Client Partner, Growth & Strategy

About 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.

Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Qualifications

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.