Strategic Growth, Italy

The Head of Strategic Growth is the senior executive who owns Wonderful’s largest client relationships after the deal is signed. You take over from the Go-To-Market (GTM) lead once the pre-sale is done, and from that point you are accountable for how the account performs: the business results we deliver, the strength of the relationship at the top of the client, and how the account grows. This is an Associate Partner-level role, and it is not a senior account-management role. You are not there to run the workplan or to manage the relationship from the top; you own the outcome. You carry a portfolio of accounts at the same time, you are the person the client’s C-suite calls, and you are accountable for the commercial outcome of each relationship: the impact we deliver, the trust we hold with the sponsor, and the next piece of work, which you are expected to shape before the client knows to ask for it. You are expected to be close to both the C-suite and the operation. You spend time on the ground, understand how the client actually works, and stay close to what is happening in production, so that what you tell the sponsor is what is really going on. Depending on account size, a GTM lead may stay involved alongside you. In many accounts there will be none, and you are the senior face of Wonderful. Either way, delivery and expansion sit with you. WHAT YOU WILL DO LEAD THE CLIENT RELATIONSHIP, TOP TO FLOOR - Be the senior executive sponsor for each account in your portfolio, with a direct line to the client’s CEO, CxOs, and business-unit heads - Walk the corridors and the floor: spend real time on site, know what is top of mind for the client’s leadership, and know what is actually happening in the operation where our work runs - Hold the hard conversations: scope, priorities, expectations, and the occasional reset when something has gone wrong RUN EXECUTIVE GOVERNANCE - Own the steering cadence with the client’s sponsor and senior stakeholders - Align stakeholders before the meeting, not in it, so decisions are prepared rather than debated live - Surface risks early and in the open; the sponsor should never be surprised - Leave every forum with clear decisions, named owners, and deadlines, and follow through on them OWN DELIVERY AND IMPACT - Take over from the GTM lead at signing and own the account from then on - Be accountable for delivery and impact across the account; the delivery and engagement leads run the workstreams day to day, you set the direction and hold them to it - Agree a baseline with the client at the start, define what impact means in their terms, measure it against that baseline, and make it visible to their leadership - Step in personally when a relationship or a deliverable is at risk, and know when a conversation needs you rather than the team TURN DELIVERY INTO GROWTH - Build and maintain a forward-looking view of the next ten use cases for each account: the business impact each could create, what it would take to deploy, and in what order - Shape these with the client’s senior team so they become the client’s roadmap, not our wish list - Work with GTM to turn that roadmap into commercial opportunities, and coordinate so the client experiences one company, not two sales motions - Build the multi-year view of where each account can go and the path to get there RUN A PORTFOLIO - Carry several accounts at once and allocate your time to where it moves the needle most - Steer the delivery teams on each account, set the bar for quality, and develop the people under you - Feed what you learn across accounts back into our offering, our pricing, and how we sell WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE IN THE FIRST 12 MONTHS - Every account you own has a named executive sponsor on the client side who sees you as their counterpart, and who trusts you to tell them the truth, resolve problems, and deliver on commitments, especially when things go wrong - The client can quantify the business results Wonderful has delivered against an agreed baseline, in their own numbers and in their own words - Governance on your accounts runs on decisions, owners, and deadlines; risks reach the sponsor from you first, not from the operation - Each account has a live view of its next use cases with impact estimates and deployment paths, and at least one account has moved from the original scope into a materially larger engagement - Handovers from GTM into your accounts are clean, with no loss of momentum or context for the client - The teams working under you know what good looks like and are growing into bigger roles WHO WE ARE LOOKING FOR - Associate Partner, Principal or equivalent at McKinsey, BCG, Bain or a comparable firm - A track record of owning senior client relationships: you have been the person a CEO or CxO calls, not the one preparing the deck for that call - Experience taking work from recommendation to implementation and being accountable for the result, not just the advice - Equally comfortable in the boardroom and in the operation: you have spent time in plants, back offices, or control rooms and know how to read what is really happening there - Proven ability to grow accounts: you have shaped follow-on work and sold it to existing clients - Comfortable owning several large accounts in parallel, each with its own engagement lead and team reporting to you - Strong commercial judgement: you understand how value is created for the client and how it translates into our business - Fluent in quantifying impact: setting baselines, agreeing them with a client, and defending the numbers - Exposure to technology-led or AI-led transformation is a strong plus HOW YOU WORK - Client-first. You are at your best in the client’s building, not in ours. You pick up what is unsaid and act on it. - Top to floor. You move between the sponsor’s office and the production floor in the same day, and you know that what you hear in one is incomplete without the other. - Present, not operational. You stay close enough to the work to know when it is off, and you let your leads run it. Your time goes to the client’s leadership, to governance, and to the next opportunity. - Skin in the game. You treat each account as your own business and are judged on its outcomes. - Direct. You tell clients and colleagues what they need to hear, with the evidence to back it up, and you are the first to raise a problem. - Builder. You are joining a company that is still shaping how it goes to market and delivers. You will help define this role, not inherit a playbook. REPORTING AND WORKING RELATIONSHIPS - Reports to the General Manager - Works alongside the Head of Go-To-Market, who leads pre-sale and hands accounts to you at signing; you bring GTM back in to convert the next use cases into commercial opportunities, and in larger accounts the GTM lead may stay involved through the first phase - Leads the delivery teams assigned to your accounts - Location and travel: based near our main clients, with regular time on site Candidate Privacy Notice https://www.wonderful.ai/careers/candidate_notice