Two comments landed on an article I wrote on LinkedIn this week, both from experienced readers.
One thought the job title was wrong. Commercial Director undersells the job; call it Chief Commercial Officer.
The other thought the ownership split was wrong. Marketing does more of the six components than it had been given credit for, especially around pricing.
Neither reader was wrong in their opinion. A similar discussion followed with another founder about how to define and label a new role: how title links to role, how role links to experience, and how to resolve it when only two of the three line up.
That has got me thinking.
For years I have watched people become obsessed with the job title: employees, job applicants, recruiters, even senior leaders. Almost nobody interrogates the job itself, and what the business actually requires the person to do, day to day.
Job descriptions do not help. Many are templated: lifted from the last hire, a competitor’s advert, or whatever recruiter shorthand exists for the role. They describe a category of person, not the real gap the business needs filled.
The answer is not a better title. It is going back to the commercial drawing board and mapping the outcomes the role needs to deliver, first.
The blueprint
Before writing a job spec, or arguing about what to call the role, map three things in this order. Getting the order wrong is where most plans go quietly inside-out.
- Key stakeholders. Who has a critical role in the commercial success of the business? Not individual names, but groups: customers, employees, shareholders, and so on.
- The strategic lever for each one. Not what the business needs from them, but what they need from the business. What is their decision criteria? What would they list if asked why they buy, stay, or invest?
- The objective set for each lever. What needs measuring to make this happen, and what the business wants back from the stakeholder in return, stated as a number that could sit in front of a £, a #, or a %. A true KPI.
That order matters more than it looks. The moment a business is under pressure, the instinct is to skip step two and jump straight from stakeholder to objective: “Revenue is down. We need more revenue.”
Nobody asked what the stakeholder needed first. The objective is not really an objective; it is the business renaming its own anxiety.
What this looks like in practice
Say the key stakeholder is written down as current corporate clients. They are quietly letting their retainers lapse and signing with someone else.
The inside-out instinct says: revenue is down, hire a New Business Sales Executive to replace them.
The outside-in move is slower and less comfortable: go back to the clients who left and ask why. The factor that shifted may not have been price at all. It could have been speed of delivery, or a service model no longer fit for purpose.
Hire the salesperson anyway, and the role has been built to solve a problem that was never diagnosed. The leaky bucket keeps leaking, and every eye in the business is on the person who made the call.
That is the gap the role should be built around.
Compare this with recruiting on title alone. “We need a new Head of Marketing,” so the business spends serious time and money finding the best marketing professional it can. They have worked for well-known brands, hold a shelf of industry awards, and excel at brand activation and SEO.
Brand activation and SEO were never the real problem. The team is not using the CRM properly, so the data is out of date. Pricing has not been reviewed in five years. Margins are shrinking as headcount grows. Nobody owns demand and lead generation.
Nothing wrong with the title itself. The role required is a different one entirely.
Titles stick
The title is the label attached to help the right person find the role. Roles change constantly; they adapt and expand. Titles, once printed on a business card and a LinkedIn header, are far harder to shift, and they tend to have a ceiling.
The salary transparency question
There is something else worth watching: the UK government has a consultation open until 27 October 2026 on requiring salary ranges in job adverts.
Nothing has been decided yet. The detail behind it, whether that is an exact figure, a range, or a benchmark rate, is still out for debate.
There has been little commentary on the potential fallout for existing employee relationships. Consider what happens if the requirement lands as currently proposed. If a business has not done the stakeholder-lever-objective work (employees are a key stakeholder too), the honest answer to “why does this role pay what it pays” does not exist. An employee who joined five years ago, on a salary that has barely kept pace with inflation, sees a new hire recruited at a higher rate for a similar role. Explaining that gap becomes considerably harder.
The easy way out becomes title inflation: inventing something grand enough on paper to justify the number, rather than explaining the gap it closes. “Senior Global Principal Strategic Client Partner” becomes a mouthful, and it is a weaker position to negotiate from than the one most businesses are in today.
“What title do we put for you?”
A fractional role started recently, and the client asked the obvious onboarding question: “What title do we put for you?”
The answer: “Whatever works for you. I am here to deliver the output. That is the result I am measured on.”
The title was irrelevant to the engagement. What mattered was the result the role had been brought in to deliver.
Compare that with a meeting sat in years ago, where someone asked a CEO how he would like to be introduced.
He banged his fist on the table: “I am the Group CEO, and that is how you will introduce me.”
Nobody left that meeting more confident in the plan. They left with a much clearer read on where his priorities really sat.
The takeaway
Before the next hire, promotion, or restructure, resist the urge to start with the title.
Think commercially, and start with:
- Which key stakeholder is currently underserved?
- What do they need that is not being delivered? Not what the business needs from them.
- What measurable objective is behind target, and how will this hire close that gap?
Write the role around that gap. Then, and only then, put a title on it.
Call it whatever fits. The job that needs doing does not care what is on the business card.
If every title were stripped out of the business tomorrow, would anyone be confused about who is meant to be doing what?
For a structured way to map stakeholders, levers, and objectives before the next hire, explore the diagnostics suite or get in touch.
Frequently asked questions
What is the blueprint method for defining a commercial role?
A three-step sequence: identify the key stakeholder group affected, define the strategic lever (what that stakeholder needs from the business), then set a measurable objective, a £, #, or % figure, that closes the gap. The role, and its title, follow from that sequence rather than leading it.
Why does mapping stakeholders before objectives matter?
Skipping straight to an objective under pressure, such as “revenue is down, we need more revenue”, usually means the business has renamed its own anxiety rather than diagnosed the real gap. Mapping the stakeholder’s decision criteria first surfaces the actual cause, which is often not the one assumed.
How might the UK’s proposed salary transparency rules affect job titles?
A UK government consultation open until 27 October 2026 is considering requiring salary ranges in job adverts. Businesses that cannot explain why a role pays what it pays, because the stakeholder-lever-objective work was never done, risk resorting to title inflation to justify the figure rather than explaining the gap the role closes.
Should a job title be decided before or after the role is defined?
After. A title is a label to help the right candidate find the role. It should be attached once the stakeholder gap, lever, and measurable objective are mapped, not used as the starting point for the job spec.
