Interim Group Commercial Director — Controls

Retention that pays for itself

Keeping a customer is not the same as paying a customer to stay. Any commercial team can lift a retention figure with deeper offers; far fewer can show that the customers retained are worth more than the incentives spent on them. The Interim Group Commercial Director is appointed to build retention economics that hold up without that crutch, and to put commercial controls around them firm enough that the economics survive the director's departure. The work sits squarely in the commercial engine: offers, renewal terms, loyalty mechanics and the evidence that shows which of them create value and which simply move it around.

Authority to stop as well as to start

The director holds executive authority under the Group Chief Executive Officer. That includes agreeing which commercial thresholds local leaders keep and where a decision rises to the group, and defining the evidence on which every market's decisions about spending, capacity and control will rest. Inherited commitments will be judged individually; some will carry on and some will close. Proposals that offload cost or risk onto another part of the business without its consent will be blocked, and spending on a retention scheme will be turned down if its case takes customer response for granted, overlooks what it relies on or never models a poor result. The director also signs off the commercial leadership structure and the route by which a pricing or retention problem reaches the group, settles disagreements with operating leaders before budgets are released, and decides how often the board is shown progress and unresolved decisions.

A year of tightening the evidence

Baseline work fills the first ninety days. With the Group Chief Executive Officer, the director should agree where commercial decisions sit, how retention economics will be measured, and who answers for each control. Without that shared measure, every argument about retention becomes an argument about definitions. By around month nine, retention offers and inherited commercial commitments should have been tested against the agreed controls, and those that nobody would own will have been stopped. By month 12 the controls and the retention evidence should be part of routine board reporting, with escalation working without the interim in place.

Remediation under watch, retention in view

The commercial teams you have led sat in businesses where revenue reached $335 million or more, headcount 1,000 or more, and operations spanned six countries. Regulatory remediation, succession and professionalisation will be examined in your record, and remediation is especially relevant: you have changed who decides, how things are funded and how often they are reviewed, while a regulator or auditor was watching. Commercial economics is required at level 4. Level 3 is required in revenue architecture, in channel partnerships and in working with a board and its stakeholders. Before allowing a commercial exception to stand, you have found out which budget was really paying for it. You develop successors as you go, so that what is built in 12 months does not depend on you personally, and you can tell the Group Chief Executive Officer what you do not yet know without treating that as a reason to delay.

Seven weeks, starting with the retention brief

You begin in week one with the Group Chief Executive Officer, a closed-door video discussion centred on the retention brief and the controls it requires. In the third week the Regional President tests with you how those controls would operate across markets. Week five is a round-table of executives, in person, representing each function, and the board's directors take the final conversation in week seven. Within five working days of each stage we will tell you in writing where you stand.