Q&A with a Business Development Lead
With new job opportunities to join Accurx in a sales role, we picked the brains of one of our fantastic Business Development Leads, Jimmy Duncan, to ask him about his role!
1. To kick things off, could you give a quick intro to your role?
My current role is Business Development Lead, looking after our Integrated Care Board (ICB) accounts in both The Midlands and The East of England. This includes 17 ICB accounts covering a patient population of 19m. It’s really rewarding to see that the relationships we hold translate to significant impact for both clinicians and patients across the country. Working closely with the rest of the commercial team, you have to understand nuanced differences between regions and be able to support our customers based on the varying needs of each region. You are trusted to be the expert point of contact for your customers, advising them on how Accurx can support their regions using our products, while also feeding back their changing needs to the business so we can continuously improve our product and services.
2. What are you working on at the moment?
We’re currently gearing up to support ICB’s procure our Booking Module, which helps to streamline the ability for clinicians to book appointments asynchronously, helping to save them time, money and ultimately helping them to deliver to patients the care they need more quickly. It’s been fantastic being able to work on a roll out of product with our customers, one which has provided so much impact to the NHS since the pandemic.
3. How long have you been at Accurx? How does this role differ to what you were doing before?
I’ve been at Accurx for 18 months now, and it’s gone very quickly! I come from a non-healthcare/healthtech background, having worked in FMCG, Martech and Recruitech including companies such as innocent drinks and Trustpilot to name a few, so there was a lot to learn about the NHS! But the smooth and very well planned onboarding process was first class and enabled me to get up to speed quickly.
A lot of companies talk about mission but few are truly mission-led. The recruitment process proved to me how Accurx is truly mission-led and that really is reflected in the culture, it reminds me of innocent drinks in that sense. What is most different about this role is the scale of the impact you are able to have. Our product is used by millions of people! I’m proud that I can play a small part in enabling better communication across the healthcare system, which ultimately helps patients, clinicians and frontline staff.
4. How do you work alongside the rest of the Sales team at Accurx?
We’re a close knit and extremely supportive team. Commercial is split into Business Development, Implementation and Customer Success, and we work very collaboratively in how we provide support to our customers. In Business Development, we’re primarily focused on bringing new Accurx users through new contracts, and when these are signed, our Implementation Team supports the onboarding process and Customer Success becomes the main point of contact on an ongoing basis. As such, we each have a role to play throughout the customer lifecycle but we’re always working together to support our customers through regular check-ins as part of the customers’ account team.
As a team we celebrate collaboration. Whether that be in our weekly team meetings, how we structure teams or how we work on projects together, we’re always looking for ways to collaborate to ultimately deliver better outcomes for our customers. Just the other day on our end of quarter team celebration, we split into teams and went on a rat race-style hunt through Shoreditch. So collaboration extends past the day to day! It’s as important to be a team player as it is an individual contributor, it’s something we really value.
5. What is one of your favourite things about working at Accurx?
It has to be how supportive the business is to parents! Parental Leave at Accurx is one of, if not the best benefit at Accurx. To have up to 18 weeks of fully paid leave, and be able to spread that over time until my daughter is five years old, is so amazing. This should be the gold standard in 2023 but unfortunately I hear too often of dads only able to take a couple of weeks of paid parental leave, especially in sales roles.
It has been so special being able to take one month at birth and another month when our daughter was 8 months, with still more to take! Being able to take leave when it suits us as a family, and as our daughter’s needs change as she grows and develops, rather than having to take it all at birth, is a big perk. I had only been at the company for 6 months when my daughter was born and I was still given the opportunity to take my parental leave, and then take a further month while my wife was still on her maternity leave, was very special. Everyone has been so flexible and understanding throughout the process and has been very supportive of me taking leave to spend time with my daughter, which is often not the case in other companies.
5. What would you say to someone who is thinking of applying to a Business Development position at Accurx?
If you consider yourself mission-led, you value a business which prioritises culture and you’d be excited to join a journey to enable more joined-up communication within healthcare, then I would encourage you to apply, as we would love to hear from you! The office perks aren’t bad either 😉
