Business Development Senior Manager, Sports & Media

ABOUT APPLY   APPLY is the Agentic Customer Experience (ACx) partner for the world's most ambitious consumer and entertainment brands. We bring together deep domain expertise across Retail, CPG, Sports, and Media with AI-native delivery capability, designing and delivering agentic solutions that turn CX vision into commercial reality. We are the partner of choice for brands like Arc'teryx, NFL, Lululemon, and Kraft Heinz. For more information, visit applydigital.com.   LOCATION:APPLY is hybrid/remote friendly. The preferred candidate should be based in the United States or Canada, working in hours that preferably align to ET (Eastern Timezone) however, qualified candidates in PT (Pacific Standard) will also be considered.    THE ROLE: We are looking for a Business Development Senior Manager to help drive growth for APPLY's Sports & Media vertical. Our ideal candidate is an experienced, consultative seller who excels at building trusted relationships, creating opportunities, and navigating complex enterprise sales cycles. They are energized by the potential of AI to transform how brands serve their customers and comfortable engaging senior executives on how digital experiences, technology, and emerging capabilities can drive meaningful business value. This is a senior individual contributor role for someone with 5+ years of business development and sales experience who is ready to own a meaningful portion of our Sports & Media growth target. You'll work closely with our Vertical Growth Lead, but you'll be expected to independently develop target accounts, originate opportunities, lead client conversations, and run pursuits from initial engagement through close. This is not a traditional cold-calling or SDR role. It's a strategic, account-based business development role that requires curiosity, creativity, commercial instincts, and the ability to create genuine value exchanges with senior prospects who may not know APPLY yet — but absolutely should. You'll combine targeted prospecting, industry relationships, partner channels, events, and thoughtful account-based strategies to build a high-quality pipeline. You'll own a portfolio of priority accounts and be responsible for turning account intelligence into relationships, relationships into qualified opportunities, and opportunities into revenue. Once an opportunity is established, you'll lead the pursuit — shaping the opportunity, mobilizing the right APPLY capabilities, developing the proposal and pitch, and helping navigate commercial conversations through close. You'll have the support and strategic oversight of our Vertical Growth Lead and Pursuit Operations team, but you'll be expected to operate with meaningful independence and accountability. Success in this role means building a strong, sustainable pipeline and closing $3M+ in new revenue in your first full year. We're looking for someone who has already developed strong consultative selling skills and is ready to take on larger accounts, more complex pursuits, and greater ownership of revenue. APPLY believes that diversity of ideas leads to the best solutions, so collaboration is critical. We need someone who can build trusted relationships externally while bringing together the right people internally to win complex opportunities. More than anything, we're looking for a driven, commercially minded relationship builder who can create momentum, energize pursuit teams, and turn conversations into meaningful client partnerships.