Functions
Interim Commercial
For any business, it’s essential to get your commercial strategy right to ensure the success of your products and services. If not, critical opportunities or objectives can be missed. If you’re not sure how to put in place such a strategy for your organisation or need to rework an under-performing one, appointing an interim commercial director can prove an effective solution.
To promote new and existing products and brands, a commercial strategy must consider vital elements that drive profitable performance. These include production, distribution, marketing, sales and customer support – but such wide-reaching knowledge isn’t always readily available to businesses. And that’s why interim commercial director roles have become so sought after.
The window of opportunity is often short in a fast-evolving market. Interim commercial directors and managers can help businesses transform existing products and services and grow at opportune moments. Interims are also ideally placed to bring brand-new products to life – making sure they’re commercially viable, ready for the market and launched successfully.
At Interim Partners, we’ve placed interim commercial directors at some of the world’s leading organisations. Why not find out if your business could also benefit from our expertise?
Why consider an interim commercial director?
Turning vision into reality
If your business has a great new idea or propositions, you might need extra help with getting your products and services to market. Interim commercial directors are expertly-placed to bring that.
Sector-specific commercial directors and managers can leverage their vast industry knowledge to execute effective commercial strategies within the same sector.
Even commercial directors or managers who come with differing industry backgrounds can bring commercial expertise to a new sector – creating effective strategies that offer a fresh ‘outsider’ perspective.
Typical interim commercial assignments
- Interim commercial director
- Interim commercial manager
- Interim commercial finance director
Key benefits of interim directors
Without an effective board, businesses often struggle with its governance and leadership. As part of long-term succession plans or for crisis situations, interim appointments bring vital perspective and effective management.
With an interim commercial director, CEO or otherwise, you get a non-executive director (NED) in place at key points in time – filling any gaps in strategic expertise and insight.
Interim Partners works with our clients to identify what requirements you have for a board member. With our proven track record, we can then match the ideal interim based on your culture and the challenge at hand.
Interim commercial directors: business-critical expertise
A business can’t just unveil a new product or service and expect it to succeed. A lot of planning must go into achieving the desired results. And there are often multiple considerations that any business must factor into their commercial strategy.
Does your product or service meet your customers’ needs? How much should you charge for it? Are there any new market opportunities to tap into? In most businesses, multiple individuals or teams are responsible for the various elements that go into a product and its launch – research, marketing, sales and manufacturing. But who in your business oversees this operation in full?
By appointing an interim commercial director or manager, a business can harness the top-level skills and expertise of someone who leads across all commercial considerations. From knowing what existing customers want to exploring how best to target new ones, it is the cross-industry or sector-specific knowledge of an interim commercial director who can help chart your course.
An interim commercial director can build the business-critical relationships to drive growth and sustain existing success. By offering top-level leadership in the short-term, interim commercial director roles establish a unified approach – bringing together every team and department that are integral to your commercial prospects in a rapidly evolving and sometimes volatile market.
Need an interim commercial director? Contact us today.
How an interim commercial director can work for you
More businesses and organisations across multiple sectors are turning to interim appointments to achieve their commercial objectives. With the various disciplines that’ll contribute to growth, Interim Partners can identify an interim commercial director that works for you.
From creating and putting in place commercial strategies to maintaining core partnerships both inside and outside your business, the scope of an interim commercial director can be as varied as you need it to be – bringing with them proven experience of doing so in previous positions.
Typical attributes of an interim commercial director that your business can benefit from include analytical thinking, problem-solving abilities and strong interpersonal skills to communicate any complex ideas that you want to get across, as well as a calmness under often intense pressure.
Executive search & selection
Finding an interim commercial director to enhance the prospects of your business is simple thanks to Interim Partners. With our extensive candidate network, we can source and secure high-calibre figures who integrate seamlessly into a business.
Wickland Westcott is our executive search business that delivers retained executive-level assignments both at home and abroad. Focused on the recruitment of top-level C-suite individuals, we can ensure that your organisation has the executive team that produces results time and again.
Across assignments, we provide up-to-date insight – making clear recommendations on when to recruit from inside your appropriate sector or when to bring in fresh perspective from outside.
With our holistic service combining the very best executive recruitment consultants with comprehensive psychometric/personality assessments from qualified occupational psychologists, you can trust us to find the right person for your organisation.
Our search and selection methodology will ensure a cultural fit – aligning fully to your values and organisational purpose. This is particularly important at a senior level.
Why Wickland Westcott?
- Over 40 years' experience in executive search and leadership consultancy
- Placed over 2,000 senior leaders across industry sectors
- 99% customer satisfaction
- 98% candidate satisfaction over the last 5 years
- Assignment completion rate of 96%
- 95% of candidates placed are still in their role after a year
Who can Interim Partners help?
Interim Partners has far-reaching experience of placing the right people with the organisations who need them most. If your business lacks the commercial edge needed to grow or could use a fresh pair of eyes, there’s no restriction to the type of organisation that can benefit.
Learn more about our work in your sector.
FTSE250 and medium-sized enterprises:
Continuity of leadership isn’t the only pressure point for businesses. Disruptive technology, changing loyalty and demands of customers, regulatory compliance and the urgency to transform requires organisations to employ strong, capable leadership, an agile workforce, and specialist skills to keep up with the pace of change within their sector, but still aligning with a unique business identity.
Start-ups:
For many start-ups, operations are on a small scale and multiple business functions are performed by a limited number of staff. It can be easy, as a result, to lose sight of the overall commercial aims. By appointing an interim commercial director, your start-up can relieve critical personnel of the burden of broader commercial strategies to concentrate on key areas of specialisms.
Global corporations:
Global corporations aren’t immune from the prospect of commercial failure. It can be the result of changing customer needs or poor product development. Microsoft’s Zune, Sony Betamax or New Coke are some examples of how even the biggest brands can get it wrong commercially – and an example of where the appointment of an interim commercial director can help.
The Interim Partners difference
We work closely with our clients to help solve their most complex business challenges. Our award-winning consulting services leverage an extensive network of trusted interim managers and executives with the expertise to deliver measurable results across multiple business functions and sectors at a fraction of the cost of management consultants.
We offer a unique approach to interim recruitment and will take the time to truly understand your business. We look at what your challenges are and what you are aiming to achieve. Together, we define your assignment goals and deliverables – giving absolute clarity on the potential value add or return on investment from your interim.
Our interims are contracted through our 4-stage Return on Interim (ROI) methodology to ensure they deliver the results our clients expect, every time.
Insights and Events
Need an interim commercial director? Contact us today.
