Job description
Commercial Manager — Run the Business, Own the Number
£80k basic + open-ended profit share | Successful business unit leaders genuinely earning £150-200k | Executive car | Scotland
This is for someone who's outgrown sales leadership and wants the whole thing. The customers, the team, the number, the call on where the business goes next.
You'd run a profitable, established trade-facing business as your own. Not a branch with a reporting line into someone else's plan, a genuine commercial unit where you set the budget, present it to the board, and own the outcome. Sales, margin, range, customers, headcount: yours. The kind of remit most people are told they have and rarely do.
It sits inside a £1bn+ privately owned group built on a deliberately flat structure and a hands-off centre. The model is simple. Devolve real responsibility to local commercial leaders, back them properly, and reward them on what they actually deliver. The profit share is tied directly to your business's performance, with no ceiling. The better you build it, the more you earn.
Why this beats the role you're probably looking at
- You own the customer relationships that move the number, you don't just oversee a team that does
- Total P&L ownership, the nearest thing to running your own company without carrying the risk
- An established, profitable operation with real customers and revenue, not a turnaround or a startup
- An open-ended profit share on the business you control, your effort, your number
- A group that grows by acquisition and promotes from within, so the next business unit, and the one after, is a genuine route rather than a vague promise
- A culture that trusts commercial people to make commercial calls, with a board that backs you rather than micromanages you
What you'd actually be doing
Leading from the front with customers and from the centre with your team. Personally owning the contract accounts that move the number, while leading and coaching a team of salespeople to do the same with theirs. Setting the commercial strategy and delivering it. Winning new business. Sharpening pricing, range and margin. Recruiting and developing the kind of commercial team that performs because you show them how. Representing the business in its market and spotting the next opportunity to go after.
This is a hands-on commercial seat, not a corner office. You'll be in front of customers as often as you're in front of your team, and you've got an operational team underneath you who run the day-to-day, stock, logistics, branch operations, the non-commercial machinery, so your time goes where it earns: on customers, on people, on the number. If reviewing reports from behind a desk is the part of leadership you enjoy most, this isn't the role.
Who this is for
Someone commercially sharp, numerate and naturally persuasive, who's at their best in front of a customer and can build a team that's the same. You've carried real commercial responsibility, you can read a P&L and you can present a business case to a board with the same confidence you'd bring to a customer pitch. You think laterally, spot value others miss, and you have the credibility to be taken seriously from the warehouse floor to the boardroom.
Sector experience isn't the point. We've benchmarked this against leaders from distribution, wholesale, construction supply, contract sales, hire and beyond. If you've grown a number, owned the customer relationships behind it, and led people to do it with you, you'll recognise this role.
It's a hands-on commercial seat for an entrepreneurial operator. Not a custodian.
The package
£80k basic plus an open-ended profit share directly tied to the performance of the business you run. There's no cap on the scheme, and successful business unit leaders in the group are genuinely earning £150-200k. Executive car (BMW, Mercedes or Audi). Defined-contribution pension. Family private healthcare.
Extra information
- Status
- Open
- Education Level
- Secondary School
- Location
- Scotland
- Type of Contract
- Full-time jobs
- Published at
- 22-05-2026
- Profession type
- Sales
- Full UK/EU driving license preferred
- No
- Car Preferred
- No
- Must be eligible to work in the EU
- No
- Cover Letter Required
- No
- Languages
- English
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