Driving business performance, from prospecting to European commercial strategy

Core competencies

• Business Development

• Pre-sales

• Bid Management

• Sales Operations

• Pipeline Management

• Negotiation

• Commercial Performance Analysis

• International Team Coordination

• Cross-functional Leadership

• Stakeholder Management

Context

Throughout my career, I have held successive roles in Sales, Pre-sales, Bid Management, and Western Europe Delivery Enablement, giving me a comprehensive understanding of the commercial lifecycle.

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This progression enabled me to contribute across every stage of the revenue engine, from business development and opportunity qualification to solution design, strategic bids, pipeline governance, and commercial capability development at the European level.

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I have worked in both fast-growing technology companies and global IT services organizations, primarily across Cloud, Cybersecurity, Digital Workplace, and Managed Services. Alongside this operational experience, I strengthened my commercial expertise through executive training in consultative selling and negotiation.

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Over time, I developed a strong conviction: commercial performance is not driven by Sales alone. It depends on an organization's ability to align commercial ambition, operational capabilities, and strategic decision-making around a shared view of opportunities.

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The challenge

Although the organizations differed in size and maturity, I consistently encountered the same structural challenges.

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Commercial opportunities were managed locally, priorities shifted rapidly, and Pre-sales teams were often engaged late in the sales cycle. Resource planning was reactive, while strategic bids required contributions from multiple functions without a consistent governance model.

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At the European level, these challenges were amplified by country-based silos. Each country managed its own pipeline with limited visibility into regional opportunities, available expertise, or delivery capacity. As a result, leadership lacked the consolidated insight required to prioritize investments, anticipate future capability needs, and support sustainable growth.

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The real challenge was therefore not increasing the number of opportunities, but building a commercial engine capable of aligning people, capabilities, and strategic priorities across the organization.

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My approach

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Over the years, I developed a structured approach to commercial performance built around one principle: an opportunity is not successful when it is signed, but when it can be successfully delivered.

My approach combines four complementary dimensions.

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Structuring opportunity generation

I supported Sales teams in qualifying opportunities, understanding customer requirements, and defining winning solution strategies.

In my first Pre-sales role, I managed 70 to 80 opportunities per year, representing approximately 30% of the company's total pre-sales activity, within a team of only three to four Pre-sales Engineers.

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Securing strategic opportunities

I led international bids worth €10M to €30M, coordinating up to 15 contributors across more than five countries.

Working with architects, finance, service management, transition, delivery, and partner teams, I transformed complex customer requirements into competitive, executable proposals, from bid qualification through negotiations and due diligence.

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Driving commercial performance

As Pre-sales Manager, I became the company's single point of coordination for all pre-sales activities.

I designed a consolidated pipeline management framework capturing opportunity maturity, forecast revenue, resource allocation, and pre-sales effort. This provided objective data to prioritize opportunities, optimize resource allocation, and better understand acquisition costs.

I also led weekly commercial pipeline reviews, ensuring continuous alignment between Sales and technical teams around priorities, workload, and delivery readiness.

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Building European commercial governance

As Western Europe Delivery Enablement Manager, I expanded this approach across eight European countries.

I established and facilitated a weekly governance forum bringing together regional Pre-sales leaders to consolidate major opportunities, identify capability gaps, anticipate resource requirements, and align commercial ambitions with regional delivery capacity.

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These governance meetings also supported the rollout of new regional service offerings by ensuring that commercial teams promoted solutions backed by existing or planned delivery capabilities.

Throughout every stage of the commercial lifecycle, my objective remained the same: maintaining alignment between business objectives, operational capacity, and strategic priorities.

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Results

This approach delivered measurable results across multiple dimensions.

From a commercial perspective, I contributed to 25 new business wins, representing €813K in revenue, including €636K in recurring business (78%).

In Pre-sales, I managed approximately 150 opportunities over two years, achieving an estimated 75% win rate on competitive bids while maintaining a median response time of six days, balancing responsiveness with proposal quality.

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On strategic pursuits, I led several international bids ranging from €10M to €30M, coordinating multicultural teams of 10 to 15 specialists across Europe and India.

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At the regional level, the governance practices I established improved pipeline visibility, strengthened collaboration between Sales, Pre-sales, Portfolio, and Delivery teams, and enabled better anticipation of future capability and recruitment needs.

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Alongside these responsibilities, I coached business professionals through the French Validation des Acquis de l'Expérience (VAE) process for the Business Engineer qualification, achieving a 100% certification success rate. Working with professionals from different industries also broadened my understanding of commercial models and enriched my own approach.

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Beyond operational achievements, this experience helped shift commercial management from opportunity tracking toward value creation, where business decisions are made with equal consideration for commercial potential, delivery capability, and long-term strategic objectives.

What this experience enables me to bring to organizations today

Today, I see commercial performance as a matter of governance, alignment, and execution, rather than sales activity alone.

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Rather than focusing solely on pipeline metrics or revenue targets, I assess the entire growth engine: how opportunities are generated, qualified, prioritized, transformed into solutions, and ultimately delivered.

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This perspective enables organizations to improve forecasting accuracy, strengthen collaboration between Sales, Pre-sales, Portfolio, and Delivery teams, anticipate capability requirements, and make more informed investment decisions.

Ultimately, it helps align business strategy, operational capabilities, and growth ambitions around a common execution model.

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In my view, high-performing organizations are not those that generate the most opportunities. They are those that consistently convert opportunities into successful outcomes through a commercial engine that is aligned from prospecting to delivery.