Client Development Director Jobs in Houston, TX (NOW HIRING)

The Opportunity

If you have spent your career understanding that the real art of sales is influence - aligning smart people around opportunity, creating momentum, operationalizing sales processes, and helping experts commercialize what they do best - keep reading. Because this role is for you.

Oliva Gibbs has made a deliberate, multi-year investment in building a business development infrastructure: a dedicated Client Development Manager (CDM) team, CRM, target account plans, and a defined MQL-to-Partner sales process. The Director of Client Development is the leader who takes that foundation and makes it perform at its full potential.

This is an operational leader role with genuine authority coupled with the ability to generate a sales pipeline. You will own pipeline management, CDM performance, and attorney BD engagement collaboration. You will have direct access to firm leadership, a clear mandate, and the opportunity to create something that has a measurable impact on the firm's growth trajectory.

What You Will Own

Pipeline Infrastructure & Visibility

• Define and drive sales pipeline requirements to hit and/or exceed annual growth targets
• Own HubSpot as the firm's revenue operating system - every active opportunity staged, tracked, and reported
• Drive consistent CRM adoption and build the reporting cadence leadership relies on
• Establish win/loss tracking across all CDMs and practice areas
• Build dashboards that give leadership, the sales team, and marketing a shared view of pipeline health

CDM Performance & Development

• Set clear activity expectations for each Client Development Manager and build a coaching cadence that raises individual performance
• Own the CDM accountability framework including regular pipeline reviews, documented performance plans, and escalation pathways
• Define and enforce Sales Qualified Lead qualification standards to protect attorney time and improve handoff quality
• Track and report CDM performance metrics to firm leadership on a consistent cadence

Attorney Business Development Engagement

• Build a structured BD participation framework that Partners can adopt and sustain
• Ensure Partners have documented BD plans and are meeting regularly with you and the CDMs
• Coach Partners on pipeline discipline, target account strategy, and consistent follow-through
• Develop trust through results - this role earns authority by making Partners more successful, not by directing them

Sales & Marketing Alignment

• Partner with the Director of Marketing on activity KPIs to foster a shared pipeline accountability structure and alignment on marketing events and priorities
• Ensure the CDM-to-Partner handoff is consistently clean and qualified across all practice areas and basins
• Contribute to and help maintain the OG Sales Enablement Playbook

How Success Is Measured

• Pipeline defined and fully visible and consistently maintained in HubSpot
• BD accountability framework operational firm-wide
• Sales Qualified Lead qualification standards defined and enforced
• Partners on active, documented BD plans
• SQLs and Close/Won KPIs meet or exceed targets

Who We Are Looking For

You understand that professional services sales is fundamentally different from product or B2C sales.

You know how to create influence without authority. You know how to drive accountability. You know how to help experts sell without making them feel "salesy". You have a proven track record of operationalizing sales.

You've worked in environments where:

• Subject matter experts resisted structure
• Relationship owners guarded clients closely
• Business development felt inconsistent or personality-dependent
• Leadership had targeted growth plans but needed you to operationalize it

You became the person who could bridge the gap between technical excellence and growth - this is where you thrive.

You speak "executive" fluently. You understand how revenue actually happens in professional services environments. You can walk into a room of attorneys, accountants, consultants, or partners and earn credibility through preparation, insight, and judgement.

You are equal parts:

• Strategist
• Coach
• Operator

The ideal candidate has built or led a revenue function inside a complex B2B professional services environment - one where the product is expertise, technical credibility matters, and subject matter experts own the client relationships. You know that your job is to make those experts more effective at BD, not to replace them.

Required

• 7+ years in a sales leadership, business development management, or revenue operations role
• Demonstrated experience in professional services - law, engineering, consulting, or financial advisory
• Proven track record building pipeline discipline and CRM adoption alongside practitioners who are new to sales accountability
• Experience managing and coaching a Client Development Manager team against quantitative KPIs
• Strong CRM proficiency - you build pipelines, reports, and dashboards without needing IT or administrative support
• Demonstrated ability to earn trust and credibility with senior professionals and subject matter experts

Preferred

• Background in energy, oil and gas, or natural resources - you understand how landmen and General Counsel make decisions
• Experience building or scaling a BD function from an early-stage foundation
• Familiarity with Scaling Up, EOS/Traction, or similar operating frameworks
• Exposure to target account selling and account-based marketing methodologies

Who Will Not Succeed in This Role

Be direct with yourself before applying - this role is likely not a fit if:

• You define success by building relationships without pipeline accountability to show for it
• You are uncomfortable with quantitative performance accountability tied to your own results AND the results of your team
• You rely heavily on authority instead of influence

Our Core Values

Core values at Oliva Gibbs are not decorative. They inform our hiring decisions, our performance reviews, and how we operate day to day.

Culture of Collaboration - You work with attorneys and CDMs - not around them. BD at OG is a team sport, and this role is the connective tissue.

Fanatical Client Service - The pipeline exists to serve clients. Every qualified prospect deserves the same standard of excellence we deliver once they're in the door.

A Passion for Teaching & Learning - A significant part of this role is developing others' BD capability. You need to find that work meaningful, not incidental.

Compensation & Structure

Oliva Gibbs offers a competitive base salary commensurate with experience, with incentive compensation tied to activity metrics, pipeline performance, and firmwide targets paid out as semi-annual bonuses. This is NOT a commission-based role. Benefits include comprehensive healthcare (medical, dental, vision), 401K with match, and a progressive PTO policy.

This role reports directly to the firm's President, with a clear, executive-backed mandate.

About Oliva Gibbs PLLC

Founded in 2013, Oliva Gibbs is a national oil and gas law firm headquartered in Houston, Texas, with offices in Columbus, Lafayette, Midland, San Antonio, and Oklahoma City. We serve a broad range of clients - from Fortune 500 integrated operators to private equity-backed startups - with a reputation built on speed, quality, and technical depth.

Our clients are oil and gas operators who choose us because of the quality of our people and the reliability of our work. With approximately 60 attorneys and 100 total employees, we are a focused, growth-oriented firm with serious ambitions and the operational discipline to pursue them.

Oliva Gibbs LLP is committed to providing a work environment free from discrimination and harassment. It is our policy to comply with all applicable federal, state, and local laws prohibiting employment discrimination. All employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications without regard for race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation (including gender identity and/or expression), pregnancy, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other factors protected by the laws or regulations in the states where we operate. We are committed to supporting a variety of recruiting initiatives to continue building a diverse and inclusive law firm and legal profession.