When Business Development Becomes Business Growth
A Leadership View on the Evolving Role of Agency Partnership
Business development has been synonymous with the art of the pitch for decades. A team arrives, delivers a compelling vision, wins the engagement, and disappears shortly after the contract is signed. This legacy transactional model no longer fits the complexity of a modern brand ecosystem. It’s a model that Dalton Mangin, Chief Revenue Officer at Quigley-Simpson, has actively worked to dismantle in favor of one focused on partnering for long-term outcomes.
Advertising and marketing today are defined by constant change, increasing pressure to prove short-term impact, and growing demand for integrated thinking. In this context, “biz dev” in its traditional form falls short. What organizations require now is not just acquisition but acceleration, not just promises but performance. Dalton’s reimagining of the business development function reflects this shift, positioning growth as a continuous and collaborative element embedded across the client lifecycle.
Growth is Not a Rebrand.
It’s a structural shift—from closing deals to building lasting impact across the client lifecycle.
The Shift from Sales-First to Value-First
In today’s agency-client relationships, the playbook has changed. It’s no longer about who shows up with the sharpest deck; it’s about who stays close, who actually solves, and who scales with the client as things evolve. Growth isn’t about landing the deal and stepping aside. It’s about being in the room long enough to make a difference.
That’s why forward-thinking teams are moving away from the traditional handoff model. Instead of disappearing after onboarding, growth leaders are embedding deeper into the client journey.
This is a redefinition of function. A growth team today is measured by its ability to deliver momentum, not just pipeline. Early engagement is less about pitching a scope and more about understanding where things break down and activating the right levers to fix them. That’s the work that earns trust and sets the stage for real, measurable impact.
How Traditional Business Development Fails To Deliver
Conventional models often silo business development from the operational realities of client work. This misalignment produces two critical failures: short-termism and disengagement. Short-termism emerges when the focus is purely on acquisition metrics rather than retention, expansion, or transformation. Disengagement follows when the team that builds trust in the sales cycle is absent from delivery. The result is a break in continuity that clients feel immediately, a dissonance between the pitch and the partnership.
The term “biz dev” itself carries historical baggage. It often conjures images of pitch-focused communication, rigid pipelines, and service-based transactions. This framing is out of step in a modern economy where relationships and adaptability drive differentiation. What’s needed instead is a consultative posture. One that values active listening over persuasive selling and recognizes growth as a longitudinal investment, not a short-term conversion.
Growth as a Strategic Engine
The rise of integrated growth teams reflects a broader strategic imperative focused on bringing insight, creativity, and agility into every phase of the client lifecycle.
These teams serve not only as revenue generators but also as internal orchestrators. They bridge departments, surface untapped opportunities, and identify shifts in behavior, budgets, or business models, often before the client names them.
Importantly, growth teams today operate with faster feedback loops. While business dev teams measure success annually, modern growth is focused on delivering results within quarterly windows or shorter cycles. This period becomes the proving ground. It enables the team to demonstrate strategic relevance, build trust, and establish traction quickly.
Clients do not measure intent. They measure impact.
Reinventing the Growth Function
A number of forward-leaning agencies have begun transitioning their business development structures into integrated growth ecosystems, and the results are telling.
In one notable transformation, a legacy “new business” department was overhauled into a growth function tasked not with signing clients but with scaling them. This included:
Embedding growth roles into creative, strategy, and media teams
Reengineering early-stage discovery into a cross-functional effort
Prioritizing short-term wins to unlock long-term potential
Monitoring and responding to client signals in real time
The outcomes were clear. Existing clients increased their scope of work. New clients converted faster due to visible early impact. Internal silos diminished, replaced by agile, co-owned problem-solving. The function became known not for what it promised, but for what it delivered consistently and measurably.
Rethinking What Leadership Should Expect
The real value of an agency is revealed after the first 30 days. Are they showing up with ideas that challenge your thinking? Are they adapting as your market shifts? Are they focused on the next opportunity, not just the current deliverable?
Too often, business development stops at the pitch. But for brand leaders, what matters is who stays close. Who listens. Who moves with you as your business evolves.
Growth, when it works, feels like alignment. Not just on outcomes, but on urgency and rhythm. The strongest agency partnerships today are the ones that embed, collaborate, and drive - not just report.
To create this growth leaders must reframe their expectations around five core principles:
1. Integration
Growth should not operate in a silo. It must be part of the full-service architecture, working alongside brand, media, analytics, and creative. When integrated, growth becomes a strategic lens across the client journey, not just an entry point.
2. Continuity
Clients expect consistency. The individuals who shape early conversations should stay connected as partners in delivery. This ensures trust, preserves institutional knowledge, and reduces friction between sales and execution.
3. Velocity
Early results matter. The first 90 days should generate meaningful progress, not everything at once, but something that proves direction and builds momentum. Impact early on is essential for long-term confidence.
4. Curiosity
Growth starts with better questions. Successful teams observe, challenge assumptions, and uncover overlooked opportunities. Curiosity is a strategic asset that drives relevance and unlocks new paths forward
5. Co-Creation
Clients no longer want one-sided delivery. They expect collaboration. Co-creation fosters shared ownership and stronger solutions, built together through iterative discovery and mutual accountability.
Today’s marketing landscape is characterized by volatility and heightened expectations. Agencies cannot afford to treat growth as a front-end function. Business development must evolve into a continuous discipline that begins with strategic insight, sustains itself through early results, and scales through trust and shared value.
When business development becomes business growth, clients feel the difference. And more importantly, they see it.
