A fractional growth engagement should specify the problem, the work, and the learning the company needs. “Help us grow” gives neither side a reliable basis for choosing activities or evaluating progress.
Decide whether you need advice, execution, or both.
Write the engagement brief
| Field | What to include |
|---|---|
| Problem | The stage of the customer journey that needs attention |
| Evidence | What the company knows and what remains uncertain |
| Hypothesis | The change or learning the engagement will investigate |
| Work | Research, messaging, channel execution, product experiments, or analysis |
| Support | Internal people and capacity required |
| Access | Approved systems and data needed for the work |
| Review | How decisions about continuation will be made |
| Handoff | What the team should retain afterward |
Keep the first scope narrow enough to learn from.
Separate dependencies from promises
A growth specialist may depend on engineering changes, design work, sales follow-up, or access to customer evidence. Name those dependencies and their owners.
Do not evaluate the person on a result that the company cannot support operationally. Equally, do not accept an activity list with no explanation of how it addresses the problem.
Agree on evidence before starting
Define what would support the hypothesis, what would challenge it, and what would remain inconclusive. Not every useful engagement produces an immediate commercial improvement.
A clear finding that a channel or message is unsuitable can inform the next decision, provided the test was well designed.
Keep work and knowledge portable
Ask for accessible experiment records, definitions, creative materials, and implementation notes through approved company systems. The team should understand what was tried and what happened.
Avoid an arrangement in which the company can see a dashboard but cannot explain or continue the underlying process.
Review the next mandate
At the end, decide whether to continue, revise the scope, stop, or hire someone for sustained ownership. Base that decision on the work remaining rather than assuming the engagement should expand indefinitely.
Use the growth engineer versus marketer guide and first marketing mandate. Discuss a growth hiring plan with Refery.