Role Summary
The Business Development Executive, Endeavour DATA supports the company's growth by identifying new opportunities, initiating outreach to potential clients and partners, developing proposals and presentation materials, and coordinating internal follow-through across business development, operations, and analytics teams.
This role combines active business development, proposal writing, strategic research, and internal coordination. The ideal candidate is proactive, commercially aware, organised, and able to translate market, stakeholder, and organisational information into practical business development outputs. The role reports to the Team Leader and will work closely with senior management where required.
Key Responsibilities
1. Business Development and Opportunity Support
- Research and identify potential clients, partners, sponsors, and collaboration opportunities across ministries, agencies, GLCs, corporates, universities, foundations, and other relevant institutions.
- Proactively map sectors, organisations, decision-makers, and potential entry points for Endeavour DATA's services and solutions.
- Initiate outreach through cold emails, calls, follow-ups, and meeting coordination to introduce the company's capabilities and open conversations.
- Build, maintain, and track a structured pipeline of prospects, opportunities, engagement history, and next steps.
- Support the progression of early stage leads into active discussions through follow-up materials, notes, and internal coordination.
- Help maintain and strengthen relationships with external stakeholders to support long-term business development efforts.
2. Proposal Development and Strategic Writing
- Support the development, customisation, and refinement of research proposals, concept notes, letters, capability decks, and presentation materials.
- Work closely with internal teams to gather inputs, structure content, and ensure proposals are accurate, persuasive, and aligned to client objectives.
- Tailor proposals to public sector, corporate, university, and funding-related contexts where relevant.
- Support the preparation of strategic documents for management review, ensuring quality, consistency, and professional presentation.
- Maintain proper records of submitted proposals, supporting documents, and related reference materials.
3. Strategic Research, Intelligence and Briefing Support
- Conduct background research on organisations, sectors, policy areas, commercial opportunities, and relevant stakeholder environments to support business development efforts.
- Prepare summary notes, stakeholder profiles, meeting briefs, market scans, and competitor overviews for internal use.
- Support the development of market, political, and stakeholder intelligence relevant to project positioning and client engagement.
- Compile and organise information into clear internal materials that support management decision-making.
- Stay aware of relevant developments in Malaysia's business, policy, regulatory, and political environment that may affect opportunities, proposals, or project direction.
4. Cross-Functional Coordination and Internal Support
- Work closely with Operations and Analysis teams to support the smooth progression of opportunities from initial engagement through proposal stage and beyond.
- Coordinate internal follow-ups, timelines, document requests, and action items required to move opportunities forward.
- Maintain proper documentation and continuity across meetings, proposals, discussions, and ongoing engagements.
- Support the preparation of decks, frameworks, and discussion materials for senior stakeholder meetings, including C-level and high-level institutional engagements.
- Participate in meetings, events, forums, and other relevant engagements when required to support relationship-building, visibility, and business development efforts.
- Provide ad hoc support on strategic assignments, management requests, and special projects related to Endeavour DATA's business development priorities.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Political Science, Public Policy, Communications, Project Management, Research, or a related field.
- 2–5 years of experience in business development, proposal writing, strategic support, client servicing, research support, or a similar role.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills in English and Malay.
- Strong research and information-gathering skills, with the ability to organise findings into clear and useful business development materials.
- Good organisational skills and the ability to manage multiple workstreams, deadlines, and follow-ups at the same time.
- Detail-oriented and able to work carefully on proposals, trackers, briefs, and internal documentation.
- Proficiency in Microsoft Office (advanced Excel skills are an advantage)
- Proficiency in AI LLMs (e.g. ChatGPT)
Preferred Qualities
- Able to communicate professionally with senior stakeholders and represent the company appropriately in external engagements.
- Strong writing ability with a good sense of structure, clarity, and persuasive communication.
- Commercially aware and able to understand how Endeavour DATA's research, survey, analytics, and consulting capabilities can be positioned to different stakeholders.
- Comfortable working in a dynamic environment where priorities may shift across sectors, proposals, and active opportunities.
- Proactive, structured, dependable, and able to work with limited supervision.
- A good understanding of Malaysian public policy, business, regulatory, and political context would be an advantage.
- Exposure to proposal development, government-related work, stakeholder engagement, research projects, or consulting support would be an advantage.
