Role purpose
The Chief Commercial Officer will lead ICE Group’s transition from a service-line-by-service-line commercial model to an integrated, scalable and data-led commercial system. The role exists first and foremost to deliver profitable commercial growth: increasing revenue, margin, market share, customer value and brand authority across Recruitment, Training, Payroll and OnSite Interpreting Services.
The CCO will align Sales, Business Development, Marketing, Brand and External Communications under one executive leader, build a unified go-to-market strategy and turn ICE Group’s “career lifecycle partner” ambition into measurable commercial outcomes.
This role requires an ambitious, highly driven and commercially astute executive who combines strategic thinking with disciplined execution. The successful candidate will demonstrate strong business judgement, a bias for action, the confidence to make difficult commercial decisions and the energy to mobilise the organisation behind an ambitious growth agenda.
Core mandate
The CCO’s mandate is to build and lead a single commercial system for ICE Group: one strategy, one pipeline discipline, one customer-insight loop, one brand architecture, one commercial scorecard and one cross-sell rhythm across all business units. The role will prioritise integrated services, profitable growth and long-term customer outcomes over transactional activity.
This is not solely a strategy, sales-management or marketing leadership role. The CCO is personally accountable for commercial outcomes and is expected to remain close to customers, markets, major opportunities and performance while building the systems, people and capability required to scale the Group.
Key responsibilities
1. Group commercial strategy and profitable growth
- Own and execute ICE Group’s group-wide commercial strategy across Recruitment, Training, Payroll and OnSite Interpreting Services. Identify where ICE Group should invest, compete, expand or withdraw, applying sound commercial judgement to market attractiveness, customer economics, capacity and risk.
- Translate the Strategic Growth Plan ambition into annual commercial plans, business-unit targets, channel priorities and measurable growth initiatives with accountable owners.
- Translate the Strategic Growth Plan into annual commercial plans, business-unit targets, channel priorities, investment choices and measurable growth initiatives.
- Build a professional business development engine that supports sustainable growth, deep partnerships, thought leadership and systematic cross-selling.
- Partner with the Leadership Team, Finance and BU leaders to ensure commercial plans feed into forecasting, annual budgets, capacity planning and investment decisions.
2. Executive Leadership - Sales and Marketing
- Move comfortably between Board-level strategic thinking and detailed engagement with customers, opportunities, pipeline and team performance.
- Provide the CEO and Board with clear, evidence-based views on commercial performance, market developments, opportunities, risks and strategic choices.
- Represent ICE Group externally with credibility and authority among customers, partners, industry bodies and other key stakeholders.
- Lead Sales, Business Development, Marketing, Brand and External Communications as one integrated commercial function. Intervene decisively where performance is behind plan, identify root causes and implement corrective action.
- Establish shared planning, campaign, pipeline and performance routines between sales and marketing. Ensure ICE Group’s external message is clear, consistent and aligned to the “career lifecycle partner” proposition.
- Manage the Marketing function to develop a group-wide communications and digital marketing strategy to serve clients, students, tutors, candidates, staff and partners, with KPIs for each customer type.
- Create a commercially ambitious culture characterised by pace, resilience, curiosity, ownership and continuous improvement.
3. Market positioning, segmentation and value proposition
- Define ICE Group’s priority segments, ideal customer profiles, personas and “where to play / how to win” choices.
- Further develop and clarify the value propositions for group, service-line and bundled propositions.
- Build evidence-based positioning around ICE Group’s ability to connect recruitment, training, payroll and specialist workforce services.
- Establish a regular voice-of-customer and market-insight process to inform product, service and campaign decisions.
4. Sales function owner
- Standardise sales stages, qualification criteria, opportunity definitions, lead-routing rules, proposal templates and account-review routines.
- Ensure CRM usage supports pipeline visibility, forecasting, lead attribution, cross-sell, account management and campaign effectiveness.
- Create a common sales operating rhythm across business units while preserving relationship-led strengths.
- Design and implement cross-sell capability and strategic account management
5. Marketing function owner
- Lead brand refresh, positioning, messaging, website and digital presence work in partnership with internal and external specialists.
- Own the national growth marketing strategy, including SEO, paid media, content hubs, AI/search visibility, case studies, thought leadership and regional campaigns.
- Build marketing attribution and ROI reporting, including lead quality, conversion, cost per lead, source attribution and campaign effectiveness.
- Strengthen ICE Group’s authority through workforce insights, market analysis, case studies, salary/skills intelligence and sector commentary.
6. Customer insight and product/service innovation
- Establish a recurring voice-of-customer programme and customer advisory feedback loop.
- Use customer, candidate, learner and client data to identify market needs, product gaps, campaign opportunities and cross-sell potential.
- Shape packaged offerings such as hire-and-train, train-and-place, payroll-plus-compliance, and workforce-development partnerships.
- Ensure commercial learning informs innovation, service design and digital roadmaps.
Required experience
The successful candidate should bring:
- Senior commercial leadership experience across Sales and/or Marketing, ideally in a service B2B or people-services environment.
- Credibility to operate as a C-suite peer and contribute meaningfully to enterprise strategy, Board discussions and major investment decisions.
- Demonstrated ability to scale a business into a structured, measurable commercial engine.
- Evidence of strong business acumen and commercial judgement across pricing, margin, unit economics, investment choices, budgets and resource trade-offs.
- Experience designing sales processes, CRM discipline, pipeline governance, account management and forecast reporting.
- Proven capability in brand positioning, demand generation, digital marketing, attribution and thought leadership.
- Experience with complex stakeholder environments: tenders, frameworks, public sector, SMEs, corporates, channel partners and/or regulated service delivery.
- Track record of leading teams through change, building capability and creating repeatable routines. Including the ability to work across autonomous business units while building group-wide commercial alignment.
What We Offer
- Opportunity to contribute to a growing and purpose-driven organisation
- A collaborative and supportive team environment.
- Exposure to a variety of brands, campaigns, and business units across ICE Group.
- 4-day working week( post probation)
- Pension and incremental leave
ICE Group is committed to creating an inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to achieve their potential. We welcome applications from individuals of all backgrounds and experiences and are committed to providing reasonable accommodations throughout the recruitment process.
