Sales Directors & Commercial Directors

A Sales Director is responsible for defining and delivering the commercial growth strategy across retail, wholesale, e-commerce and out-of-home channels. They lead the sales team, manage key retailer relationships, set revenue and margin targets, and ensure the business is positioned for profitable, sustainable growth. In challenger brands, the role often includes hands-on ownership of strategy, forecasting, pricing and cross-functional leadership.

A Sales Director is primarily focused on revenue delivery, retailer relationships and leading the sales team.
A Commercial Director typically has broader ownership across pricing, margin, promotional strategy, trade spend, category, forecasting and commercial planning. In many SMEs, the titles are used interchangeably — but the Commercial Director role usually carries wider P&L responsibility.

Salaries vary by size and stage of business, but typical ranges are:

Sales Director (SME/Challenger Brand): £100,000–£140,000 + bonus + LTIP
Sales Director (Blue-chip FMCG): £120,000–£160,000 + car + bonus + LTIP

Businesses typically look for:

Strong retailer relationship management (Top 4, Discounters, Amazon, or Convenience)
Experience building or restructuring a sales team
Category, pricing and margin understanding
Ability to scale revenue sustainably
P&L leadership and commercial planning
Experience in challenger brands or high-growth environments
Ability to work cross-functionally with marketing, operations, finance and supply chain

Category experience is preferred but not always essential. Many challenger brands value functional capability, retailer knowledge, commercial acumen and evidence of scaling a brand more than deep category experience. The closer the category, the shorter the ramp-up time — but transferable skills often outweigh category specificity.

Lime Talent run a specialist executive search process focused exclusively on the FMCG and consumer goods sector. This includes:

Market mapping and targeted headhunting
Salary benchmarking and role scoping
Behavioural and competency-based interviews
Shortlisting with full profiling and references
Support through offer negotiation, onboarding and retention

We work with both fast-growth challenger brands and established blue-chips, ensuring a search strategy tailored to each client’s needs.

Because challenger brands often need leaders who can roll up their sleeves, operate with limited resources, and scale rapidly. Lime Talent has deep specialism across food, drink, health, beauty and consumer goods — and a track record of placing leaders who deliver growth through Top 4, Discounters, Amazon, DTC and new channel development.

Most searches take 4–8 weeks depending on:

Complexity of the role
Attractiveness of the salary and package
Need for specific channel or category expertise
Candidate availability and notice periods
We can run accelerated searches for urgent or interim leadership hires.

Yes. We regularly place interim Sales Directors, Commercial Leads, and Head of Sales contractors, particularly for:

Maternity cover
Business turnarounds
Funding rounds
Rapid new retailer launches
Short-term gaps while recruiting a permanent hire

We work with:

Seed-stage and Series A challenger brands
VC/PE-backed growth businesses
Founder-led SMEs
Mid-size FMCG brands
Global blue-chip consumer goods groups

Our strongest niche is high-growth disruptive brands looking for hands-on commercial leaders.

Yes — while most of our placements are UK-based, we also support searches across Europe, North America and APAC, particularly for brands expanding into new regions.