Why This Agency Separated Business Development From Sales and Marketing

Most agencies bury business development under either sales or marketing leadership. WITHIN took a different approach: making BD an independent function that serves both without answering to either.

Taylor Thomson, who leads revenue operations at the Denver agency, argues this structure prevents the systematic dysfunction that plagues most organizations. “Marketing teams are basically, for all intents and purposes, they care about getting a lead in the door and then they kind of wash their hands,” Thomson explains. BD teams reporting to marketing optimize for lead volume regardless of quality.

The opposite problem happens when BD reports to sales. Those teams avoid anything risky, focusing only on opportunities that will definitely close. They’re protecting sales win rates rather than building the best possible pipeline for long-term growth.

Neither approach serves the organization’s actual interest: attracting prospects who are genuinely good fits and likely to become successful long-term clients. Thomson’s revenue operations philosophy emphasizes alignment across the entire commercial organization rather than optimizing individual functions.

At WITHIN, business development operates as a bridge between functions. The team interacts constantly with marketing to understand what campaigns are driving inbound interest. They talk with sales leadership daily to learn what’s resonating in pitch conversations. They maintain relationships with client success to understand what makes for successful long-term engagements.

This independence requires someone credible to both marketing and sales. Thomson’s background includes roles reporting to heads of both functions at previous companies. He understands their different perspectives on what business development should accomplish. Taylor Thomson’s position at WITHIN’s organizational structure reflects how modern agencies are rethinking traditional hierarchies.

The structure also demands different success metrics. Instead of measuring only lead volume or only close rates, independent BD teams focus on fit quality across the entire revenue lifecycle. Are prospects reaching out because they genuinely understand what the agency does? Or are they confused about offerings and unlikely to become good clients even if they sign?

Thomson provides his BD team with daily intelligence briefings—curated insights from 15 industry newsletters that help them understand prospect contexts. This contextual knowledge enables substantive conversations rather than generic pitches.

The approach requires patience from leadership. Building marketing infrastructure that creates genuine “air cover” for BD takes six to nine months. Most organizations give it three months before demanding more aggressive outbound prospecting.

But agencies that maintain the investment see dramatically better results. BD reps have higher-quality conversations. Response rates improve. Meetings convert to opportunities at better rates. The pipeline fills with prospects who actually fit rather than just names to pad reports.

For agencies struggling with misalignment between marketing and sales, Thomson’s message is clear: the problem might be structural rather than personnel-related. Business development shouldn’t exist to serve one function’s metrics. It should optimize for outcomes that matter to the entire organization. His insights on this challenge have been featured in industry discussions about revenue operations and organizational design.

The question for agency leaders: are you willing to give up control over BD to create better overall results? Most aren’t. That’s why WITHIN’s structure remains unusual. But Taylor Thomson’s documented results suggest the independence is worth the organizational complexity.