Business Development Lead – Growcer (Ottawa)

About Growcer

Growcer builds the infrastructure for food sovereignty. We're the world leader in modular container farms, with over 900 projects worldwide. We provide communities, Indigenous nations, schools, hospitals, and institutions across North America with the tools, training, and support to grow food locally, 365 days a year. We don't just sell container farms; we help communities go from dependence to self-reliance, one harvest at a time.

Growcer is entering its next phase of growth and scaling across North America. Effective Growcer employees are tenacious, enjoy a fast-paced environment, and are comfortable working on big-picture challenges with lots of autonomy.

If you want your work to be visible, your impact to be direct, and your mission to be one you'd be proud to explain at a dinner party, you'll feel right at home.

The role

The Business Development Lead is a quota-carrying role that owns the top of our sales funnel. You turn outreach, events and inbound interest into discovery meetings and qualified opportunities for our Account Executives.

Our buyers are Communities, Schools, Hospitals and Nonprofits. Deals involve many decision-makers, and take 12 to 24 months to close. You open those conversations, earn trust early and hand off opportunities that are ready to move.

You'll work closely with our Account Executives, Marketing, and the Funding Strategy team.

What you'll do

• Research prospects and use real signals (new funding, grant awards, program launches, public announcements) to write personalized outreach
• Run calls, emails, LinkedIn and sequences across our core segments, and book discovery meetings
• Lead first conversations: understand each organization's goals, decision process, timing and likely funding path, then qualify before handing off to an Account Executive
• Follow community and organizational protocols, and listen more than you pitch
• Keep relationships warm with consistent, thoughtful follow-up over long cycles
• Keep CRM accurate: activity, stages, next steps and stakeholder notes
• Use AI tools to research and scale outreach, and to analyze what's working so you keep improving
• Represent Growcer at conferences, farm tours and events, and turn event contacts into pipeline
• Respond to inbound inquiries and connect people with the right next step
  

What success looks like

You carry a monthly quota of discovery meetings booked and qualified opportunities accepted by our Account Executives.

• First 30 days: learn our offer, segments and sales process; shadow live discovery calls and community meetings.
• By 60 days: run your own outreach sequences and book your first discovery meetings.
• By 90 days: lead discovery conversations with confidence and hit your monthly quota.
  

Who you are

Experience. One of these describes you:

• some experienced carrying a quota as an SDR, BDR or similar, ideally selling B2B software to mid-market or enterprise buyers
• A recent graduate with real proof of drive: you led Enactus or a student association, placed in a business case competition, ran a student franchise, or started a business
  

What we look for

• Customer-first: you follow through, and you care what happens after the meeting is booked
• Coachable: you ask questions, take feedback and put it into practice quickly
• Integrity: you'll tell a prospect when we're not the right fit yet
• Driven: you set goals, chase them and solve problems without waiting to be asked
• Humble and a good listener: you treat every community as a partner, not a market segment
• Patient: you keep momentum on deals that take a year or more and involve many people
• Organized across many conversations at once
• Comfortable with AI tools and current on modern prospecting
• Experience with Indigenous communities, schools, nonprofits, higher education or healthcare is an asset
  

The details

• Location: Ottawa, ON. Hybrid from our Ottawa office; you live within commuting distance of Ottawa–Gatineau.
• Compensation: OTE of $120,000 CAD in year one, with earnings growing with performance and a path to an Account Executive role.
• Travel: about 30% for conferences, farm tours, community visits and events.
• Language: English required. Bilingualism (English and French) is an asset.
• Must be legally able to work in Canada and hold a valid driver's licence.
  

How we hire

This role puts you in front of prospects from day one, so we'd like to see you in action early.

1. Intro call with our team.
2. Outreach exercise: write a short cold message to a realistic Growcer prospect.
3. Mock discovery call: we'll give you one piece of feedback, then run it again. We care more about how you adjust than how the first run goes.
4. Final conversation with leadership and references.
   

Accommodation

Growcer is dedicated to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. If you need accommodation(s) because of illness, disability, or other special needs at any time during the recruitment process, please contact [email protected].

Reconciliation

The Growcer team acknowledges that we work with many Territories and Treaty areas, and we are grateful for the traditional Knowledge Keepers and Elders who are with us today, those who have gone before us, and the youth who inspire us.

We recognize the land and the benefits it provides all of us, as an act of Reconciliation, as recommended by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) 94 Calls to Action, and gratitude to those whose territory we reside on, work on, or are visiting.

Growcer is committed to progressing the path of Reconciliation in a deeply meaningful way, in partnership with Indigenous and First Nations Peoples, and is dedicated to fulfilling our role and responsibilities in this regard.