As Sales Officer, you will serve as the single commercial point of contact across three Ghent University Core Facilities: the Drug Product Development core facility (DPD), the NanoMedicine Core (NMC), and the HighTru core facility.
Your key responsibilities will be:
Single point of contact for industry: Act as the central contact for all industrial inquiries across DPD, NMC, and HighTru, ensuring a consistent and professional interface with external partners.
Customer relationship management (CRM): Create a central CRM overview of all ongoing and potential industrial interactions across the three facilities, enabling systematic relationship continuity.
Lead generation and market outreach: Proactively identify market needs and generate qualified leads through networking, sector intelligence, (international) conference presence, and targeted outreach to pharma and biotech companies in Belgium, Benelux, and beyond. For HighTru, building new markets for novel capabilities will be necessary, which requires going beyond just managing existing relationships.
Proposal preparation and deal closure: Support the conversion of leads into larger collaborations by preparing tailored proposals, negotiating terms, and coordinating with scientific teams throughout the process, from initial discussions to contract finalisation..
Platform cross-selling: Systematically map what each industrial contact already uses across the three facilities, identify adjacent services relevant to their pipeline, and introduce them to the full platform offering. This includes coordinating across multiple autonomous academic entities with distinct leadership.
Market intelligence: Act as the platform’s market intelligence function by regularly consolidating observations on pricing, competitor activity, emerging client needs, and R&D trends, and translating these into actionable recommendations for facility managers to support cost model updates, service portfolio decisions, and investment priorities in an anticipatory manner. .
Communication and reporting: Coordinate quotations, reporting templates, and marketing materials; liaise with relevant Business Developers within Ghent University for institutional business development support.