Business Development Coordinator Job Description

A Business Development Coordinator runs the support work behind a company's effort to win new clients, partners and contracts. The managers and principals own the relationships and the pricing. The coordinator owns the machinery: the CRM, the target lists, the meeting calendar, the proposal schedule and the weekly pipeline numbers. When a partner asks which bids are due this month, which prospects went quiet after a first call, or whether the capabilities deck still shows last year's project list, the coordinator is the one with the answer.

The work splits into a few recurring streams.

Research and targeting. Coordinators build account lists from sources such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, trade association directories, public bid boards and conference attendee lists. They check that each contact still works at the company, tag accounts by sector and size, and hand the list to whoever is doing the outreach.

CRM upkeep. In Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Deltek CRM, the coordinator logs activities, moves opportunities between stages, merges duplicate records and runs the reports leadership reads on Monday morning. A pipeline report is only as good as the records behind it, so this is quiet, constant work.

Proposals and pursuits. At engineering, architecture, construction, consulting and government-services firms, the job leans hard toward proposals. The coordinator reads the RFP, builds a compliance matrix, sets internal deadlines, chases resumes and project sheets from technical staff, formats the response to the buyer's page and font rules, and gets it submitted on time through a portal or by courier. Proposal libraries in tools such as Loopio or Responsive hold the reusable boilerplate.

Outreach operations. Coordinators set up email sequences, keep unsubscribe lists clean and watch deliverability. Mailbox providers set technical rules here: starting May 5, 2025, Microsoft's Outlook.com began enforcing SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication for domains sending over 5,000 emails per day, and Microsoft's postmaster page says noncompliant messages go to the junk folder, with rejection to follow until the DNS records are corrected. A coordinator who can read a bounce report and ask IT the right question about a DMARC record saves the team a lot of lost outreach.

Events and meetings. Trade shows, client lunches, site tours and pitch rehearsals all need a calendar owner, booth logistics, badge lists and follow-up tracking after the event.

Where the job sits on the org chart varies. In a 40-person engineering firm it may report to a marketing manager and spend much of its week on proposals. In a software company it may sit inside sales operations and spend more time on CRM data and outreach tools. In a staffing firm or a regional bank it can look closer to executive support for the business development lead. The common thread is the same: the coordinator keeps the growth team's information accurate, its deadlines met and its handoffs clean, so the people who sell can spend their hours with clients instead of with spreadsheets.

Education. A bachelor's degree in business, marketing, communications or English is the usual starting credential, and journalism or economics graduates fit well too. A degree is not the only route: candidates who come up through an administrative or sales support desk and can show clean work in a CRM are worth a look. For proposal-heavy work, writing and editing ability matters more than the major.

Experience. As a rough guide, expect 0 to 2 years in an office role for entry-level coordinator work, and 3 to 5 years with proposal or pipeline ownership for a senior coordinator seat. Good feeder jobs include marketing assistant, sales assistant, office coordinator, recruiting coordinator and inside sales.

Tools to know.

• One CRM in depth: Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or Deltek Vantagepoint at architecture and engineering firms
• Prospecting databases such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo or Apollo
• Sequencing tools such as Outreach or Salesloft, plus the basics of email authentication and list hygiene
• Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, with real fluency in PowerPoint, Excel pivot tables and Word styles
• Adobe InDesign for firms that produce designed proposals and qualification packages
• Proposal libraries such as Loopio or Responsive where the firm answers a steady stream of RFPs

Credentials. None is required to get hired. Three are worth knowing about:

• APMP Foundation, awarded by the Association of Proposal Management Professionals, is the APMP certification aimed at people newer to proposal work.
• Certified Professional Services Marketer (CPSM), awarded by the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS), is aimed at marketers in architecture, engineering and construction, and suits a coordinator planning a longer career in that sector.
• Salesforce Certified Platform Administrator, awarded by Salesforce, shows a coordinator can configure the CRM rather than just enter data into it.

Skills that separate good coordinators.

• Writing tight, accurate copy fast: a project description, a cover email, a two-line bio
• Reading an RFP and catching the requirement buried on page 37
• Running several deadlines at once without dropping a handoff
• Basic data sense: spotting a broken report, a duplicate account or a pipeline stage that never moves
• Comfort asking busy senior people for inputs and following up until they arrive

Typical path forward. Coordinators who like writing and deadlines can move toward proposal manager or marketing manager. Those drawn to the numbers move into sales operations or CRM administration. Those who enjoy client contact move into business development manager or account roles. A few years of solid pursuit work in one sector builds sector knowledge that travels with the person.

BLS does not track business development coordinators as their own occupation. The closest official home is Business Operations Specialists, All Other (SOC 13-1199), a broad residual group that ONET describes as "all business operations specialists not listed separately." ONET lists the projected growth for that group from 2025 to 2035 as average (3% to 4%), with about 98,700 openings a year on average. Those figures cover the whole group, which includes many jobs that have nothing to do with sales support, so treat them as a broad signal rather than a forecast for this title.

Pay in practice. The national BLS band for the occupation is wide, and the group behind it is mixed. Title-level data are thin. One regional example: the 2024 salary survey run by SMPS Oregon and SMPS Seattle, covering marketing and business development staff at architecture, engineering and construction firms, put 15 respondents in its Category IV, whose examples include Marketing or Proposal/Pursuit Coordinator. That group reported a minimum salary of $61,000, an average of $68,953 and a maximum of $81,000. It is one region, one sector and a small sample, useful as a reference point and nothing more.

Where the jobs are. Coordinator roles exist wherever a company has to win work through pursuit rather than walk-in demand: engineering and architecture firms, general contractors, management consultancies, government contractors, staffing agencies, commercial real estate, law and accounting firms, software companies and nonprofit development offices. Any firm that answers public-sector RFPs needs someone who can manage compliance matrices, addenda and submission deadlines, and in a small firm that person may be the coordinator.

AI and automation. The Census Bureau reported that larger firms were the biggest AI users. In Business Trends and Outlook Survey data collected from December 2025 to May 2026, 37% of firms with at least 250 employees reported using AI in their business operations. For a coordinator that means first drafts of outreach emails, meeting summaries, contact enrichment and RFP answer suggestions can come from software at employers that have adopted these tools. What the software does not do well is know which past project actually fits a buyer's scoring criteria, notice that a reused bio lists the wrong license, or decide that a bid is not worth chasing. Coordinators who check, correct and assemble machine output hold value; those whose job was mainly retyping and formatting may face more pressure.

Rules worth tracking. Outreach work runs under email and privacy rules that change. Keeping up with sender authentication, opt-out handling and the state privacy laws in the markets the firm sells into belongs on a coordinator's list, and the coordinator who owns that knowledge becomes the person the team asks.

How to move up. The coordinator seat is a starting point. Proposal management, marketing management, sales operations and CRM administration all build on it, and so do client-facing business development roles. Choosing one sector and learning how its buyers evaluate bids is a practical way to make the next step concrete.

Dear Hiring Manager,

Please consider me for the Business Development Coordinator opening at Halvorsen Engineering. For the past two years I have been the marketing and proposal assistant at a 60-person civil engineering firm in Sacramento, and I am ready to own the pursuit process rather than support one piece of it.

In my current role I manage the proposal calendar for our transportation and water groups. When an RFP arrives, I read it the same day, build a compliance checklist, and set internal deadlines for resumes, project sheets and fee input. Last spring we had three municipal submittals due in the same week. I split the work into daily checkpoints, kept the principals on schedule with short morning check-ins, and all three went out a day early with no compliance gaps. We were shortlisted on two.

I also cleaned up our CRM. When I started, the database had duplicate client records, stale contacts and opportunities that had sat in the same stage for a year. Over four months I merged the duplicates, set up required fields for every new opportunity, and built a weekly pipeline report that our business development director now opens every Monday.

I work in Deltek Vantagepoint, InDesign and the full Microsoft 365 suite, and I am studying for the APMP Foundation exam. I write quickly and cleanly, and I like the detective work of finding the requirement hidden in an addendum.

Halvorsen's growth in transit work is the kind of pursuit pipeline I want to help run. I would welcome the chance to talk about how I could support your team's next round of bids.

Sincerely, Dana Whitfield