New Business Manager - Hashtag
Bengaluru
New Business Manager
Experience: 4 to 7 years
Location: Bangalore (with occasional travel to Chennai and other cities when the work needs it)
Reports to: Founder & CEO
At Hashtag, the New Business Manager is the person who opens doors. For ten years our growth has come from the founder's network, referrals, inbound, word of mouth, and outbound. That has built a roster of brands across categories and a body of work we are proud of. Now we want that growth to be deliberate, and Bengaluru is the market we want to win next. Bengaluru is yours to conquer.
You are a senior seller who has sold a service before. Maybe it was an agency's retainers, maybe it was SaaS implementation, consulting, staffing, media, events or any business where the product is people and thinking rather than a box on a shelf. You know that service sales is won on trust, on the quality of your questions, and on never letting a conversation go cold. If you have sold for an agency, you will land running. If you have not, we will teach you the agency side: how retainers work, how creative and digital work is scoped, how to read a brand's problem and how we price. What we cannot teach is hunger, discipline and the ability to hold a room with a founder or a marketing head.
Your job is to fill the pipeline, move it forward honestly and build Hashtag's presence in Bangalore from the ground up.
What You'll Do
Build the Pipeline
Own new business for Bengaluru, find, research and open conversations with brands in any category where the work is good and we can do it well.
Run named account outbound every week: researched, personal and specific, never spray and pray.
Work the referral engine: turn warm introductions from the founder, the team and our clients into real meetings.
Read the market for triggers: new launches, expansions, funding, leadership changes and category movement. Reach the brand before a requirement exists.
Show up where buyers are: industry events, founder communities, association meets and LinkedIn.
Run the Conversation
Lead first meetings and discovery: understand the business, the problem, the money and who actually decides.
Qualify hard. Every lead is scored against our Five Gates (Money, Mandate, Problem, Fit, Timing) and the ones that fail go to nurture, politely and quickly.
Bring the founder and the right craft leads into the room at the right moment, fully briefed.
Build the credentials and capability decks for each conversation with the internal team, so every prospect sees the Hashtag that is relevant to them.
Shape the scope with the team so that what we propose is what we can deliver at a healthy margin.
Move It to a Close
Own every open deal through proposal, negotiation and paperwork, with the founder alongside you on pricing and the final close.
Follow up with discipline: every open deal has a next action and a date, or it is not in the pipeline.
Keep Nurture alive: stay in touch with good prospects who have no requirement today, with something relevant each time, so we are the first call when they do.
A deal is won when the advance is in the bank, not when someone says yes.
Hand Over Clean
Pass every new client to the Brand Partnerships team with signed scope, commercials and full context, so the client feels one continuous relationship.
Stay close through the first 90 days so the promise made in the sale is the experience they get.
Keep the System True
Keep your pipeline current at all times, because your forecast is only as good as your data.
Report four numbers every Friday: leads added, meetings held, proposals out, deals closed.
Bring the market back into the agency: what prospects ask for, what they pay, who we lose to and why.
Study what is converting and what is not, and keep sharpening the approach. The sales system is young and you will help shape it.
What You Are NOT Expected to Do
Write the strategy or make the creative. You will have content, design, film, web and performance teams behind you.
Manage client accounts after handover. That belongs to Brand Partnerships.
Decide pricing, discounts or payment terms on your own. Those stay with the founder.
Chase volume for its own sake. We would rather win five right clients than fifteen wrong ones.
What Success Looks Like (First 6 Months)
You can pitch Hashtag as well as the founder does, and prospects cannot tell you did not come from an agency.
Bangalore has a live, qualified pipeline that did not exist before you joined.
First meetings are happening every week and proposals every month, from sources beyond the founder's own network.
Your first clients are signed, paid and happily handed over.
Your pipeline is so clean that the founder stops asking for updates.
Who You Are
4 to 7 years in B2B sales or business development, selling a service: an agency, a consultancy, a martech or SaaS services firm, media, events, staffing or similar.
You have carried a number, closed deals yourself and can talk honestly about the quarters you hit it and the ones you did not.
A hunter by temperament: comfortable with cold outreach, rejection and long sales cycles. Persistent without being pushy.
You understand that selling an agency is not about a rate card. It is about ideas, thinking and business impact.
Commercially sharp: comfortable talking budgets, scope and value with senior people.
You ask better questions than you give answers. Founders and CMOs enjoy talking to you.
Curious about brands, marketing and how businesses grow. You do not need to be a marketer, you need to want to become fluent.
Self managed. You will be our first person in Bangalore, so nobody will be looking over your shoulder.
Clear written and spoken English. Kannada, Tamil or Hindi is a real advantage
Nice to Haves (Optional)
Experience selling for a creative, digital or performance marketing agency.
An existing network among founders and marketing heads in Bangalore.
Hands on experience with sales pipeline tools and with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo or similar.
Ambition to grow into the New Business Lead seat and build a team under you.
The Vibe
You report to the founder and work with him directly. No layers.
Fixed pay plus a variable tied to the revenue you bring in, with no ceiling on it.
A full creative agency behind you and a ten year body of work to sell.
You are building a city for us, not filling a desk.
This is not a role where you forward leads and wait. It is where you build a market, earn the trust of people who run real businesses and see your wins turn into work the whole agency is proud of.
If you have been selling a service and want to sell something you can be proud to show, this is where you belong.
Come build with us.