Marketing & Sales
Executive Search

Marketing & Sales.

Retained search and advisory for the leaders who own the number — CMOs, CROs, Chief Growth Officers, and VPs of Sales — backed by ClimbWizely’s own decades of commercial and go-to-market experience. It’s one of the ways we work at the Organizational level, building the commercial leadership an entire company is counting on.

Overview

The most expensive hire to get wrong.

Marketing & Sales is retained search and advisory for the leaders who own the number — CMOs, CROs, Chief Growth Officers, and VPs of Sales — backed by our own decades of commercial and go-to-market experience. These are the seats where growth is won or lost, and the people in them set the trajectory of the whole business. Getting the hire right is one of the highest-leverage decisions a company makes.

Which is exactly why getting it wrong is so costly. A commercial leadership miss is uniquely expensive. The wrong CMO burns a year of demand generation and a marketing team’s confidence. The wrong CRO misses two forecasts before anyone admits the motion is broken. By the time the mistake is clear, you’ve lost time you can’t make back and pipeline you can’t rebuild overnight — and the number is still due. Most search firms evaluate these leaders the way they evaluate any other: track record, references, a polished narrative. That’s the gap where the expensive mistakes hide.

The outcome we’re after is a commercial engine you can trust — growth that compounds quarter over quarter rather than a one-time bump. We have an unfair advantage in delivering it: we have carried the number ourselves. Across decades of commercial leadership we have built pipelines, set pricing, missed and hit forecasts, and rebuilt go-to-market motions from the ground up. We know the difference between a leader who tells a great growth story and one who has actually delivered it — and that’s the difference we hire for, because it’s the difference that shows up in revenue.

What We Do

Commercial leaders who move the number.

We run a retained search built backwards from the outcome you’re hiring to deliver. Before we look at a single candidate, we help you diagnose where growth is actually breaking — demand, conversion, retention, or alignment across the seats — and shape the role around that constraint rather than a generic job spec. Then we find and rigorously assess the leaders who can build a pipeline, price with confidence, and turn strategy into revenue, measuring every one against the number they’ll own instead of a resume that reads well.

Because we’ve carried the number ourselves, we assess like a peer — probing the record for what a candidate genuinely owned versus rode, and pressure-testing their plan for your business the way another commercial leader would. When you want it, our go-to-market advisory runs alongside the search, sharpening positioning, pricing, or the growth plan so the strategy behind the hire is as strong as the leader you bring in. And we help the new leader start strong, so the momentum you hired for begins early. The capabilities below are where a typical engagement concentrates.

Chief Marketing Officer

Brand, demand, and positioning leadership that earns a seat at the growth table.

Chief Revenue Officer

Full-funnel ownership of pipeline, forecast, and predictable, repeatable revenue.

Chief Growth Officer

Cross-functional leadership that aligns marketing, sales, and product around growth.

VP & SVP of Sales

Sales leaders who build teams, hit quota, and scale a repeatable motion.

Marketing & Sales Assessment

Clear-eyed evaluation of candidates and sitting leaders against the role ahead.

Go-to-Market Advisory

Our own commercial expertise, brought in alongside the search when you need it.

We don’t just recognize a great commercial leader on paper. We’ve carried the number they’re about to own.
  • Signal over story

    We separate the leaders who narrate growth from the ones who actually drove it, so the hire holds up against the forecast.

  • Priced to the seat

    Assessing like an operator shrinks the odds of a mis-hire in the role where a single miss can cost a year of pipeline.

  • Momentum on day one

    A leader vetted against the number ramps faster and starts compounding revenue instead of rebuilding trust.

What Changes

A commercial engine you can trust.

We hold the search to the same standard you hold the hire — results you can see in the business.

The right leader

A commercial executive matched to your stage, market, and the number they’re accountable for.

Growth that compounds

A go-to-market motion that builds momentum quarter over quarter, not a one-time bump.

Advisory when it counts

Our own commercial experience on hand, so the plan behind the hire is as strong as the hire.

What We Look For

What “good” actually looks like.

Commercial leaders are easy to interview and hard to assess. These are the things we test for, because we’ve seen where the gap between the pitch and the performance opens up.

Owned the number

A record of carrying a quota or a P&L — not just influencing one from the side.

Built the motion

Evidence they created a repeatable, scalable go-to-market — not inherited one that worked.

Stage fit

Experience at your scale, because the leader who wins at $10M often stalls at $100M.

Cross-functional pull

The credibility to align product, marketing, and sales rather than fight them.

Talent builder

A team that followed them, and a bench they developed on the way up.

Honest with the data

A leader who reads the funnel clearly and tells the board the truth early.

How We Work

From the number to the leader who’ll own it.

01

Define

We start with the outcome — the growth you’re hiring to deliver — and build the role from there.

02

Search & Assess

We find and rigorously evaluate commercial leaders against that outcome, not a checklist.

03

Land & Advise

We help the hire start strong, and stay close with go-to-market counsel when you want it.

Common Questions

What leaders ask us.

The questions that come up most when a commercial leadership search begins.

Do we need a CMO, a CRO, or a Chief Growth Officer?

It depends on where growth is actually breaking. Sometimes the answer is one seat, sometimes it’s the way those seats work together. We help you diagnose the constraint first — demand, conversion, retention, or alignment — and shape the role around it.

How is your assessment different?

We assess against the outcome you’re hiring for, informed by having carried that outcome ourselves. We probe the record for what a candidate actually owned versus rode, and we pressure-test their plan for your business, not a generic one.

Can you help beyond the hire?

Yes. Our go-to-market advisory can run alongside the search — sharpening positioning, pricing, or the growth plan — so the strategy behind the hire is as strong as the leader you bring in.

Related

Explore further.

Commercial leadership connects the search to the growth work around it.

How We Partner

Operators running your search.

Because we’ve carried the number, we partner on the commercial problem behind the hire — not just the seat you’re filling.

Diagnose before we search

We help you name where growth is actually breaking, so the role solves the real constraint.

Assess like a peer

We pressure-test a candidate’s plan for your business the way another commercial leader would.

Advisory on tap

Go-to-market counsel alongside the search, so the strategy is as strong as the hire.

The Three Ways We Help

Commercial leadership is an Organizational climb.

Placing a CMO or CRO is our Organizational work — the leaders a whole company’s number depends on. But the same discipline scales down: to the executive sharpening their own commercial edge, and to the professional building toward a growth seat of their own.

Let’s Talk

Ready to hire the leader who owns growth?

Tell us the number and the timeline. We’ll tell you honestly how we can help you hit it.

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