Hiring BD for Your Digital Agency? Here’s Why It Feels Impossible.
MARCH 2025 • AUTHOR: LAUREN BOYD, PRINCIPAL RECRUITER
Business development is the lifeblood of any agency. These hires are your first touchpoint with potential clients, directly influencing deal flow, revenue, and your agency’s reputation. Yet, hiring top BD talent in the ad world often feels like an uphill battle.
After nearly a decade of recruiting for digital agencies—from entry-level BD managers to VPs of Business Strategy—I’ve seen firsthand why BD hiring is uniquely challenging. Unlike other sales roles, agency BD demands deep industry expertise, razor-sharp emotional intelligence, and the ability to sell ideas, not just products and services.
So why is it so hard to find the right fit? Below, I’ll break down the key hiring challenges and offer strategies to help you land the BD talent your agency needs.
What are the challenges?
1. The Unspoken Must-Haves: Resourcefulness & Ownership
When your agency’s pipeline slows, you need a BD hire who makes things happen– not one who’s waiting for leads to roll in. The best agency BD talent is part strategist, part problem-solver, and a full-time self-starter– curious, relentless, and wired for action. And that’s on top of the long list of must-have skills already packed into the job description.
Hiring for BD in digital agencies requires a different playbook. Extra interview time isn’t just helpful, it’s critical. You’re not just vetting experience; you’re testing for EQ, IQ, and industry instinct. And here’s the kicker: a massive pool of "qualified" applicants quickly shrinks to a rare few who can actually deliver.
What does that mean for your agency? Expect plenty of BD candidates who look great on paper. But the real work happens in the interview– where you uncover the mindset, drive, and adaptability that truly set the best apart. BD hiring isn’t about volume. It’s about knowing exactly what to look for.
2. The Non-Negotiables: Industry Expertise & Continued Learning
Digital marketing moves fast– and if your BD team isn’t ahead of the curve, they’re behind. One Google update, one AI breakthrough, and suddenly what worked yesterday is obsolete. The best agency BD pros don’t wait for clients to ask about emerging trends; they’re the ones bringing those insights to the table first.
Take the GA4 shift in 2024. If your BD team had Universal Analytics down cold but never bothered to get up to speed on GA4, they weren’t just behind– they were irrelevant. In agency sales, knowledge gaps aren’t just inconvenient; they cost you deals.
Yes, ongoing learning is expected in most industries, but not all sales careers demand the same relentless pace of adaptation. If you want BD hires who can keep up and add value in real-time, you need to hire for more than just experience. You need curiosity, agility, and a hunger to always be one step ahead.
3. The Real Challenge: Agency Sales Isn’t Selling—It’s Consulting
Selling agency services isn’t like selling a product, there’s no plug-and-play pitch. Every client has unique goals, challenges, and blind spots. A true BD pro isn’t just selling services; they’re diagnosing problems and crafting solutions. That’s why the best agency salespeople don’t sound “salesy” at all.
Take this scenario: A prospect asks about Paid Search, but your BD team knows to dig deeper. By asking the right questions, reading between the lines, and challenging assumptions, they realize SEO and CRO would drive better results. Without that insight, they might sell the wrong service– setting the agency up for mismatched KPIs, frustrated clients, and lost renewals.
Consultative BD is trust-building, not order-taking. The best BD hires educate clients, guide them toward the right solutions, and set expectations upfront. Their ability to advise, not just sell, is what separates agency BD from traditional sales. If this is your team’s first BD hire or you lack the time/resources for extensive training, deep agency expertise isn’t a bonus– it’s a must.
4. The Kicker: Competition for Top BD Talent Is Fierce
Great BD hires have options. With strong networks and sharp relationship-building skills, they’re in high demand– especially from Enterprise SaaS companies that can outspend small to mid-size agencies on compensation.
And it’s not just about hiring, it’s about keeping them. High BD turnover creates a ripple effect across your business. A revolving door of sales talent means you’re constantly offboarding veterans, onboarding replacements, and waiting months for new hires to ramp up. Meanwhile, the pipeline slows, deals stall, and momentum suffers.
Finding and retaining top BD talent isn’t just a challenge, it’s a business imperative.
How Can Digital Agencies Overcome These BD Hiring Challenges?
1. Set Clear Expectations from the Start
Misaligned expectations between employer and employee can lead to quick turnover and costly mistakes. Your job description and interview process shape a candidate’s perception of the role, so you’ll want to be crystal clear about what success looks like before they sign on.
Do you need a strategic closer to evaluate inbound leads or an outbound hunter who drives new business? Will they travel 25% of the time or go through a four-week probation period? Any compensation caveats—like bonuses tied to individual quotas vs. company-wide revenue goals—should be laid out upfront.
The last thing you want is a new hire feeling blindsided and bailing six months in. Transparency isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a retention strategy.
2. Ditch Rigid, Arbitrary Hiring Requirements
Hard numbers can help narrow the talent pool, but overly rigid hiring criteria will shrink your options unnecessarily. Setting an arbitrary threshold—like requiring a $2M+ annual sales quota—may weed out top talent before you even see their resume.
What if a stellar candidate has only $1.5M in sales but brings deep agency experience, top-notch SEO expertise, and killer consultative skills? That missing $500K doesn’t mean they can’t succeed—it might just mean they haven’t had the opportunity yet.
Instead of enforcing bare-minimum cutoffs, consider ranges and evaluate candidates holistically. Some BD skills can be trained quickly, while others (strategic thinking, industry expertise, etc.) take years to develop. Hire accordingly.
3. Leverage an Industry-Specific Recruiting Partner
A BD hiring partner who specializes in digital marketing can be a game-changer. The agency space is nuanced, and it takes years to truly understand the landscape, the players, and what makes a BD hire successful.
I know this firsthand– it took me nearly two years to fully grasp the agency ecosystem, terminology, and sales dynamics. A generalist recruiter spanning multiple industries won’t have the same depth of expertise or the same talent network to pull from.
The right industry-focused recruiting consultant doesn’t need a ramp-up period– they can hit the ground running on day one. And unlike a full-time hire, you’re not on the hook for salary, benefits, and PTO. It’s a targeted, high-impact investment.
“Finding the right BD hire for our agency was both critical and challenging. We had worked with other firms before, but none truly understood what we needed—a sharp strategist/consultant with deep industry expertise, who also excels at both inbound and outbound sales.
Workstrat helped us find that person, and they’ve been instrumental to our sales function. Since joining, they’ve had an incredible impact on our pipeline, refined our GTM strategy, and even referred other top-notch hires who have strengthened our team.
This wasn’t just about filling a role—it was about finding the right talent for a notoriously tough hire. Workstrat made that happen, and in record time: five weeks flat.”
Get BD Hiring Right the First Time
BD hiring for ad agencies isn’t easy, but getting it wrong is far more costly. The right BD hire doesn’t just fill a role– they drive revenue, build relationships, and position your agency for long-term success.
That’s why having a strategic hiring approach matters. Define the role clearly, stay flexible on rigid requirements, and ensure your BD talent has the industry expertise, consultative mindset, and proactive drive to succeed.
If you’re ready to stop spinning your wheels and start landing top-tier BD talent, workstrat can help. With deep expertise in digital agency hiring, we’ll help you find BD professionals who don’t just meet the requirements– but actually move the needle.
Let’s build your high-impact BD team. Reach out today.
LAUREN BOYD,
PRINCIPAL RECRUITER
With 11+ years in Talent Acquisition, I’ve led thousands of interviews, made hundreds of hires, and built high-impact recruitment processes. As a Principal Recruiter, I help businesses grow by creating win-win outcomes for both employers and candidates.
Let’s connect on LinkedIn.
