and knowing what makes a compliant agency pitch credible.

•    Experience managing an outsourced outbound partner.

•    Partner or referral channels you’ve built that produced revenue.

•    An existing profile in one or more of our verticals, whether known at events, active in industry forums or followed by target decision-makers.

•    A clear view of how agencies are structured, where margin is made and lost, and how to position against both large networks and boutique specialists.

Compensation & Structure

•    Base salary: £50-£60k

•    Opportunity to earn: minimum £76k annually at quota (£750k in new annual revenue). Accelerator scheme for new business achieved above quota.

•    Full breakdown provided in a separate document.