Insights — Executive Recruitment — 3 min read
What Should You Look for When Recruiting a Commercial Director?
A Commercial Director trades on judgement about price, risk and partnerships. Assess that judgement directly rather than inferring it from titles.
In short
Look for demonstrable judgement on pricing, contracts, margin protection and partnerships in a business of comparable complexity — not a generic commercial background. Test how the candidate has handled real pricing pressure, contentious contract terms and partner negotiations, and confirm they can present that judgement credibly to a board.
Commercial Director appointments are judged on decisions that are hard to observe from a CV: what price was actually held or given away, which contract terms were pushed back on, and which partnerships were built to last rather than signed for a headline.
The assessment should be built around surfacing that judgement directly.
What evidence actually matters for this role?
- Specific examples of pricing decisions they made or influenced, including where they held a price under pressure and where they chose to discount, and why.
- Contract terms they negotiated, pushed back on, or refused — and the commercial reasoning behind those calls.
- Partnerships or channel relationships they built, and evidence those relationships produced results rather than just agreements.
- Comfort presenting commercial trade-offs to a board, since the role usually carries governance exposure that a Sales Director role may not.
How do you test pricing and contract judgement directly?
| Capability | How to test it |
|---|---|
| Pricing judgement | Present a real, anonymised pricing dilemma from your business and ask how they'd approach it |
| Contract and risk judgement | Ask about a specific contract term they refused, and what happened as a result |
| Partnership development | Ask for a partnership they built, how it was structured commercially, and how it is monitored |
| Margin protection under pressure | Ask how they've handled a customer or the board pushing for a discount they disagreed with |
How does this differ from assessing a Sales Director?
A Sales Director candidate is assessed on leading a team to convert opportunities; a Commercial Director candidate is assessed on the terms those opportunities convert under — price, contract and partnership structure. Some strong candidates can do both, but the underlying evidence you should be looking for is different, and conflating the two assessments is a common cause of a poor hire.
What sector and scale experience actually matters?
Experience with comparable deal complexity, contract length and partnership structures tends to matter more than sector match alone. A Commercial Director experienced in long-term B2B contracts and channel partnerships in one sector generally transfers well to another sector with a similar commercial structure.
What red flags should give you pause?
- No specific example of holding a price or contract position under real commercial pressure.
- Partnerships described purely in terms of agreements signed, with no evidence of the commercial outcome that followed.
- Discomfort discussing margin, discount policy or contract risk in concrete terms.
- A background purely in sales leadership with no exposure to pricing strategy, contracts or partnership structuring.
Discuss a Commercial Director requirement
Permanent, interim or fractional. The conversation starts with what the role must own — price, margin, terms and partners — rather than with a job title.
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