Commercial Director

Most weeks in this role move across pricing, sales execution, partnerships, and go-to-market strategy for the business unit you're responsible for. You're reviewing pipeline and commercial performance, working through pricing and discounting decisions, structuring deals or partnerships that don't fit a standard template, and being the senior commercial voice in product and strategy conversations. The role expects breadth, not specialization.

A common surprise is how much of the work is internal coordination across functions that don't naturally align — sales wants discounts, finance wants margin, product wants the roadmap protected. Many find that the commercial director is often the only person looking at the whole P&L, and the political work of getting functions to make tradeoffs falls to you. Strategy work and execution accountability sitting in the same role tend to require constant context-switching.

People who enjoy the breadth and the visibility that comes with owning commercial outcomes tend to thrive. The role often suits those who can hold sales energy and analytical discipline at the same time, and who are comfortable making decisions where the data is incomplete. The cost is typically the relentless focus on the number and the political work that comes with sitting between functions with different incentives.