The Role

The VP, Client Partner Growth & Strategy sits at the intersection of market intelligence, enterprise business development, executive client partnership, and long-term account growth.

This is not a traditional sales role - this is a role for someone who can create belief before there is a brief.

You will be the person who walks into a C-suite conversation, earns the room with a sharp point of view on what is changing in the market, helps a client understand the real problem underneath the presenting issue, and turns that trust into meaningful work for SH/FT. You will not simply respond to RFPs or route leads through a sales process. You will identify where enterprise clients are struggling to connect marketing, data, technology, and AI into a working growth system, and then shape the commercial opportunity around that need.

Reporting directly to the CEO, you will lead enterprise pipeline development, open and deepen senior client relationships, shape new opportunities, close new business, and help grow a portfolio of high-value enterprise accounts. This role requires someone who can move fluidly from market POV to business case, from first conversation to signed engagement, and from initial project to long-term partnership.

You will not replace delivery leadership or day-to-day account management. Your role is to create and grow strategic relationships, shape the commercial path, and serve as an executive-level partner where your presence materially advances trust, clarity, and growth.

About You

You understand how enterprise organizations buy, evaluate, and implement professional services. You know what a broken tech stack looks like, but more importantly, you know how to talk about fixing it in business terms, not technical ones.

You have a clear perspective on how AI is reshaping marketing operations, data strategy, customer experience, content, and the consultancy landscape. You can translate that perspective into urgency and value for clients who know they need to act, but may not yet know where to start.

You are comfortable sitting across from CMOs, CTOs, Chief Digital Officers, data leaders, and transformation executives. You can challenge with warmth, reframe complexity, and create confidence without overplaying certainty.

You are not a generic seller. You are a strategic commercial leader who can diagnose, shape, sell, and expand meaningful work.

What You’ll Accomplish

Enterprise Growth & Business Development

• Own the full enterprise opportunity cycle from initial relationship development through contract execution, with a focus on Fortune 500 and high-growth organizations with complex marketing, data, and technology needs.
• Develop and execute a targeted account strategy, identifying organizations where SH/FT can create immediate and measurable value.
• Build and deepen relationships with C-suite and VP-level buyers, including CMOs, CTOs, Chief Digital Officers, VPs of Marketing, VPs of Data, and transformation leaders.
• Engage senior clients in strategic conversations about growth, AI, customer experience, data activation, martech modernization, and long-term digital transformation roadmaps.
• Create demand from insight, not just respond to inbound interest or formal RFPs.
• Bring a consultative approach to every sales conversation, focusing on diagnosing root problems and designing solutions rather than pitching capabilities.
• Work closely with BDR, marketing, Client Partner, and delivery teams to align pipeline activity, coordinate account strategy, and support deal progression.

Client Partnership & Account Growth

• Serve as a senior strategic partner across a focused portfolio of high-value enterprise client relationships.
• Lead strategic account planning to identify expansion opportunities, deepen SH/FT’s footprint, and help clients realize greater value from the partnership.
• Partner with Client Partners and delivery leaders to ensure commercial strategy, client needs, delivery capacity, and business objectives are aligned.
• Serve as an escalation point and trusted advisor when clients face complex or high-stakes challenges.
• Help clients move from isolated projects to broader growth-system opportunities.
• Champion the client perspective internally while balancing SH/FT’s margin, scope, delivery capacity, and strategic priorities.
• Protect the through-line from first conversation to long-term client growth.

Market Strategy & Thought Leadership

• Develop and maintain a sharp, informed point of view on the enterprise marketing and martech landscape, including the evolving role of AI in marketing operations, data strategy, content, customer experience, and digital transformation.
• Translate market signals into actionable intelligence for SH/FT’s go-to-market approach.
• Help shape how SH/FT positions, prioritizes, and pursues new opportunities.
• Represent SH/FT externally as a credible voice in the market, including at industry events, in client conversations, and in partnership with marketing on thought leadership content.
• Partner with the CEO and senior leadership team to refine and sharpen SH/FT’s positioning as the enterprise martech and AI landscape continues to evolve.

What Great Looks Like in the First 12 Months

In your first year, success looks like:

• Building a focused target-account strategy across high-potential enterprise clients.
• Opening and advancing senior relationships with CMO, CTO, CX, data, digital, and transformation leaders.
• Creating qualified opportunities that convert into meaningful consulting revenue.
• Expanding two to three strategic accounts beyond initial project work into broader growth-system partnerships.
• Helping sharpen SH/FT’s market-facing POV around AI, martech complexity, data activation, and enterprise growth systems.
• Building trust internally as a commercial leader who can bring the right people into the right opportunities at the right time.
• Demonstrating clear commercial judgment around which opportunities to pursue, how to shape them, and what makes them valuable to both the client and SH/FT.

What You Bring

Experience & Expertise

• 10+ years of progressive experience in business development, client strategy, enterprise account leadership, consulting, agency leadership, or professional services growth.
• Demonstrated track record of opening, developing, and closing enterprise-level engagements with Fortune 500 or similarly complex organizations.
• Experience navigating long, complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles.
• Deep understanding of the martech ecosystem, including platforms like Adobe, Salesforce, Braze, Optimizely, and adjacent data, activation, and customer experience technologies.
• Ability to connect technical complexity to business impact in a way senior executives can understand and act on.
• A grounded, credible perspective on how AI is changing the way enterprise marketing, data, and technology organizations operate.
• Proven ability to sell professional services, including advisory, strategy, implementation, managed services, and/or outcomes-based engagements.
• Experience sitting in the room with CMOs, CTOs, and senior stakeholders and holding your own as a strategic peer, not just a vendor.

Skills & Capabilities

• Strategic storytelling: You can synthesize complex market dynamics, client challenges, and SH/FT capabilities into a clear, compelling narrative that moves people.
• Consultative selling: You diagnose before you prescribe. You understand that the best deals come from solving real problems, not simply winning RFPs.
• Commercial judgment: You know the difference between activity and momentum. You can tell when an opportunity is real, when a client is signaling urgency, when a scope is too thin to matter, and when a conversation needs a sharper business case.
• Account strategy: You know how to map an organization, identify the right entry points, build executive relationships, and move from a first project to a long-term partnership.
• Executive presence: You can sit with senior leaders, ask better questions, challenge assumptions, and create confidence in ambiguous or high-stakes conversations.
• Cross-functional partnership: You can work effectively with delivery, marketing, operations, and executive leadership to bring the right resources to the right opportunities.
• Financial acumen: You understand margin, scope, pricing, delivery capacity, and what a healthy professional services engagement looks like from both a client and business perspective.

Mindset

• Market-curious: You are genuinely interested in what is changing in the enterprise landscape. You form your own point of view, not just relay what you read.
• Relationship-first: You build trust before you build pipeline. You think in years, not quarters.
• Commercially courageous: You are comfortable telling senior clients what they need to hear, not just what they expect to hear.
• Consultative at your core: You have been close enough to the work to know what good looks like, and you bring that credibility to every conversation.
• Comfortable with ambiguity: You can operate without a complete playbook and make good decisions with incomplete information.
• Growth-oriented: You are energized by the opportunity to help shape what SH/FT becomes, not just maintain what it is.

Candidate Profiles We Are Excited to Meet

The right candidate may come from several backgrounds, including:

• A senior agency or consultancy leader who has grown major enterprise accounts and developed trusted C-suite relationships.
• A consulting principal or client growth leader with experience across digital transformation, martech, data, CX, marketing operations, or AI-enabled business transformation.
• A former client-side marketing, digital, data, or operations leader who has lived the pain of broken systems and can now advise clients with credibility.
• A founder, growth leader, or senior operator from a smaller consultancy who understands ambiguity, relationship-led growth, and the need to shape the market.

This role is likely not right for someone whose experience is primarily SaaS sales, traditional account management without origination, or thought leadership without meaningful commercial responsibility.

What We Offer

• Competitive compensation aligned with your experience and impact, including base salary and variable compensation.
• Remote flexibility with meaningful travel to clients and industry events.
• A direct line to the CEO and COO, with genuine influence on how SH/FT grows and positions itself in the market.
• A collaborative culture that values diverse perspectives, clear thinking, and innovative problem solving.
• The opportunity to do high-impact work for some of the world’s most recognized brands.

Why SH/FT

SH/FT is a consultancy built for the next era of enterprise growth.

We bridge the gap between marketing, data, technology, AI, and execution to help organizations connect with customers in more intelligent, scalable, and measurable ways. At SH/FT, you will help senior leaders understand what is changing, where complexity is slowing them down, and how to build the systems required to create growth.

This is an opportunity to shape the future of how enterprise organizations turn strategy, technology, data, and AI into business performance, with direct access to leadership and a real seat at the table.

Comp & Benefits

Compensation: $180K - $200K base + commission / variable compensation. Salary is based on several factors including but not limited to skillset, relevant education, level of experience, certifications, and scope of responsibilities.

In addition to base salary, SH/FT offers benefits such as medical, dental, vision, STD/LTD, Life/AD&D, Flexible Paid Time Off, and various other ancillary benefits and perks.

We welcome and encourage applications from people with disabilities under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. Accommodations are available on request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the selection process.

Candidates must have current US or Canada work authorization. For US candidates, this employer participates in E-Verify and will provide the federal government with your Form I-9 information to confirm that you are authorized to work in the US.

No relocation assistance can be offered at this time.

All inquiries are held in strict confidence.