About the Role
The Commercial Operations Lead is responsible for ensuring that commercial and sponsorship sales activities are well-structured and governed. This role oversees commercial pipelines, CRM systems, and reporting to provide cross-functional coordination, ensuring that sales teams and senior stakeholders have clear visibility of priorities, opportunities, risks, and next actions. By collaborating with commercial, strategic, and specialist teams, the Commercial Operations Lead will create structure around complex sales environments, drive accountability, and connect the right expertise and resources to opportunities at the appropriate stages.
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Key Responsibilities
- Lead the commercial operations framework supporting sponsorship, partnership, and business development activity.
- Own governance of the commercial pipeline, ensuring clear visibility of opportunities, owners, values, stages, next actions, and deadlines.
- Lead regular pipeline reviews, identify stalled or at-risk opportunities, and drive accountability for agreed actions.
- Oversee CRM requirements, ensuring data quality, process consistency, and ongoing system improvements.
- Own weekly, monthly, and ad hoc commercial reporting, ensuring information is accurate, relevant, and useful for decision-making.
- Provide senior stakeholders with clear visibility of commercial performance, priorities, risks, and required actions.
- Act as a key operational interface between commercial leads, regional and international sales teams, and wider business functions.
- Resolve operational blockers and escalate material risks, dependencies, or delays when required.
- Oversee regional and international sales processes, including relevant approvals, commission arrangements, and commercial records.
- Ensure sales teams have the processes, information, tools, and support required to progress opportunities effectively.
- Maintain forward visibility of major commercial milestones, events, outreach activity, deadlines, and upcoming requirements.
- Coordinate commercial planning and communications, including relevant market intelligence and business updates.
- Maintain oversight of key commercial workstreams, priorities, actions, and deadlines.
- Coordinate inputs and deliverables across teams, establishing clear ownership, responsibilities, and timelines.
- Connect commercial opportunities with relevant strategic thinking, insights, and specialist expertise to strengthen partner and client conversations.
- Ensure appropriate internal expertise is introduced at the right stage of the commercial process.
- Maintain visibility of dependencies across teams and proactively identify potential gaps, risks, or blockers.
- Ensure information, decisions, and actions are communicated effectively between commercial and specialist teams.
- Manage and develop commercial operations resources, providing clear priorities, guidance, coaching, and escalation support.
What We’re Looking For
- Strong experience in commercial operations, sponsorship sales, partnerships, business development, or a related commercial environment.
- Proven experience managing complex sales pipelines and commercial processes.
- Strong understanding of CRM systems, ideally Salesforce or a comparable platform.
- Excellent reporting, analytical, and stakeholder-management skills.
- Ability to coordinate effectively across multiple teams, markets, and specialist disciplines.
- Demonstrated ability to create structure, improve processes, drive accountability, and resolve operational issues.
- Strong organizational, communication, and prioritization skills.
- Confidence working with senior stakeholders and managing competing priorities.
- Experience managing, coaching, or developing team members.
- Experience within sponsorship, sports, entertainment, esports, partnerships, or major events is advantageous.
The Person
You are a commercially minded operator who brings structure, discipline, and clarity to complex sales environments. You are comfortable working with senior stakeholders, constructively challenging where necessary, and ensuring decisions translate into clear ownership and action. You combine strong attention to detail with an understanding of the wider commercial picture. Proactive in identifying risks, improving processes, and ensuring teams have the information and support they need to perform effectively, you are a natural connector, able to bring together commercial teams and specialist expertise from across a business so that opportunities benefit from the right thinking, capabilities, and resources at the right time.
