Sponsors ask us the same three questions before they ask anything about channels: what does an engagement cost, how long does it run, and how is it different from hiring an agency. This guide answers them the way we answer them on a call. Growth execution work at Claymore Partners is priced as a fixed monthly fee for a defined scope and a defined period. It is not a percentage of media spend and it is not hourly. It opens with a seven-week commercial audit, and it ends when the number it was scoped to move has moved and the capability has been handed over.
Every engagement has the same three phases, whatever the mandate.
Diagnose. A commercial audit, seven weeks, fixed scope. It produces a quantified fact base of where revenue is leaking across marketing, sales, pricing, retention and the data layer that connects them, and a sequenced plan with owners. Findings are presented in week eight. The audit is priced on its own, so a sponsor can buy the diagnosis without buying the execution.
Rebuild. The front-loaded, finite work: measurement and attribution, the data foundation, the reporting the board will read. This is where most of the early cost sits, because it is where most of the early value sits. A company that cannot say which channel is producing revenue cannot be optimized, only spent on.
Run and hand over. Embedded Operators inside the business who own a number until it moves, working in the company's own leadership rhythm. Cost falls over time as infrastructure work completes and the in-house team takes over what the operators were doing. The end state is written into the scope at the start. How we work sets out the sequence in full.
Growth execution work is priced as a fixed monthly fee for a defined scope and a defined period, not as a percentage of media spend and not hourly. The fee reflects the seniority of the operators deployed and the breadth of the mandate. Percentage-of-spend pricing rewards a partner for spending more, which is the wrong incentive inside a portfolio company.
Three things: how many commercial functions are in scope, whether the work includes rebuilding data and measurement infrastructure or only running channels, and how senior the embedded operators need to be. Infrastructure work is front-loaded and finite; channel operation is ongoing. Engagements that include both cost more at the start and less later.
An agency is bought as capacity against a brief and is accountable for deliverables. An embedded operator is bought to own the diagnosis, the sequencing and the outcome, and is accountable for a number. The agency line item is usually smaller. The total cost of the wrong one is usually larger, because the diagnosis never gets made.
A senior commercial hire costs salary, equity and a six-to-nine-month ramp, and the capability leaves when they do. An embedded engagement front-loads the same capability without adding permanent headcount to a company that may be sold in three years. The trade is permanence for speed, and the handover is part of the scope.
Long enough to diagnose, rebuild and hand over, which is measured in quarters rather than months or years. The commercial audit that opens the work is a fixed seven-week process, with findings presented in week eight. Engagements that cannot describe their own end state at the start tend not to have one.
No. Growth execution outcomes take longer to land than a typical engagement window and depend on decisions the operator does not control, including capital allocation and pricing. Fixed-fee pricing keeps the incentive on doing the right work rather than the measurable work. Sponsors who want outcome-linked economics usually want an operating partner, not a vendor.
In scope: the commercial engine. Marketing, sales, pricing, retention, and the data and reporting layer that connects them, which is the Revenue Blueprint. Before a deal, the same questions are asked on deal timelines as Digital Due Diligence, and our guide to marketing due diligence covers what that underwriting looks like.
Not in scope: media budgets (paid on the company's own accounts, never marked up), software licences, and headcount. An engagement never owns the company's ad accounts, CRM or data. It builds them for the company to keep.
Ask every prospective partner the same four questions and put the answers in one table: what is the pricing basis (fixed, hourly, or percentage of spend); who owns the accounts and the data at the end; what is the named diagnostic and how long does it take; and what does the end of the engagement look like. A proposal that cannot answer the fourth question is a retainer, not an engagement.
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