The Role
Purpose of the Head of Commercial
To lead the delivery of commercial growth activity across Lantra’s Awards portfolio, translating strategic growth priorities into clear sales direction, targets and activity. The role is accountable for driving sales performance across retained and new business through effective sales leadership, account management, customer service, product marketing and market development, ensuring income is protected, grown and diversified.
Working collaboratively across product, policy, external engagement and delivery teams, the role ensures market insight and customer need directly inform product positioning, go to market activity and sales focus. The post holder leads the sales function to build a stable retained customer base, identify and convert growth opportunities, expand into new and emerging markets, and deliver accurate forecasting, budgeting and target setting that maximises income and contribution.
Overview
Job Title: Head of Commercial
Reporting to: Commercial Director
Line Management: team of staff incorporating Account Management, Customer Service, New Business Development, Product Marketing.
Salary: Competitive salary plus benefits
Hours: Full Time 37.5 hours/week, but with hours commensurate with fulfilling the responsibilities of the role
Location: Coventry, Warwickshire with opportunity for Hybrid Working.
Main Responsibilities
Income Planning, Forecasting and Targets
Income forecasting and budgeting
• Clear ownership of strategic sales data analysis
• Robust income forecasting to inform business planning and expenditure business planning
• Accurate and timely forecasts to support commercial decision making
Data, insight and reporting
• Ownership of income reporting, shared with wider business on a monthly basis
• Customer and market insight used to inform sales focus and priorities
• Evidence based decision making supported by clear data
Sales Targets
• To work with sales team to produce business plans that will deliver the income budget with clear layers of accountability within the sales function
• Targets to be defined as retained, new business and pipeline for continued growth
Customer Retention
Account Management
• Account Management model aligned to customer value and growth potential
• Improved retention and growth within existing accounts
Customer service excellence
• Customer charter inclusive of SLAs developed and maintained
• Service delivered consistently to agreed SLAs
• Strong customer advocacy and satisfaction maintained or improved
New Business and Market Development
New business development
• Proactive identification of new customers and new markets
• New Business pipeline aligned to agreed growth targets
Funding alignment
• Product portfolio aligned to regional and national funding opportunities
• Market opportunities identified and reflected in sales focus
Product Marketing
• Clear value propositions and pricing logic for portfolio
• Go to market plans aligned to sales target and customer need
• Marketing activity aligned to growth plans
Sales Leadership and Performance
Leadership
• Provide strategic guidance to sales function including priorities, targets and ways of working
• Teams working collaboratively towards agreed goals across sales, account management and customer service
• Sales targets translated into clear individual objectives with active performance management
• Coaching, development and capability building to ensure the team has the skills and capacity to deliver the sales plans
• Performance engagement and succession managed to sustain a high performing sales team
Person Specification
Knowledge / Skills Required
- Strong commercial acumen
- Excellent analytical, planning and communication skills
- Clear understanding of customer metrics and how they drive performance and improvement
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills
- Ability to negotiate and manage stakeholders
- Ability to use Word and Excel at intermediate level or above
- Ability to manage a hybrid team, prioritise and delegate tasks.
- Understanding of education, training or awarding organisations (desirable)
- Knowledge of public funding and policy environments (desirable)
- Product Marketing (desirable)
- Understanding of Quality Assurance (desirable)
- Understanding of the requirements of ISO and GDPR (desirable)
Experience
- Senior level experience leading commercial, customer or growth functions
- Delivering income, contribution or margin improvement
- Leading multi-disciplinary teams
- Experience of working collaboratively across the business to develop a customer centric business approach
- Experience of managing projects (desirable)
- Experience of using a CRM (desirable)
- Experience of working in an Awarding body or working with Training Providers (desirable)
- Experience working within charitable or purpose led organisations (desirable)
- Project Management (desirable)
- Experience of working with Boards or executive teams (desirable)
Qualifications
- Management or leadership qualification or equivalent experience
- Degree or higher qualification in business, marketing or related discipline (desirable)
Behaviours
- Customer First, continually seeking improvements to customer service, solving customer problems quickly and in full, and rising to challenges to take ownership of customer issues
- Commercially Driven, understanding the business structure and their role in achieving business plan, striving to get think commercially to achieve cost savings, and able to streamline process, costs and resources to focus on adding value
- Collaborative, encouraging effective communication across all levels, sharing knowledge and information, and asking questions and checks understanding
- Camaraderie,sharing best practice and knowledge with team members and colleagues across teams, recognising and responding when others require help and support. Always approachable and open to the ideas of the team
- Leadership, acting as a role model of the corporate values and behaviours, developing trust by delivering on promises and communicating all changes, and able to engage with others and makes suggestions or offers help when it is needed
- Personal Effectiveness, taking ownership of allocated tasks, planning ahead and communicates plans to those who need to know. Operating in a proactive mindset, and able to adapt when the needs of their role or the organisation changes