Can candidates successfully transition between industries in Commercial Excellence roles?

Core Commercial Excellence skills such as pricing strategy, revenue optimization and commercial analysis are often transferable across industries. This makes it possible for candidates to move between sectors, particularly at more junior or mid-level roles. At the same time, the level of seniority plays an important role. For more senior positions, industry-specific experience often becomes more critical. These roles typically involve greater responsibility, higher impact and higher compensation, which increases the importance of a strong and proven track record within a similar context. Our role is to assess where cross-industry experience adds value and where industry specialization is required, ensuring the right balance between fresh perspective and proven expertise.

How do you ensure the right match within a specific industry context?

We combine deep functional expertise with an understanding of industry-specific dynamics. Rather than focusing on titles alone, we assess how a candidate’s experience translates to your environment. This ensures that both the technical skills and the industry context align with your organization’s needs.

How does your network support different industries and markets?

Our network is both specialized and diverse. It includes professionals across multiple industries and regions, each with their own experience and context. This allows us to identify candidates who not only bring the right expertise, but also understand the specific challenges of your market.

Commercial Excellence Executive Search

Commercial Excellence in Logistics and Transport

In Logistics and Transport, Commercial Excellence is closely linked to operational reality. Pricing and revenue decisions are shaped by capacity, service levels, network design, fuel and labour costs, and reliability expectations. Commercial teams must balance margin protection with competitive pressure, while managing complex rate structures, contract terms, surcharges and customer specific agreements. The result is that pricing is not only analytical. It requires clear governance, disciplined execution and strong collaboration between commercial, finance and operations.

Hiring is challenging because the best professionals combine data driven decision making with practical judgement and stakeholder influence. They need to understand cost to serve, route profitability, contract negotiation and the customer experience across the full delivery chain. The right profile also depends on your maturity and business model. Some organisations need a first hire who creates structure and improves price discipline. Others need leaders who build capabilities, implement tooling and scale a team across regions. From specialist roles to director, VP and executive level, we help organisations secure talent that protects margin, improves commercial performance and supports sustainable growth.

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The benefits of working with us

Our focus is not on finding just any candidate, but on identifying the best candidate for the organisation. By considering the company, its stage of development and the maturity of Commercial Excellence, we create matches that work in practice and support long-term growth. We combine this with a personal and direct approach, short communication lines and close collaboration, because we believe this delivers the best results.

Testimonials

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I would highly recommend working with Pieter. He played a defining role in helping us fill a very senior Pricing role, not only by connecting us to good clients but also consulting on the needs for the role. Despite the highly specific requirements, he remained persistent, continuously refining the...

Tim Beurkens Director Category & Revenue Management at Coda | E-com | FMCG

I can’t thank Pieter enough for his persistence and integrity in finding the perfect fit for our organisation. Despite my misgivings about his initial candidate proposal, Pieter believed in the candidate (driven by his understanding of our business needs and culture) and had the intelligence and...

John Watson Director Purchasing, Assortment & Pricing | Raja

I partnered with Pieter van der Houwen on the recruitment of a Revenue Manager for our Commercial Excellence team at Vrumona. Operating in a relatively niche market, Pieter demonstrated strong market insight and access to a high quality network of candidates. Beyond that, he added real value by...