Cash is King – the role of a Commercial Director

Let’s not be under any illusion that the primary function of any organisation that is in business is to ‘make money’ – the rest is just posturing and positioning... Marketing. I’ll come on to that in another article soon.

Cash is king. Without cash, the business will not survive. The role of the Commercial Director is, as a senior management team player, the individual who leads an organisation through the commercial landscape and achieves the big picture goals. That task includes overseeing product development; identifying all and any market opportunities; determining pricing to balance profit with client satisfaction; how and when to go to market; directing the marketing operations. Put more simply, the key functions under the remit of a Commercial Director – particularly from a small to medium sized marketing communications agency – are:

• Marketing

• Business Development

• Sales

• Client Liaison

To be successful, these functions cannot not be strictly ring-fenced – we’ve all experienced the Sales v Marketing face-off. These functions have to work as a unit providing a seamless and consistent journey for the customer.

I have always found that the key to success in this role is accurate forecasting. This provides:

• The lead-to-quote-to-sale ratio analysis – and permits you strategise and drive towards 1:1:1

• How to set objectives to achieve billing – and ensuring the team has the resources necessary to deliver

• Identifying:

  • Marketing requirements – to meet commercial shortfalls...and/or

  • Resource requirements – to deliver production goals

… in both instances, forearmed is forewarned.

Over the last few years, I’ve reviewed many platforms. With the exception of Salesforce, none allow the accurate projection of a billing schedule necessary to deliver the visibility of an organisation and support how to deliver its commercial goals efficiently.

Not that I’m going to evangelise about Salesforce. In a lot of instances it can be a sledgehammer to crack a nut (and a very expensive sledgehammer too). Subject to the complexity of the organisation, accurate forecasting can be provided simply with Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets and good management. After all, when I started my career in the commercial world (in a very small way), I was successful with a card index system, pencil and sheet of graph paper.

Here is just one example of what, as a Commercial Director, I bring to the party. In many companies I’ve worked, I’ve heard the almost mantra-like statement, “we always have a bad July and August – that’s just the way it is...”. With that mentality, sure enough, the company has talked itself into a bad July and August – and the cashflow challenges that brings in the coming months. My role is to identify why there is a shortfall in those months; create a strategy to prevent it; implement the plan!

I always question – if it is a ‘known’, it should not be a ‘given’.