Commercial Excellence Lead

dentsu•Chicago, IL

21h•Remote

About The Position

The Commercial Excellence Lead joins Merkle’s Commercial Excellence team within the Client & Commercial organization. The role helps leaders and teams make informed decisions about managing and growing the business by turning complex commercial information into clear insights, recommendations, and actions. It works across client leadership, sales, marketing, delivery, and other cross-functional teams, covering portfolio-level planning and prioritization as well as individual client and deal decisions. The position determines where the business should focus, monitors performance and pipeline, identifies risks and opportunities, and gives leaders the information and recommendations needed to act. Success requires comfort with reporting and data, technology fluency, strong analytical and commercial judgment, operational rigor, and the ability to communicate and influence across organizational levels. The role connects information from multiple sources, diagnoses what is happening and why, forms a clear point of view, and translates that analysis into practical recommendations.

Requirements

At least 5 years of experience in commercial operations, sales operations or enablement, client leadership, revenue strategy, business operations, consulting, or a related role involving analysis and cross-functional business decision support.
Strong analytical and diagnostic skills, including the ability to synthesize information from multiple sources, identify patterns and root causes, and convert findings into recommendations.
Strong commercial acumen, including experience interpreting revenue, pipeline, forecast, client, or sales-performance information to assess risks, opportunities, priorities, and tradeoffs.
Advanced Excel proficiency and experience with business intelligence, CRM, or revenue technology platforms.
Experience enabling business processes and driving adoption, including translating changing business needs and processes into practical workflows, communications, training, or operating practices.
Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, including the ability to communicate complex information clearly, facilitate cross-functional conversations, and develop concise recommendations for senior and executive audiences.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Power BI, Salesforce, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, Altify, Microsoft Copilot, or comparable platforms.

Responsibilities

Develop client and portfolio intelligence by connecting revenue, pipeline, client, relationship, market, and other signals to identify growth opportunities, business risks, and areas requiring attention.
Translate analysis into actionable recommendations by diagnosing underlying drivers, evaluating business implications and tradeoffs, and providing leaders with a clear point of view on where and how to act.
Support revenue and pipeline planning and management, including pipeline health, opportunity qualification and progression, forecasting inputs, prioritization, and identification of commercial risks and gaps.
Monitor commercial performance and governance by tracking KPIs, goals, adoption, and adherence to agreed commercial practices, and identifying trends, gaps, and areas requiring intervention.
Deliver executive-ready reporting and decision support through recurring governance cadences, translating commercial performance, risks, opportunities, and recommendations into clear narratives for senior leaders.
Enable commercial processes, tools, and ways of working by partnering with process and product owners to translate changes into practical workflows, communications, training, and guidance for business users, and channel end-user feedback to support continuous improvement.
Drive adoption and accountability for agreed commercial practices, reinforcing expectations for data quality, process adherence, opportunity management, and other required ways of working.
Partner across Client, Sales, Marketing, Finance, Delivery, and other functions to align stakeholders, resolve cross-functional issues, and improve commercial execution.
Maintain strong operational and data discipline, ensuring commercial analyses, reporting, systems of record, and deliverables are accurate, reliable, timely, and actionable.