Functions/Sales, Marketing & Commercial
Function

Sales, Marketing & Commercial

Sales, marketing and commercial leadership covers everything between the product and the customer. Our work spans CCOs, CMOs, business heads, and the senior commercial leaders below them.

How we work here

The leadership picture in Sales & Marketing today.

The classical separation between sales and marketing has eroded. The strongest commercial leaders today move fluently between brand thinking, channel mechanics, performance marketing, and the digital tools that connect all three. Pure brand CVs without these crossovers have become a narrower bet for senior seats.

In FMCG and consumer businesses, the leadership pool is concentrated in a small number of training-ground companies. We know that pool well and have worked with it for decades. Outside FMCG, the picture is more fragmented and the mapping is more bespoke.

D2C and digital-first thinking has become its own discipline. CMOs and CCOs who can move between classical brand stewardship and platform-native execution are in short supply, and Indian businesses are competing for them with global peers.

Channel sales leadership — distributor management, modern trade, e-commerce, and increasingly quick commerce — is a distinct discipline within commercial leadership. The strongest channel leaders are often inside companies that train them well and rarely look outside.

Mandates we typically run

The seats we are asked to fill.

  • Chief Marketing Officer — for consumer brands, B2B businesses, and digital-first companies
  • Chief Commercial Officer and Chief Sales Officer — for businesses where sales is a senior board-level role
  • Head of Brand and Head of Innovation — for businesses where these sit alongside the CMO, not below
  • Head of E-commerce and Head of D2C — for businesses building digital-first sales as a parallel business
  • Head of Channel and Head of General Trade — for FMCG, consumer durables, lifestyle, and other channel-driven businesses
  • Country Sales Head and Regional Sales Head — for multinationals operating in India and Indian businesses with multi-regional sales structures
What is distinct here

Three things about Sales & Marketing search.

Marketing has been reshaped by the platforms and by data. The strongest CMOs today have moments of performance marketing, marketing tech, and data analysis in their CVs alongside classical brand work. Pure brand CVs without these moments have become a narrower bet for the most senior seats.

The training-ground companies in FMCG, consumer durables and tech remain the cradle of senior commercial talent. We map them carefully and stay in regular contact with the layer beneath their senior leadership — because the next wave of CMOs and CCOs is forming there today.

Quick commerce has emerged as a distinct commercial discipline within the larger e-commerce category. Few leaders have lived through a full cycle of it yet. The talent picture is still being formed, and we follow it closely.

Connected expertise

Our work in other functions.

Talk to us about your next leadership search.

Every enquiry is handled in confidence. Tell us about the role, and we will tell you honestly whether it is one we can do justice to.

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