Business Development Executive, Trade & Hospitality

Job description

Design Your Future With Us. Creativity lives here. We celebrate craftsmanship, design, and inspired living. Whether you are in marketing, tech, or logistics, your voice and vision matter. We showcase employee spaces, share design stories, and promote growth through a culture of flexibility, storytelling, and opportunity. From onboarding to day-to-day, we help you bring your style to life. **Location:** Remote (United States or Canada) ### About the Role One Kings Lane is building a dedicated new business development function to grow its highest-value, highest-retention customer segments: the trade and hospitality space. As **Business Development Executive, Trade & Hospitality**, you will own net-new account acquisition end to end — sourcing, prospecting, pitching, and closing interior designers, design firms, hotels, and hospitality groups. Success in the first 6–12 months means building a trade and hospitality pipeline from the ground up, establishing repeatable outreach workflows powered by AI tools, and closing larger accounts that drive recurring, project-based revenue. This is a lean team. You will own a lot, move fast, and make decisions with full end-to-end responsibility. ### What You'll Do - Identify, prospect, and close new B2B accounts in the trade and hospitality space — interior designers, design firms, hotels, and hospitality groups. - Build and manage your own pipeline of larger accounts with the goal of driving repeat purchasing and long-term retention, not one-time transactions. - Field inbound and outbound calls directly with prospective trade and hospitality accounts — this is a hands-on, high-touch role. - Use AI tools to scale and sharpen outreach — prospecting, list-building, messaging, and follow-up — covering more ground as a single-threaded new business function. - Implement and oversee AI-driven workflows to increase productivity and deal velocity; write clear prompts, validate outputs, and iterate based on results. - Own funnel metrics and pipeline health; improve CRM discipline, reporting consistency, and forecasting accuracy. - Build scalable processes for lead routing, opportunity tracking, and follow-up; identify opportunities to shorten sales cycles and increase conversion. - Coordinate with the inbound/existing-accounts owner to ensure clean handoffs once accounts are established and to keep account strategy aligned. - Partner with merchandising, operations, and vendor teams to support inventory planning and special orders for trade and design clients. ### Required Qualifications - 5–8 years of B2B sales or business development experience, ideally with exposure to trade, design, hospitality, or a related relationship-driven, high-touch sales environment. - Proven track record of sourcing and closing net-new accounts — not just managing an existing book of business. - Comfort working independently and remotely, with the discipline to self-manage a pipeline without day-to-day oversight. - Familiarity or comfort using AI tools to support prospecting and outreach workflows. - Strong phone and relationship-building skills; comfortable being the primary point of contact fielding calls directly with prospects. ### Why Join The people who do best here are builders. They take ownership, move fast, and want to see the direct impact of their work. - **Cross-Functional Impact:** Your work touches merchandising, operations, vendor teams, and brand strategy — you will shape how One Kings Lane serves its most valuable customer segments. - **AI-First Skill Building:** You will integrate AI tools into every stage of the sales process, building modern prospecting and outreach capabilities that accelerate your career. - **End-to-End Ownership:** You own the entire net-new pipeline from sourcing to close, and you will help define the commission structure and account strategy as this function grows. - **Competitive Benefits (US):** Paid time off policies, 401(k) match, medical/dental/vision and a variety of supplemental policies, and employee discounts across our portfolio of brands. - **Competitive Benefits (Canada):** Paid time off policies, RRSP match, medical, dental, and vision coverage, a variety of supplemental benefit options, and employee discounts across our portfolio of brands. ### Interview Process 1. **Recruiter Screen** - A 30-minute conversation with our recruiting team to align on the role, your background, and what you are looking for. 2. **Hiring Manager Interview** - Conversation with the Director of Digital Merchandising & Strategy focused on your approach to net-new business development, pipeline management, and AI-enabled sales execution. 3. **Case Discussion** - A practical walkthrough of how you would build and execute a prospecting strategy for a target trade or hospitality account. 4. **In-Person Interview** - We'd like to meet you. Details and logistics will be arranged with your recruiter. 5. **Reference Checks** - Conducted in parallel with the final stages where possible. 6. **Offer** - We move quickly for the right candidate. *Interview process is subject to change. Any updates will be communicated promptly and clearly.* ### Please Note - Part of our interview process is a **mandatory in-person interview** with someone on our team prior to an offer. Candidates that are unwilling or unable to meet for an in-person interview will be removed from consideration immediately.