Most Stage 6 businesses meet senior commercial hiring the same way. The team has grown to 30-100+ FTEs. Revenue is north of £10M. The founder is still functioning as the de facto head of every commercial decision — pricing, sales hires, marketing direction, customer success escalation, board narrative. The conversation about a senior commercial hire — VP Commercial, Head of Revenue, Head of Growth, GM — starts. Sometimes the hire happens. Six to nine months later, the hire is gone, and the team is back to where it was, minus the salary, the disruption, and the founder's bruised confidence.
The instinct after a failed senior hire is usually to blame the candidate. Wrong fit, wrong stage, wrong industry. Sometimes that is the diagnosis. More often, the candidate was capable; the role they landed in had no structural layer for them to step into, and the system that brought them in was thin to begin with.
Why senior commercial hires fail at Stage 6
Stage 6 is a different hiring problem than Stage 5. Stage 5 senior hires are usually filling a single function gap — Head of Sales because the sales team is breaking, Head of Product because the product roadmap is constrained. Stage 6 senior hires are usually filling a cross-functional gap — the founder needs someone who can run multiple commercial functions in coordination, not just one of them well.
That cross-functional shape is harder to hire for. The candidate pool is smaller. The interview rubric is harder to design. The constraint diagnostic — which cross-functional shape does this business actually need — is non-trivial. And the failure mode is more expensive: a failed Stage 5 Head of Sales sets back one function by 9 months; a failed Stage 6 VP Commercial sets back three functions by 12 months and damages the team's confidence in senior hiring overall.
The fix is structural, and the structure has six pieces. Skip any of them and the stick rate drops. Build all of them and the hire is materially more likely to land and stay.
The six pieces of a senior commercial hire that sticks
1. Constraint diagnostic before the JD. Which senior commercial role actually moves the leverage point? VP Commercial if revenue is constrained by lack of cross-functional leadership across sales, marketing, and customer success. Head of Revenue if go-to-market is fragmented and the issue is end-to-end revenue ownership. Head of Growth if acquisition discipline (paid, organic, content, partnerships) is the specific gap. GM if the constraint is multi-team coordination at scale and the founder needs a peer-shaped layer below them. The four shapes are not interchangeable. Stage 6 buyers who try to hire a generic 'senior commercial leader' usually end up with someone who fits no specific gap and gets squeezed out within a year.
2. JD against the actual constraint. Not a generic template. The JD names the specific business constraint the role exists to solve. 'VP Commercial who will own end-to-end revenue across sales, marketing, and customer success, install pod-lead structure across a 12-rep sales team, restructure comp around the new product mix, build the cross-sell motion to 30%+ of new revenue within 18 months, and step the founder out of daily commercial decisions by Month 6.' Specific. Bound to outcomes. Different from the same JD a £100M company would post. Salary band benchmarked to the buyer's geography and stage, not to industry-average tables that mix Stage 6 with Stage 9.
3. Scorecard, interview rubric, reference protocol. The scorecard defines what 'good' looks like for each interview stage — phone screen, structured interview, working session with the founder, panel with the team, reference protocol. The rubric ensures every candidate is scored on the same dimensions in the same order, so comparisons are real and not personality-led. The reference protocol structures backchannels — typically 6-8 references including at least three outside the candidate's listed referees, with structured questions that produce comparable answers. The discipline isn't clever; it's the difference between hiring on charisma and hiring on evidence.
4. Sourcing channels identified, first 5-10 candidates screened. Senior commercial roles don't come from job boards alone. The system identifies the right channels — executive search firm relationships, network referrals, LinkedIn outbound, alumni networks of relevant scale-up companies — and runs the first 5-10 candidates through screening during the engagement window. The buyer doesn't end the engagement at zero candidates; they end it with a curated shortlist already vetted, and the search continues into Operate Phase from there.
5. 30-60-90 plan written before the candidate starts. Day 1 the new hire walks into a documented set of priorities tied to specific business outcomes. 'In the first 30 days, you'll review the current commercial team structure, run 1:1s with every direct report, and ship a written assessment of where the structural gaps are. In the first 60 days, you'll have rebuilt the comp plan against the new revenue mix, launched the pod-lead structure, and held the first weekly commercial review. In the first 90 days, you'll have shipped a written quarterly plan with measurable revenue and margin targets, and the founder will no longer be in daily commercial decisions.' The plan isn't aspirational — it's a contract.
6. The operating layer ready to receive the hire. The most overlooked piece. A senior commercial leader who lands into a team with no comp structure, no documented sales motion, no defined customer success rhythm, and no shared dashboard is going to spend their first 6 months building the foundation rather than leading. The system that brings the hire in needs to coexist with the system the hire steps into — Workflows #13/#14 (Sales Calls That Score + The Sales Team That Runs Itself), #15 (The Account That Grows Itself), #1 (Cohort Retention Dashboard) all need to be running by the time the senior hire lands. Otherwise the hire becomes a foundation-builder, not a leader, and most senior candidates resent that bait-and-switch within a quarter.
Why the 90-180 day land time is honest disclosure, not a bug
Senior commercial roles take 90-180 days from JD posted to start date. The headhunt cycle is typically 60-90 days for a specialised role. Notice periods are 60-90 days for senior candidates. Working through the candidate funnel cleanly — phone screens, structured interviews, working sessions, references, offer negotiation, notice — adds up to 4-6 months in most markets.
That timeline doesn't fit inside a 6-month Build Phase engagement. Pretending otherwise is the bug, not the timeline itself. The honest disclosure: the system ships in Build Phase, the hire lands deep in Operate Phase. Most engagement closeouts deliver the system, the JD, the scorecard, the 30-60-90 plan, and the first 5-10 candidates already screened — not the seated hire.
Buyers who understand this in advance plan correctly. They commit to Operate Phase before Build Phase ends, because they know the senior hire will land 60-90 days into Operate. Buyers who don't understand this in advance feel like the engagement underdelivered, when actually the timeline is structurally correct and the system is the deliverable.
The two-hire reality: commercial in Build, content/authority in Operate
Stage 6 businesses typically need two senior hires within an 18-month window. The commercial hire (VP Commercial, Head of Revenue, Head of Growth, or GM — whichever the constraint diagnostic identifies) lands in Build Phase + early Operate. The content/authority hire (Head of Content, Head of Brand, or Authority Marketing Lead — for AI-citation visibility, off-site authority compounding, brand-mention engine) lands in mid Operate.
Both fit inside a 24-week Build Phase + first 6 months of Operate, but only as systems, not as seated hires by Week 24. The discipline is to scope both JDs in Build Phase, ship both 30-60-90 plans, and sequence the hires across the 12-18 month window. The buyer ends Build Phase with two ready-to-deploy senior hire systems, not one. The first one lands ~Month 5-6. The second lands ~Month 9-12.
Trying to ship both seated hires inside 6 months is the failure mode. Trying to ship one and ignore the other is the slower failure mode. Scoping both JDs and sequencing the hires is the discipline.
What the 30-60-90 plan looks like when written well
The plan that produces stick rate is specific, time-bound, and measurable. Vague plans produce vague hires; specific plans produce hires who either deliver or self-correct.
Specific looks like: 'Day 1-30: Audit the current sales motion across all 12 reps, assess pod readiness, and ship a written gap analysis. Day 31-60: Restructure comp against the new product mix (cross-sell + continuity), launch pod-lead structure with two pod leads identified, hold first weekly commercial review. Day 61-90: Ship the quarterly commercial plan with revenue, margin, and pipeline targets; the founder is no longer in daily commercial decisions; first comp cycle under the new plan completes cleanly.'
Vague looks like: 'Get to know the team, build relationships, identify priorities.' That JD produces a hire who's still building relationships at Month 6 while the founder is still in every commercial decision.
What this looks like in real businesses
A logistics business we worked with had been running with the founder as de facto VP Commercial for two years. The team was at 80 FTEs, revenue at £18M, and the founder was burning out. The constraint diagnostic identified VP Commercial as the role-shape (cross-functional gap across sales, marketing, and customer success). The system shipped in 22 weeks: JD, scorecard, comp benchmark, 30-60-90 plan, and first 8 candidates screened. The hire signed Month 6 of Operate Phase, started Month 7. By Month 10, the founder had stepped out of daily commercial decisions; pod-lead structure was live; comp was restructured; cross-sell was 18% of new revenue. The hire stuck. The founder got their calendar back.
A consulting firm took a different shape. Same Stage 6 size but the constraint was acquisition discipline, not cross-functional leadership. The diagnostic surfaced Head of Growth, not VP Commercial. The JD scoped to acquisition channel ownership (paid, content, partnerships, outbound) with a specific revenue contribution target by Month 12. The Head of Growth hire landed Month 5 of Operate Phase, started Month 6. By Month 11, paid-channel CAC had dropped 35% and content-driven inbound had become the largest acquisition channel. Different shape, different role, same discipline.
Why founders resist this
The most common resistance is the timeline aversion. Founders want the senior hire seated by the end of Build Phase because they're tired and they want relief. The honest disclosure that the hire lands 60-90 days into Operate Phase feels like a delay. It isn't — it's the actual timeline a senior commercial hire takes in any market — but it feels like one because the founder's expectation was different.
The second resistance is the budget aversion. Two senior hires (commercial + content/authority) is a meaningful cost increase. The discipline is to scope both in Build Phase but sequence them in Operate, so the cost lands across 18 months not 6. The cost is real and the cost of not making the hires is higher — Stage 7 graduation is structurally impossible without senior commercial leadership beneath the founder, and the cost of running another 18-24 months as the de facto VP Commercial is usually more than the salary differential.
The third resistance is the fear of getting the role-shape wrong. Hiring a VP Commercial when the constraint was Head of Growth, or vice versa, is an expensive miss. The fix is the constraint diagnostic done rigorously before the JD — and the system that does the diagnostic in Build Phase is exactly the deliverable the engagement provides. The founder doesn't have to guess; the diagnostic surfaces the right shape from the data.
The bottom line
Stage 6 senior commercial hires fail not because candidates are wrong but because the system that brings them in is thin, and the operating layer they land into has no structure for them to lead. The fix is six pieces — constraint diagnostic, role-shaped JD, scorecard, 30-60-90 plan, sourcing pipeline, and the operating layer ready to receive — and they compound into a hire that sticks.
By Week 20 you have a defensible senior-hire system and a candidate pool ready to interview. The hire lands in Operate Phase with the rubric backing every decision. The 90-180 day land time is honest disclosure, not a bug. And the founder steps out of daily commercial decisions by Month 6 of the senior hire's tenure, not by Week 24 of Build Phase. That's the timeline. Build the system, run it cleanly, and the hire sticks.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do we know whether to hire VP Commercial, Head of Revenue, Head of Growth, or GM?
The constraint diagnostic surfaces the answer from the data. VP Commercial if the gap is cross-functional leadership across sales, marketing, and customer success. Head of Revenue if the gap is end-to-end revenue ownership and go-to-market fragmentation. Head of Growth if the gap is acquisition channel discipline. GM if the gap is multi-team coordination at scale. The four shapes are not interchangeable — running the diagnostic before the JD is the difference between a hire that sticks and one that doesn't.
Why doesn't the senior hire land by Week 24 of Build Phase?
Senior commercial roles take 90-180 days from JD posted to start date. The headhunt cycle is 60-90 days, notice periods are 60-90 days, and the candidate funnel adds another 4-8 weeks. That timeline doesn't fit inside 6 months — pretending otherwise is the bug. The system ships in Build Phase; the hire lands 60-90 days into Operate.
Do we really need two senior hires (commercial + content/authority)?
Most Stage 6 businesses do, but they don't both fit inside Build Phase. The discipline is to scope both JDs and sequence the hires across 12-18 months. Commercial hire lands ~Month 5-6 of Operate. Content/authority hire lands ~Month 9-12. Both 30-60-90 plans get written in Build Phase so the buyer ends with two deployable systems, not one.
What happens if the first senior hire doesn't work out?
The system handles it cleanly because the scorecard, 30-60-90 plan, and reference protocol provide structural data on whether the hire is delivering. If the hire isn't on track by Month 4 of their tenure, the gap is visible and the conversation happens cleanly. The candidate pool from the original sourcing pipeline often has the next viable hire already screened. Most failed senior hires fail because the failure mode is invisible until Month 9; the system makes it visible by Month 4.
How does this fit into the wider Get Profitable Growth engagement?
Workflow #6 Senior Hire That Sticks ships Weeks 11-20 + Operate Phase. The system runs in parallel with Workflows #1, #4, #11, and #14 — the operating layer the hire lands into. By Week 20 the system is shipped, candidates are screened, and the buyer is positioned to make the hire in early Operate Phase. The content/authority hire (the second senior role) gets scoped in Operate Phase with its own 30-60-90 plan ready to deploy when timing supports.