Director of Commercial Operations
About the Role
The Director of Commercial Operations leads customer-facing (commercial) operations with the charter to drive sales efficiency, effectiveness, and customer service excellence. Reporting to the Vice President of Sales, this role oversees two key functions: Customer Service and Inside Sales. The Director is a strategic and operational leader responsible for building and optimizing systems, frameworks, and programs that power a high-performing sales organization.
In close, cross-functional partnership with Manufacturing, Marketing, and Finance, this role ensures sellers have the capabilities, insights, incentives, and operating rigor needed to drive consistent, profitable growth. The vision is to adopt a holistic, data-driven approach to commercial operations, optimizing cost to acquire and serve customers while expanding engagement and commercial relationships further down the value chain. The goal is to mature a systematic, data-driven approach to drive commercial and business success, particularly in the residential market.
Responsibilities
- Lead customer service to drive high customer satisfaction with an optimal overhead footprint, including defining and measuring team KPIs and SLAs, customer satisfaction measurement and resolution, and systematizing customer service activities into a 360-degree customer view.
- Create a holistic inside sales-outside sales-customer service value stream and optimize approaches with operations.
- Manage and develop the inside sales team, optimizing customer and opportunity engagement with the field sales team. Responsibilities include defining the role of inside sales, enabling seamless inside-field sales engagement using technology (CRM/CDP), and collaborating with Marketing on customer journeys.
- Identify where automation, inside sales, and field sales should be applied, leveraging the 500K annual inbound inquiries to assure sales velocity, and defining/measuring team KPIs.
- Own the requirements and prioritization of the commercial tech stack, including selection, investment, deployment, and user adoption. Responsibilities include new technology evaluation, system/tool rationalization, integration with other systems (e.g., martech stack), administration, training, and data quality/compliance/governance to drive sales team efficiencies.
- Collaborate with IT on systems deployment, maintenance, and improvements for tools such as ERP, CRM, CustomerSat, BI, and CDP.
- Collaborate with IT/Analytics to enable and produce commercial analytics relevant to the lead/opportunity funnel, order book, and revenue. Ensure access to regular reporting and dashboards for the commercial team and company management to inform decision-making and align with growth objectives.
- Develop monitoring and methodologies to analyze sales metrics, provide insights, support decisions, and highlight areas for process improvement.
- Enable training activities to ensure sales teams understand and effectively utilize systems and reporting resources.
- Create sales strategies and develop budgets, policies, and procedures to support the sales infrastructure.
- Collaborate with area and regional sales leaders to develop and execute sales management disciplines and processes for sales excellence.
- Direct sales forecasting and planning, actively contribute to the S&OP process, and own sales performance reporting and outlook by segment.
- Drive sales strategy and resource deployment by providing analytical thought leadership and business insights about market conditions, competitors, and Formica’s market position. Help establish strategic priorities for growth.
- Design, implement, and evolve the sales operating model, including the sales skills framework, sales methodology, and supporting tools.
- Design and lead the Strategic Account Management framework and account prioritization, ensuring consistent account planning and opportunity management.
- Build and govern the Strategic Account Review process, including cadence, metrics, and executive reporting.
Skills
- Strategic and highly execution-oriented
- Data-driven with strong business judgment and intellectual curiosity
- Effective in ambiguity and transformation
- Credible with both senior leaders and frontline sellers
- Collaborative, pragmatic, and outcomes-focused
- People management and development
- “Product Management” of internal tools
- Commercial tech stack architecture
- Data analysis, BI analytics, and reporting tools
- Deep expertise in CRM systems and commercial automation
- 360-degree customer view
- Customer satisfaction measurement
- Process optimization
- Strategy development
- Sales and operations planning (S&OP)
- Sales forecasting and reporting
- Training, knowledge development, and change management
- Demonstrated AI proficiency