Vice President Commercial Excellence

Career Guide
A Vice President of Commercial Excellence is a senior leader who improves how a company sells, prices, serves customers, and grows revenue. The role builds scalable ways of working across sales, marketing, customer success, and revenue operations, using data and clear processes to increase win rates, customer retention, and profitable growth.

Key Responsibilities

  • Set the commercial excellence strategy aligned to revenue and profit goals
  • Standardize sales processes across regions and teams
  • Improve sales pipeline health and forecasting accuracy
  • Design pricing and discount governance to protect margin
  • Lead customer segmentation and account prioritization
  • Build sales performance management including targets and incentives
  • Drive sales enablement programs including training and playbooks
  • Improve go to market planning for new products and regions
  • Establish commercial metrics and performance reviews
  • Partner with finance on revenue planning and budget ownership
  • Lead cross functional initiatives to reduce sales cycle time
  • Build and lead a high performing commercial excellence team

Top Skills for Success

Strategic Planning
Executive Communication
Stakeholder Management
Change Management
Team Leadership
Revenue Forecasting
Sales Process Design
Sales Performance Management
Pricing Strategy
Discount Governance
Go To Market Strategy
Customer Segmentation
Sales Enablement
Data Literacy
CRM Proficiency
Cross Functional Collaboration

Career Progression

Can Lead To
Chief Revenue Officer
Chief Commercial Officer
General Manager
Senior Vice President Sales
Senior Vice President Revenue Operations
Senior Vice President Strategy
Transition Opportunities
Vice President Sales
Vice President Revenue Operations
Vice President Pricing
Vice President Strategy
Vice President Customer Success

Common Skill Gaps

Often Missing Skills
Advanced Pricing StrategySales Incentive DesignForecasting MethodologyCRM Data Quality ManagementSales Enablement Program DesignProfitability AnalysisExecutive Level StorytellingChange Adoption Measurement
Development SuggestionsBuild a portfolio of measurable commercial improvements. Lead one end to end initiative such as pricing governance, forecasting accuracy, or sales process standardization. Strengthen data foundations by improving CRM hygiene, metric definitions, and recurring performance reviews. Practice executive narratives that link actions to revenue, margin, and customer outcomes.

Salary & Demand

Median Salary Range
Entry LevelTypically not applicable for this title. Comparable Director level roles often range from 180,000 to 260,000 USD total compensation
Mid Level250,000 to 400,000 USD total compensation
Senior Level400,000 to 650,000 USD total compensation
Growth Trend
Strong demand in companies focused on profitable growth, improved forecasting, pricing discipline, and scalable selling. Hiring is most common in B2B, life sciences, software, manufacturing, and business services.

Companies Hiring

Major Employers
SalesforceMicrosoftAmazon Web ServicesOracleServiceNowJohnson and JohnsonPfizerRocheMedtronicGE AerospaceSiemensSchneider Electric3MHoneywellPepsiCoUnileverProcter and GambleAccentureDeloitte
Industry Sectors
SoftwareCloud ServicesLife SciencesMedical DevicesIndustrial ManufacturingBusiness ServicesConsumer Packaged GoodsEnergyTelecommunications

Recommended Next Steps

1
Audit the current commercial system including pipeline, pricing, segmentation, and enablement
2
Define a small set of commercial metrics tied to revenue and margin outcomes
3
Create a 90 day plan with two high impact pilots such as discount governance and forecasting improvements
4
Align with sales, marketing, finance, and product leaders on decision rights and operating rhythm
5
Assess talent needs and hire for analytics, enablement, and program leadership gaps
6
Document a repeatable sales playbook and roll out training with adoption tracking