General Manager, Digital Agency (Remote, Montreal)

Blacksmith Agency; Montreal; Remote; CAD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Blacksmith Agency is a remote agency delivering websites and paid/organic programs for US clients. As General Manager, Digital Agency you run the company day to day, overseeing sales, recruiting, delivery and marketing.

You will manage four department leads, set weekly rhythms and quarterly priorities, and steer profit margins and client contracts. Strong negotiator, coach, and communicator with a track record of scaling teams is expected.

Qualifications

• Experience leading sales teams in an agency or services business.
• Ability to coach a sales rep, run pipeline reviews and close deals.
• Proven track record negotiating client contracts and vendor terms.

Responsibilities

• Lead four department leads and ensure numbers, development, and reviews.
• Oversee weekly rhythm and quarterly priorities; decide where to cut when needed.
• Own profit margins and delivery cost decisions; manage hiring and growth.
• Drive commercial conversations, client contracts and redlines.
• Develop leaders and replace founder-led decision making with timely actions.
• Make executive decisions quickly, aligning with company strategy.

Skills

Sales leadership

Agency leadership

Coaching reps

Pipeline reviews

Negotiation

Clear communication

Job description

About The Role

Blacksmith Agency is a remote agency building websites and running paid and organic programs for US clients. As General Manager, Digital Agency you run the company day to day. Sales, recruiting, delivery and marketing all report to this seat. Today that work sits on the founder's desk, which is the whole reason it is open.

Blacksmith Agency

• Executive
• Full time
• Remote (USA or Canada)

What You Own

• Four department leads: their numbers, their development, their reviews, and the call when one of them is not going to get there.
• The week. The meeting rhythm, this quarter's priorities, and what gets cut when two of them collide.
• Profit, measured on attainment rather than activity. Margin on delivery, the real cost of a hire, which business we take and which we turn down.
• The commercial conversations: client contracts and the redlines that come back on them, vendor terms, and what we will and will not agree to.
• Building strong operators into actual leaders. Several of them have never been coached as one.
• The decisions that wait on the founder today, made the same day instead.

What You Need

• A sales background: you carried a quota, then led salespeople against a number as a VP of Sales, CRO or sales-led general manager. You can coach a rep, run a pipeline review and close a deal yourself.
• Agency experience first: a digital, marketing or creative agency is ideal. A SaaS or professional services business also works. You know how a services company sells, prices and delivers.
• More than one function reporting to you, where their numbers, their hiring and the decision when a leader was not working out were yours to make. Running a large team inside a single function is a different job.
• You joined a company at one size and left it three or four times bigger. Forty people to a hundred and forty is the shape we mean. Expect to be asked for the headcount the day you arrived, the day you left, and what you put in place to make the second number survivable.
• A profit number you personally carried. Margin, not revenue somebody else sold and not a budget you were handed to spend.
• Real negotiation experience, on contracts and with people. This seat sits across the table often.
• A communicator. Most of what this job is, is being clear with four leaders and one founder about what is true right now.

Please do not apply if

• You have never managed salespeople against a number. A project, program or operations management background without sales leadership is a different seat.
• Nobody has ever reported to you, or you have never owned someone's review or had to performance-manage a leader.
• You have only ever led inside one function.
• The company you point to for growth was already large when you arrived.
• What you want is the visionary seat. That one is taken, and this is explicitly the other one.

None of these are preferences we bend on. They are how we screen, so applying anyway costs you an hour and gets you a no.

Process

Three conversations, then a decision. A thirty minute screen with our recruiter, a first round with the founder this seat reports to, and a final. No take-home project and no panel interview.