Recruiting an OEM Sales Manager

THE CLIENT

A global distributor of wire, cable, and associated products. Providing first class products from leading brands to OEM’s and End users in a diverse range of markets. An employee-owned organisation, with a real focus on achieving sustainable international growth.

THE ROLE

After a leadership change in the EMEA business, with Collingwood placing a new Managing Director last year, it was identified that the sales organisation in EMEA was disjointed and lacking the direction needed to achieve their ambitious growth targets.

Collingwood were subsequently retained to recruit a new member of the EMEA Senior leadership team. Reporting directly to the MD, the OEM Sales Manager is responsible for leading the sales organisation in the UK and Germany, driving a proactive sales culture that encourages solution selling and the creation of long-term partnerships.

As a member of the leadership team, it was clear that this individual needed to demonstrate a strong blend of strategy and execution, ideally with experience of building and leading teams in the UK, Germany, and wider Europe.

THE SOLUTION

This position was the first hire into the leadership team under the new Managing Director and therefore it was important we sourced an impressive candidate, with the ability to drive short term change, whilst building for long term growth. It was evident to us following a thorough briefing call that there would be challenges with this search, specifically the need for this individual to be based out of an office in remote Germany.

Following a thorough search, we identified a talent pool of candidates that possessed the relevant skill and experience, this talent pool was shallow having less than 50 candidates. It was therefore critical that we approached people in a very personal and specific manner to ensure maximum engagement. We therefore sent personalised approaches referencing key points of interest in their experience to gain as much interest as possible. We took interested candidates through a robust Collingwood interview process to ensure the strongest shortlist possible.

We ensured that we stayed in constant contact with our client, sharing all search intelligence in a transparent manner. This interaction allowed us to keep the search on track, sharing example profiles as we progressed and utilising the intelligence to ensure our client made the right decisions.

THE RESULT

Having identified over 50 candidates we progressed 9 interested candidates through our robust internal process. Interviewing against the key competencies and skills required for the role, we narrowed the 9 candidates to a shortlist of the 3 best.

Our client utilised all our intelligence, gained both from the search and our interviews to progress the shortlist through a thorough interview process, including psychometric testing. This resulted in two candidates that our client felt were a fantastic fit. Unfortunately, the first candidate decided to stick with an internal counteroffer, we quickly offered the second candidate who accepted.