City Manager Scope, Not Business Development Manager
The Amazon Restaurants org structure was: Account Specialists, Major Account Specialists, and City Managers (CMs). City Managers reported to a Regional Restaurant Manager and operated as the metro GM for live regions, owning sales, marketing, expansion, merchant performance management, and metro-level strategy. I operated at City Manager scope for LA Metro West and was trained through the City Manager Training Leone v4 curriculum.
The current resume understates this as "Business Development Manager." The actual scope was metro-level GM work. The artifacts I authored (Q1 Metro Strategy Doc, three pilot proposals, 9 email iteration versions, Module 8 of the training curriculum) are the proof of record.
City Manager Training Leone v4. 15 modules
The training curriculum I went through. Each module covered a metro GM responsibility area.
Three Pilot Proposals I Authored
Each pilot diagnosed a structural gap, proposed a measurable solution, and defined success criteria. The pattern is the same one that later produced the Tentpole 2025 Strategy doc at Amazon Ads.
Onboarding Optimization. Before vs After
The 2017 pilot proposed compressing the onboarding cycle by transferring stage ownership from a 5-person handoff chain to the Sales Rep during the sales meeting itself.
Before (2016 baseline)
- 38-day average onboarding cycle
- 764 merchants in active onboarding backlog
- 5 different points of contact per merchant
- 23 contacts per merchant on average
- Menu collection: 48 hours to 18 days
- Photoshoot scheduling: 2 to 3 days
- Kindle training: 15 days
- 140 merchants lost during onboarding (Jul to Dec 2016)
Proposed (2017 pilot)
- 10-day cycle target
- 2 contact points per merchant
- SR ownership of menu collection during sales meeting
- SR ownership of photoshoot scheduling at site
- SR-led Kindle training with merchant present
- Menu collection: 1 hour
- Photoshoot scheduling: 1 hour
- Kindle training: 1 hour
- Long-term: 2-week earlier metro launches via rolling
Cold-Outreach Email Iteration. 9 Versions
Iterative testing of merchant acquisition email approaches. Each version tested a specific hypothesis (length, framing, marketing focus, neighborhood-level targeting).
Q4 Expansion Strategy
Authored the LA Metro West Plan for Q4 with explicit zip-level targets and goals.
- 3 new zip codes launched reaching 16k+ Prime customers (90007 with 12k Prime, 90089 USC campus 1,132 customers, 90006 with ~3k Prime).
- 10 new merchants closed-won by end of Q4 (5 native restaurants per zip).
- Sub-category gap fills: 90012 Mexican, 90017 Mexican, 90028 Mediterranean, 90046 Mexican Thai Indian.
- 4 new Anchor and Elite merchants in Q4 (1 elite per month, 1 anchor per month).
- 8 Rotos: 1 Roto per week promoting top merchants for 8 weeks, plus 1 Roto per week for new zip clusters.
What the Role Produced
Sustained over the role tenure across LA Metro West.
The 9-version cold-outreach iteration discipline contributed to consistent qualification and conversion.
Local merchant partnerships and event-based activations.
Onboarding Optimization, Hotel Partnership, Apartment Promotion. Each defined a measurable problem and a measurable solution.
The Pattern Behind the Result
The sales metrics (40% over target, 60% close rate, 30% partnership growth) read as competent BD work. The deeper signal is in the artifacts. Authoring 3 pilot proposals, a Q1 Metro Strategy Doc, 9 iterations of cold outreach, and a co-authored module of the org-wide training curriculum is City Manager-level scope, not BD Manager scope. The pattern that later produced the Tentpole 2024 Post Mortem and 2025 Strategy doc was already operational here. Diagnose the structural problem, propose a measurable mechanism, define the success criteria, deploy the test.