Sales Managers – Consumer Products
Challenge:
Our client was a $1bn global market leader in protection solutions, with operations in the Americas, Europe and Asia. They were struggling to improve the sales performance of one of its UK subsidiaries.
LORD were approached by a frustrated UK HR Director with a brief to recruit 2 Sales Managers. The Sales & Marketing Director for the business unit had insisted on using a large number of national recruitment agencies on a non-retained basis. After several months of trying the quality of the candidates produced had been poor and no appointments had been made.
The situation was now quite serious; Group was asking searching questions of both the Sales & Marketing Director and the UK HR Directors, as to why demonstrable improvements in the sales team had not been made.
Our challenge was to quickly deliver a step change in the calibre of candidates produced. Then to support the Sales & Marketing Director to build a sales team that would deliver their ambitious growth plans.
Method:
We met with the all the senior stakeholders and took a detailed brief. It was clear that candidates with the specific set of skills, experience and potential they were looking for, were not easily available, and would need to be headhunted from a competitor or aligned business.
Our lead consultant really needed to get under skin of this role and the company. They spent a day with Sales & Marketing Director at his Quarterly Sales Meeting in order to meet with the sales teams and to get a better understanding of the dynamics, culture and personalities within the teams. This enabled us to get a much better appreciation of what would work from a candidate fit prospective and what would not.
Results:
Our consultants conducted an exhaustive market mapping exercise and identified a list of target companies. This is where we knew that candidates with the specific skills, knowledge and experience that we were looking for would be employed.
We then prioritised individuals within those organisations and made our confidential approach. We initiated interest and encouraged the candidates to engage with the process. Potential candidates were initially sceptical, they all knew that our client was recruiting and many had been approached but had been put off by the previous agencies. The client’s employer branding had been damaged by the indiscriminate approach to candidate engagement.
However a more consultative and informed approach was appreciated by the candidates and they quickly expressed an interest. They were asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement and met with us for a first stage interview. We met with 12 high calibre individuals and shortlisted 6 to meet with our client for 2 potential Sales Manager vacancies.
Conclusion:
Our client actually made 3 hires from the shortlist, the candidates were so strong and they didn’t want to miss the opportunity to secure the additional talent when it was available.
Now “sold” on our retained search process and we have successfully completed 18 assignments for them, across their multiple divisions both in the UK and Europe.
They acknowledge that our process is very thorough and robust but also very efficient, typically taking no longer than five weeks from brief to offer acceptance. It is now clear to them, why in over twenty years LORD has not failed to successfully deliver a retained assignment.