Interim Commercial Director
I build, fix and scale commercial functions, helping global and local organisations with market entry, post merger integration, go to market strategy and more. Available worldwide.
What I do
Most people arrive and start fixing what is visibly broken. I start by working out what your commercial engine should actually look like, and then build toward it. The fixing tends to be a consequence rather than the goal.
My preference is to work embedded: inside the team, accountable for the result, close enough to the detail to change how things actually get done. That is where I am most effective, because commercial problems are rarely only commercial.
That said, it is your call. Some companies want an advisor alongside their own leadership rather than someone in the seat, and I work that way too. The shape and the length are set by the problem in front of us, not by a template.
01
You are opening somewhere you have no name, no network and no team yet. I hire the first people, build the partner base, put the commercial process in place, and hand over an operation that holds.
3 countries opened from zero
02
The team is underperforming or stuck, and there is no internal candidate to lead it out. I work out what is actually wrong, rebuild how the team operates and what it sells, and get the numbers moving again without losing the people.
A declining market returned to growth
03
Two commercial organisations need to become one. Process, tooling and reporting, and then the harder half, which is the culture and the people who actually make the numbers.
6 markets · 4 business units · 25 people
Go to market strategy, pricing and rate cards, category and vertical expansion, forecasting and reporting. I write plans I then have to deliver, which tends to make them more honest.
Defining the roles, running the hiring, onboarding and developing people. I have built teams from a single person, and hired the country manager who later became my own boss.
Most commercial problems live at the seams between teams: commercial and editorial, product, marketing or data. I have spent years as the person who gets two departments that do not naturally get on working properly together.
Building revenue models that need product and editorial buy in to work, and translating between teams that measure success in completely different units.
Marketplaces, partner networks, affiliate and performance channels, platform and multi sided models, where your revenue depends on several parties all getting something out of it. Designing how the pieces connect is a different discipline from selling, and it is where I have spent most of my career.
An independent read of your commercial engine. Where revenue really comes from and how concentrated it is, which relationships are fragile, where growth is being left on the table, what is quietly dependent on one person, and what would break tomorrow. You get a clear picture and a prioritised plan you can act on with or without me.
Giving a commercial team the numbers it needs to manage itself. This is usually the first thing I fix and the reason everything after it works.
The part most people leave out
I took the combined commercial organisation across six markets in February 2023. The first half of that year was still contracting. By the fourth quarter, five of the six markets were growing double digits and the sixth had almost stopped falling. The following year the group grew 44%.
Commission across six markets. Absolute figures withheld.
The first half went into the things that do not show up in a revenue line: giving teams the numbers they had never had, bringing key client relationships back in house, and getting two very different ways of working to become one. The second half is when it started to show.
+20%
Q4 of my first year, against the prior year
5 of 6
Markets growing double digits by that quarter
+44%
The full year that followed
~0
Attrition through the change
Track record
Stripped of industry language, sixteen years of my career is one repeated move: go where the commercial function does not exist yet or has stopped working, build it, and leave it running and growing.
Who I work with
Every business is different, and a conversation is the quickest way to find out whether I can help. That said, there are patterns in the work I am usually brought in for.
STAGE
Scale ups, established mid market businesses, groups integrating after an acquisition, and companies backed by private equity. What they have in common is that commercial performance matters enough to invest in getting it right.
MOMENT
A new market, a merger, a leader who has left, a category that has stopped growing, or a situation with enough moving parts that it is hard to see clearly from inside it.
MANDATE
I am at my most useful with access to the numbers, access to the people and a clear brief. Whether that is from inside the team or alongside your own leadership is entirely your call.
AMBITION
The work I enjoy most is where something needs to be created, rebuilt, or taken to its next stage. If you are somewhere in that territory, there is probably a conversation worth having.
In their words
“Bruno's consultancy work and recommendations had a direct impact in increasing our revenue by 10%. His inputs were of inestimable worth for the growth of my business.”
Thiago Hahn
CEO and cofounder
Skyline Worldwide · client
“He encourages ownership, gives people the space to develop, and creates an environment where decisions are based on facts, collaboration, and mutual trust.”
Simon Knapp
Managing Director, abo24
Direct report
“A natural ability to bring people together, creating an environment where everyone can do their best work. Highly respected across the business.”
Sophie Halley
Head of Account Management UK
Direct report
Questions
I take operational ownership of your commercial function for an agreed period: hiring, setting and running strategy, rebuilding process and reporting, and handing over a working operation at the end. Embedded is my preference because it is where I am most effective, but I work in an advisory capacity where a client prefers it.
Worldwide. I have run commercial operations across nine markets in Europe and the Americas and opened three countries from zero, and I work remotely or on site anywhere a company needs me. British and Brazilian national, working in English, Portuguese and Spanish, and comfortable across time zones.
It depends entirely on the problem. Some are a short, sharp diagnostic. Others run for many months embedded with the team. The scope is agreed up front around what the business actually needs rather than against a fixed template.
Four recurring ones. Entering a market where you have no presence. An underperforming or stuck commercial team with no internal candidate to lead it. Two commercial organisations that need to merge after an acquisition. And friction between commercial and another department such as product, editorial, marketing or data.
Scale ups, mid market businesses and larger groups, including companies backed by private equity and businesses integrating after an acquisition. My experience to date spans travel and hospitality, ecommerce and marketplaces, digital media and publishing, retail and consumer brands, performance marketing, adtech and subscriptions, and the commercial mechanics travel further than people expect.
Yes, and it is usually the core of the work rather than a side effect. I have hired the first account managers in new countries, built a team of nine from a standing start of one, and recruited a country manager who went on to become my own line manager.
Faster than most, because reading an unfamiliar commercial situation is the part I am best at. I have moved between countries, companies, sectors and cultures for sixteen years and the first thing I do in any of them is work out how the system really operates and who actually decides things. Expect a useful point of view within the first few weeks, not the first quarter.
Yes, for the right commercial leadership role. The work is much the same either way, and a first conversation is the quickest way to find out whether it fits.
A thirty minute call, which costs nothing and usually tells us both fairly quickly whether there is something here. If there is, I will follow up with a short written view of the problem and what an engagement would look like.
About
I spent nine years at Atolls, formerly Global Savings Group, moving from account manager to Commercial Director across four promotions, and finishing by running the combined commercial organisation after the merger with Pepper. Before that: HRS and hotel.info in Brazil, Booking.com, Travelocity and Agoda.
The thread running through all of it is the same. I go into places where the commercial operation does not exist yet, or has stopped working, and I build it: the strategy, the process, the reporting, the client relationships and above all the team. I have opened countries from nothing, rebuilt teams that had lost their way, merged two commercial cultures into one, and spent a lot of my career as the person who gets departments that do not naturally get on to work well together.
Moving between that many markets and business models has a practical benefit for clients. What is standard practice in one sector is often the unlock in another, and I tend to arrive with solutions your direct competitors have not seen, because I have not spent my whole career in one place.
What I care most about is what is still standing afterwards. I recruited the country manager who became my own boss. The account manager I hired in Mexico is still in the job more than a decade later. Most of the people who have recommended me publicly worked for me during the hardest year any of us had.
I now do this work independently, anywhere in the world, embedded or advisory depending on what the business needs. I am also open to the right permanent commercial leadership role, because the work is much the same either way.
Working together
Start with a commercial diagnostic if you want an independent read on what is really going on, or go straight to an engagement if you already know. Embedded or advisory, short or long: we shape it around the problem, not around a template.