Forming the Growth Team

Borrowed

"The key to getting the most revenue growth out of a pool of talent is to put people in roles that leverage their exceptional talents; this means matching people with their highest producing activity."

From "Extreme Revenue Growth" by Victor Cheng [Book]

Learned

I’ve been getting a similar question from other agency leaders lately. It comes in different forms, but it’s really about the same thing: how do you structure a role for someone involved in partnerships, account strategy, sales, outreach, and attending events? What I’m really hearing is, how do I find someone to augment what I do?

It’s something I’ve been figuring out in real time, and the path wasn’t straightforward. In chatting with these folks, I thought it’d be worthwhile to share how it’s unfolded for us.

Several years ago, we had a Director of Business Development role at Barrel. The role was meant to manage the entire sales cycle and eventually expanded to include managing relationships with our tech vendors and agency partners. For various reasons at the time, we decided to phase it out.

At the time, I was serving as CXO and ended up taking on our sales efforts. Through that process, I started to understand the opportunity we had in partnerships with our tech vendors. The shift for me was moving away from thinking of partners as vendors and toward seeing them more as an extension of our team. Rather than it being all about lead sharing, there were opportunities to collaborate on client strategy, co-market together, and create real business outcomes for both sides. I wrote about this back in 2023 when we narrowed our e-commerce stack and redefined what those partnerships could look like. What I was seeing was that partnerships could produce and support the highest-quality opportunities for the business, and we weren’t investing nearly enough there.

Fast forward a few years. I became CEO and was still managing these areas. Partnerships. Sales. Marketing (think webinars, events, etc). I kept feeling like there was an opportunity to bring on someone who could work with me to own some of this, much like the folks who reached out recently. I’d actually interviewed people for a sales role for months before becoming CEO. I almost hired someone, but then backed out at the last minute. Rather than force it, I waited. When I picked the search back up, I’d made the leadership transition and started putting out feelers for someone in a more partnerships-focused role. One day, I got on a call with David, who was at Shopify at the time, thinking it was a casual connect. I soon learned it was an interview, and we hired him.

His role was Growth & Partnerships Manager. The intention was for him to co-lead sales with me and drive partnerships for the company. Just a few months in, it became very clear that there was much more opportunity on the partnership side than either of us expected. David kept asking me, “How did you do all of this?” And the honest answer was, that’s why I hired him! Having someone dedicated to partnerships showed us what was possible when we actually invested there. Partners were proactively looping us into client conversations, opportunities were coming through collaboration, and existing accounts were growing because we were more plugged in.

Once we saw the value of going deeper on partnerships, the next moves became clear. We needed someone to own the sales process separately, so I started searching for a Business Development Manager. And when I started that search, I realized something else. Partnerships are great for originating opportunities, working together, and collaborating. But to activate those partnerships through marketing efforts takes another person entirely. It’s amazing how much coordination a simple dinner or panel discussion can take. So I started searching for a Marketing Manager as well.

None of this was the plan from the start. I didn’t set out to hire three people. I hired one where I saw the most leverage, and the need for the others revealed itself once that person was in the seat.

Together, these folks are part of what I call the Growth Team. Three roles: Partnerships Manager, Business Development Manager, and Marketing Manager. They report to me alongside our team leads, who are responsible for implementation across account management, technology, creative, and strategy.

I won’t say I’ve figured it all out. Building out this team has been anything but smooth. And there are plenty of questions I’m still answering, from how these roles are structured to where responsibilities begin and end. What I can say, though, is that I’m confident these roles will be critical for where we want to go.

What really drove it home for me was when our Business Development Manager put in his notice at the start of the year. Without hesitation, my immediate reaction was that we needed a backfill. Having someone in that seat showed us what’s possible. I couldn’t imagine going back. Our new hire starts on Wednesday. They come from an agency focused on CPG, and we’re psyched. We’ll be at Expo West together in a couple of weeks with David and our Marketing Manager, Alex.

If there’s one thing I’d offer anyone trying to figure this out, it’s not to wait until you have the perfect plan. Figure out where you have a gap and need more leverage, design a role around it, and start there.

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Related: Narrowing Our E-Commerce Stack & Partnerships, Tech Partnerships Progress​

& Thought

Where is my bandwidth the bottleneck? What's the move I keep putting off because the plan isn't perfect yet?