Client Partner- Life Sciences

About Next Row

Next Row Digital is a consulting firm headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois. Applied AI is the center of our growth strategy: we help enterprise clients put AI to work in their marketing and operations, from AI-assisted campaign and content operations to keeping brands visible as search shifts to AI-driven discovery. That work rests on more than a decade of digital experience and marketing technology delivery, with deep specialization across the Adobe stack, including AEM, Marketo Engage, Workfront, Customer Journey Analytics, and Journey Optimizer.

Our largest client relationships are in life sciences, and this role exists to grow them. Much of that growth will come from bringing our AI offerings into accounts that know us today for martech delivery, which is exactly the cross-sell this role owns.

We are hiring a Client Partner to own our life sciences portfolio. The anchor is a Fortune 100 biopharmaceutical company, where we have a multi-year, multi-million dollar relationship today and a mandate to roughly triple it over the next two years. The portfolio also includes two other established life sciences accounts with real room to grow.

This role is based in the Chicago area and is not a remote position. You will be at the anchor client’s offices in person every week, so we are only considering candidates already living in, or independently relocating to, greater Chicago.

This is a growth job first. You will spend most of your time opening new buying centers, building sponsor relationships at the VP and CXO level, and shaping deals, not administering the current book. You are accountable for the portfolio P&L, client satisfaction, and delivery outcomes, and you will work with a dedicated delivery lead who runs execution day to day so that delivery quality never comes at the expense of growth, or the reverse.

We will be direct about the bar: tripling a large account in 24 months is aggressive. We have an established multi-year master agreement, a strong delivery record, and leadership willing to invest ahead of revenue. We need someone who has done this kind of expansion before and can walk us through exactly how.

• Own the account plan, forecast, and pipeline for the portfolio, and report on them with the discipline of a P&L owner.
• Map the anchor account’s buying centers, including brand and franchise marketing, IT, commercial operations, data and analytics, and procurement, and open the ones we do not serve today.
• Build and sustain executive sponsor relationships at the VP and CXO level, backed by quarterly business reviews that clients actually want to attend.
• Co-sell with Adobe’s field and partner organization, and with our other technology partners, to originate opportunities we would not find alone.
• Cross-sell and upsell the full Next Row portfolio, from experience platforms and marketing operations to data, analytics, and applied AI.
• Grow the other life sciences accounts in the portfolio from steady-state engagements into strategic relationships.
• Partner with the delivery lead on staffing, quality, escalations, and margin, and own the outcome with the client even when the news is bad.
• Own proposals and RFP responses for the portfolio, and negotiate statements of work, renewals, and rate cards with enterprise procurement.
• Help shape Next Row’s life sciences go-to-market: industry points of view, events, and co-marketing with Adobe and our other partners.

• By month 6: a written account plan with named sponsors in at least two buying centers we do not serve today, and a qualified pipeline behind the growth target.
• By month 12: new programs sold and staffed in at least one new buying center, measurable growth in the anchor account,…