What's a Commercial Associate?

Dom here, founder of Generalyst. I believe the future belongs to generalists, not specialists - for a myriad of reasons.

One of them is the rise of AI: instead of doing everything manually, AI Agents take over more and more tasks.

Which makes pretty much everybody a manager. And generalists tend to make better managers than specialists.

This is particularly relevant for the role of the Commercial Associate.

What’s a Commercial Associate?

The position has been gaining traction a lot in the UK (also thanks to the work of Jumpstart), and now we’re bringing it over to Germany. Put simply, a commercial associate is a go-to-market generalist.

They sit in the sweet spot between being a true generalist, and a sales specialist. A specialized generalist, if you will.

It’s the perfect role for someone who wants to operate like a founder on the commercial side: figure out sales strategy, executing it, and iterating on it. And the perfect role for startups who don’t yet have a full sales / marketing department. A commercial associate fills those gaps, and grows with the company.

At Omnea, one of the companies pioneering this position, a commercial associate was promoted to lead US expansion 2 years later.

The main objective: making sure the startup grows its revenue by combining a variety of activities.

What does a Commercial Associate do?

There’s a wide range of tasks associated with the position. Here’s a sample menu:

Owning the top of the funnel

A Commercial Associate often owns outbound sales efforts. First, they identify customer segments, research them, build ICPs, and finally start reaching out to them – using a variety of channels: email, social, cold calling.

Automating top-of-funnel work

Once identified, it’s part of the CA’s palette to build the first automations for outbound. This could be generating email campaigns, automating social outreach, or even implementing cold calling AIs.

CAs need to bring some sort of systems thinking to the process: they shouldn’t just own the operational work, but also constantly improve the systems.

This can be part of the work – if this is the only task that’s needed, working with a GTM Engineer would be better.

Closing deals & Account Management

Especially in early-stage settings, CAs often own smaller deals end-to-end. While the founder should still be closing most of the large deals, CAs are the next in line to run a discovery call, product demo, or even negotiate contracts.

Building the sales playbook

In Founder-led Sales, the founder still does most of the work (and rightfully so). It’s up to the founder to figure out the problems the customers have, and identify solutions; but the Commercial Associate often takes over the role of figuring out how to get customers into the door. Kind of like a combination of sales analyst and strategist.

Supporting high-leverage deals and partnerships

This is where the role becomes more like a Founder’s Associate – in larger deals, they support the founders with proposals, slide decks, coordinating follow-ups, or contractual work.

Growth Hacking

For some startups, the traditional playbooks don’t work. So it’s up to the Commercial Associate to try a variety of new things and see what sticks – such as events, physical outreach (eg. coming to a company’s office and giving away free donuts), hosting webinars, stuff like that.

This is just an overview, and you can define the role as you’d like. Fundamentally, the Commercial Associate can take on any responsibility related to Growth and GTM.

‍

What makes a great Commercial Associate?

Besides the factors that make a good generalist and the 4 pillars of the selection we run at Generalyst (track record of excellence, high agency, clarity of communication, and bias for action - for more, read our manifesto), these factors are particularly important for Commercial Associates:

Mix of people & technology skills

This position involves a lot of talking, and some rejection. CAs have to be used to that. At the same time, given the strategic & automation work, a solid understanding of no-code tools and a knack for systems thinking is equally important.

It’s not a pure sales role, nor a pure GTM Engineering role – it’s somewhere in between.

Previous sales or marketing experience

Not required, but certainly helpful: having done the work before. This doesn’t mean that the title has to say “sales” or “marketing” – you can acquire these skills in other roles too, such as recruitment, charity fundraising, or running a side hustle.

Former commercial founders are also well-suited for this role.

Comfort in facing clients

This is a client-facing role. Period. Therefore, the perfect CA has had high-stake interactions with clients before. Traditionally, this happens in consulting, but there’s a myriad of ways to learn this.

For instance, someone that ran a speaker series at their university has likely faced similar situations, negotiating with high-stake individuals.

When should you hire one?

I believe founders should still be doing sales. Nobody closes better than the founder; if you as founder can’t sell your product or service, hiring a Commercial Associate won’t solve the problem.

On the other hand, if you’re drowning in work, can consistently close deals, then it might be the right time.

Think of it as your first commercial hire to build, execute, and refine your playbook – but not at the person that solves your market risk.

If you’re a team of 2 technical founders, hiring a CA might not be enough. In that case, you may want to consider getting a former commercial founder on board as late co-founder.

Example Job Descriptions

The Commercial Associate position isn’t very common in Europe yet. Here are 2 examples from the UK/US:

Omnea Commercial Associate | Welcome to the Jungle (formerly Otta)

Crane Venture Partners Job Board

How do you hire a Commercial Associate?

Use your own network. Post a job online. The usual.

Or, if you just want to have 3-5 pre-qualified, matching candidates presented to you, you might want to consider working with Generalyst.

‍