REAL Partnership
Commercial Director - Client Development (Full, Part or Contract)
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What REAL is
REAL Growth Consulting is a boutique commercial transformation firm. We work across the direct-to-consumer economy, from retail and FMCG through to hospitality, on the five levers that actually move commercial performance: media and marketing, customer and CRM, digital product and e-commerce, category strategy including price and promotion, and people transformation.
Our clients are recognised consumer businesses, listed and private, alongside an expanding portfolio of companies backed by London investment funds. We are principal-led, senior by default, and we do not sell work we cannot personally stand behind.
We are now hiring the person who will own how the firm grows.
Description of role
This is the commercial ownership of a young, high-calibre firm, held by one person who is equally comfortable in a chief executive's office and in a margin conversation.
You will build the pipeline and you will run it. Creation and management are both the job. What we will not accept is volume for its own sake. Every conversation you open should be one you would be happy to be judged on.
The mandate has four parts.
- Originate. Open relationships with chief executives, chief commercial officers, and chief customer officers across the consumer economy, from FTSE 250 retail and FMCG to founder-led D2C and hospitality groups, and with the partners and operating teams at the funds that back them. This means a live network on day one, not a plan to build one. It also means genuine pipeline creation: identifying where our work is needed before the client has written a brief.
- Prepare. Do the intellectual work before the room. Research the business properly, understand where its commercial performance is actually leaking, and adapt our five-lever methodology to that specific situation. When you walk in, the chief executive should feel that you have already thought about their business harder than the last three advisers who called.
- Shape. Turn that understanding into a commercial construct: scope, approach, team, timeline, and price. Work alongside the founder and our principal-tier consultants to design an answer that is defensible on substance and priced to protect margin.
- Close. Own the negotiation and the signature. Hold the number, manage procurement and legal, and bring the mandate over the line without discounting away the quality of the work.
Underneath all four, you will run the commercial engine of the firm: pipeline discipline and forecasting, pricing architecture, proposal and credentials infrastructure, contracting, and REAL's external voice across positioning, thought leadership, and marketing.
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What you will own
Origination and relationships
- Build and hold a named account and fund coverage plan across the consumer sector
- Convert existing personal relationships into qualified executive conversations from the first quarter
- Represent REAL at board and executive committee level with the credibility of a peer, not a supplier
- Establish referral routes through investment funds, operating partners, and portfolio chairs
Pursuit and conversion
- Own the end-to-end pursuit: qualification, research, shaping, proposal, pricing, negotiation, signature
- Run a disciplined, accurate, forecastable pipeline the founder can build the business on
- Design and enforce a pricing architecture that protects margin without losing competitive pitches
- Build the pursuit infrastructure: credentials, case evidence, proposal standards
Commercial operations and communications
- Own revenue forecasting and the commercial reporting rhythm of the firm alongside the founder
- Oversee contracting, terms, and commercial risk on new mandates
- Direct REAL's external positioning: website, credentials, thought leadership, and how the firm shows up in the market
- Convert delivered work into published proof, so every engagement compounds into the next
Expectations
This is a quality business, not a volume business.
Our clients are chief executives of substantial consumer companies. They are sold to constantly and they are extremely good at telling the difference between someone who has understood their business and someone who has run a sequence. Everything about how you open, prepare, and close has to survive that scrutiny.
So, to be direct about fit. If your track record is built on outbound volume, automated email sequences, mass connection requests, or hitting an activity number, this is not the role for you, and we will find out quickly. If your track record is built on a small number of relationships you have earned over years, work you have shaped personally, and clients who take your call because of what you did for them last time, we should talk.
The work we sell has to be delivered to the same standard we sold it at. You will be accountable for that promise, not just the signature.
Who you are
Essential
- A live, personal, senior network across the consumer economy: chief executives, chief commercial officers, chief customer officers, and their equivalents in retail, FMCG, D2C, or hospitality. We will discuss this specifically and in detail.
- Demonstrable origination track record. You have opened doors and closed significant advisory or transformation mandates, and you can evidence what you personally sourced.
- The intellectual horsepower to prepare properly: to read a business, form a point of view, and adapt a methodology rather than present a menu.
- Genuine commercial literacy. You can hold a conversation about margin, mix, contribution, and pricing without a finance person in the room.
- The energy to build a commercial function from nothing, combined with the polish to hold a FTSE 250 boardroom. Both, not one.
- Comfort in a small, senior, unstructured firm. There is no sales support function to inherit. You will build it.
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Distinctive
- Background in strategy consulting, transaction services, or the commercial leadership of a consumer business
- Existing relationships with investment funds and their portfolio operating teams
- Experience selling into value-creation and turnaround situations
- A visible external voice in the consumer sector
Not for you if
You need an inherited territory, a lead engine, a script, or a number to dial. This role is autonomy and accountability in roughly equal measure.
Terms
Base salary and package to be discussed and set according to experience. Expect a solid base for a role at this level, paired with a bonus structure that is deliberately significant and directly proportional to what you sell. As an indication, commission is set as a percentage of signed revenue you originate, in the region of five percent, so a million pounds of signed work translates into roughly fifty thousand pounds of bonus, uncapped.
If you are good at this, you should earn considerably more here than in an equivalent role at a larger firm, because the value you create is not diluted across a sales organisation.
London based, hybrid, with the expectation that you are in front of clients rather than at a desk. Reporting directly to the founder, with a seat at the table on how the firm is built.
To apply
Send a short note to info@real-consulting.co.uk covering three things: the segment where your network is strongest, one mandate you personally originated and closed, and what you would want to understand about a consumer business before walking into the chief executive's office.
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