Chief Growth Officer

Position Summary

The Chief Growth Officer (CGO) is responsible for leading ResearchFDI’s growth strategy and driving sustainable, profitable revenue growth across the organization. As a member of the Executive Leadership Team, the CGO oversees sales, business development, marketing, strategic partnerships, pricing, and revenue performance. The Sales team reports directly to the CGO, who is responsible for establishing clear priorities, processes, targets, and accountability across the function. Working closely with the CEO and other members of the Executive Leadership Team, the CGO translates ResearchFDI’s corporate strategy into an actionable growth strategy encompassing sales, market expansion, pricing, partnerships, marketing alignment, and new revenue opportunities. The CGO owns the overall company sales pipeline and sales performance, while ensuring individual sales team members are accountable for developing and managing their respective pipelines and achieving agreed-upon targets.

Key Responsibilities:

Sales & Revenue Leadership

• Lead ResearchFDI’s overall sales strategy and oversee achievement of revenue and new-business objectives.
• Manage the Sales team, establishing clear individual and team targets, KPIs, responsibilities, and performance expectations.
• Require each salesperson to develop an individual sales plan aligned with organizational priorities, approve those plans, and conduct regular performance and pipeline reviews.
• Oversee the company-wide sales pipeline, forecasting, opportunity qualification, and CRM processes.
• Build on existing sales dashboards and KPIs to improve visibility into pipeline, conversion, sales productivity, forecast accuracy, and revenue performance.
• Participate directly in strategic, high-value, or complex sales opportunities where executive involvement adds value.
• Ensure sales proposals, pricing, and significant commercial terms align with ResearchFDI’s strategy, profitability objectives, and delivery capacity.
• Provide regular sales and revenue performance reporting to the CEO and Executive Leadership Team.

Growth Strategy & Market Expansion

• Develop and execute ResearchFDI’s growth strategy in alignment with overall corporate objectives.
• Identify and prioritize opportunities for growth across new markets, geographies, services, client segments, and revenue channels.
• Evaluate market trends, competitive activity, client needs, and business intelligence to inform growth priorities.
• Increase the geographic diversification of ResearchFDI’s client portfolio and global footprint.
• Oversee strategic partnerships and evaluate new partnerships based on their potential contribution to organizational growth.
• Oversee strategies to further commercialize ResearchFDI Academy, the FDIP certification, training, and other emerging revenue opportunities.
• Evaluate conferences, trade shows, and other business development activities based on strategic value and expected return on investment.

Marketing, Business Intelligence & Sales Enablement

• Directly manage Marketing to ensure activities support ResearchFDI’s sales and growth objectives.
• Ensure ResearchFDI’s positioning, messaging, sales materials, and proposal templates remain current and aligned with priority markets and services.
• Build on existing business intelligence processes to proactively identify prospective clients, market opportunities, and emerging trends.
• Work with appropriate internal and external resources to improve sales reporting, analytics, CRM utilization, and automation, including the responsible adoption of AI-enabled sales tools.
• Use available data and business intelligence to strengthen forecasting, territory planning, resource allocation, and sales decision-making.

Team & Performance Management

• Lead, coach, and develop the Sales team and provide appropriate oversight and direction to Marketing.
• Establish clear performance expectations and accountability for team members.
• Lead quarterly sales performance, pipeline, and individual plan reviews.
• Oversee the onboarding and training of new Sales and Marketing team members.
• Develop and maintain a structured sales training and onboarding program.
• Ensure team members have the processes, tools, training, and information required to succeed.
• Foster a high-performance culture focused on accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, and measurable results.

Executive & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Partner closely with the CEO and Executive Leadership Team to establish organizational revenue, growth, profitability, and market expansion priorities.
• Work with Finance to develop revenue forecasts and budgets, monitor sales-related expenditures, and ensure growth initiatives support appropriate financial returns.
• Work with Operations and service delivery teams to ensure sales commitments, pricing, timelines, and growth strategies align with organizational capacity.
• Oversee effective processes for transitioning newly acquired clients from Sales to the appropriate delivery and client management teams.
• Ensure commitments made during the sales process are clearly documented and communicated internally.
• Provide executive leadership with visibility into sales performance, growth opportunities, risks, and outlook.

Considerations:

• 15 years of progressive experience in sales, business development, growth strategy, or related leadership roles, including significant experience at a senior or executive level.
• Demonstrated experience managing and developing sales teams, including establishing individual targets, managing performance, coaching team members, and holding employees accountable for results.
• Proven track record of achieving revenue growth and new-business objectives.
• Experience developing and executing sales strategies, managing pipelines, forecasting revenue, and leading complex or high-value opportunities.
• Experience within a consulting, professional services, economic development, or other relationship-driven B2B environment is strongly preferred.
• Strong understanding of pricing, margins, budgets, sales forecasting, CRM systems, AI implementation and revenue performance.
• Experience managing departmental budgets and evaluating the financial return of sales and growth initiatives.
• Strong executive communication, leadership, negotiation, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Marketing, Economics, Commerce, Political Science or a related field, or equivalent professional experience. An MBA or other relevant advanced degree is considered an asset.
• Travel: Occasional (15-20%) for conferences, key events, and leadership meetings worldwide.
• Location: Hybrid work model, requiring an on-site presence in Montréal, Québec, Canada, 2–3 business days per week.