Two senior sales appointments in five weeks. The half of the story that usually goes untold: a client who could decide.

In late March, I signed two mandates. Senior Sales Managers for two geographically and culturally challenging territories at a DACH premium cycling manufacturer: Western Germany combined with a parallel BENELUX market entry, and Eastern Germany in the premium segment. Both territories had to be built from scratch — no predecessor, no established distribution network, no revenue. Every additional week of vacancy cost the client immediate market presence. By early May, both employment contracts were signed.

Five weeks from mandate signature to employment contract — for profiles where the relevant candidate pool numbers barely twenty people in the entire market. It is worth being open about why this worked — and why it likely wouldn’t have worked through conventional search routes.

WHAT MADE THESE MANDATES DIFFICULT.

The client is a scale-up in the premium e-bike segment with a clear brand position. Both roles carried the same profile requirement: senior-level credentials, at least fifteen years of professional experience, an existing customer network, a feel for multiple market cultures. A defined salary band that was not open to negotiation. And in both cases the understanding that candidates would be 50+ — the depth of experience required couldn’t realistically come from anywhere else.

The territories were difficult for two distinct reasons:

For the Western mandate, the client needed someone who could build two markets in parallel: Western Germany and BENELUX. Both territories without an existing distribution network, both ground-up. That translated into specific demands: fluent German and Dutch, hands-on familiarity with both markets — IBD and OEM alike — and the ability to operate in the business culture of each. Anyone who has tried to place premium e-bikes in the Netherlands without a Pon or Accell background knows what this requirement actually means. This role wasn’t one market entry. It was two, running in parallel.

For Eastern Germany, the profile requirement was identical, but the geographic reality different. Eastern Germany is considered a complex territory in the premium segment — different dealer structure than the West, different purchasing power distribution, different brand acceptance. Anyone who doesn’t know the territory from years of personal responsibility there will fail within the first year.

IF YOU’VE NEVER DONE THE JOB YOURSELF, YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND IT.

Before we get to how the appointments were made, an observation that ran through both mandates.

Anyone who has never been responsible for a sales territory cannot judge what the role actually demands. Job descriptions read, in most cases, like wish lists — languages, experience, network, willingness to travel. What they don’t capture is the real profile: the ability, in a season meeting with a premium dealer, to recognise within five minutes whether he’ll genuinely sell the model or whether he’s just nodding politely. The difference between collegiality and calculation in a distributor negotiation. The moment a dealer turns a pre-order into a re-order — and the moment he steps back.

These things never appear in a brief. They aren’t easy to ask about. They have to be understood by the headhunter, because otherwise they won’t be picked up in the first conversation with the candidate either.

The same applies to international markets. Anyone who has never worked between BENELUX, DACH and Scandinavia personally tends to treat the differences as nuance. They are not nuance. A Dutch premium dealer communicates differently, calculates differently, builds relationships differently than a German one. Anyone who can’t feel that difference will eventually present a candidate who calls three months later and says: “I don’t understand why they aren’t buying.”

WHY CONVENTIONAL SEARCH WOULDN’T HAVE WORKED HERE.

If you set up a search like this through job portals or CV-database recruiters, you typically don’t come anywhere near the relevant profiles. The reason is straightforward: the candidates who qualify aren’t publicly available. They’re in established positions, they don’t respond to job adverts, and their CVs sit in no database that a recruiter could sort by keywords.

Beyond that: Senior Sales Managers with fifteen years in the industry recognise a sales pitch in ten seconds. And they recognise just as quickly whether the person calling has ever stood in front of a dealer themselves. Anyone in the latter category has lost the conversation before it begins. These candidates can only be reached when the caller can immediately understand, from their own industry experience, what makes this particular mandate genuinely attractive — and what doesn’t.

HOW THE APPOINTMENTS HAPPENED.

Both candidates came from a personal network built up over more than twenty years — partly from people I’ve worked with directly, partly from contacts that have developed over years in the industry. Their performance was something I had either observed myself or verified at first hand. References didn’t need collecting — they were already known.

For the Western/BENELUX mandate, I approached a Dutchman who has lived in Germany for years and has held several senior positions in the cycling industry. Fluent in both languages, both markets covered from direct sales responsibility. For Eastern Germany, a candidate known and recommended for outstanding performance across several premium brands — though one we had to bring back into the cycling industry, having left it in the meantime. A high performer reactivated for this specific role.

In the first conversation with both, the topic wasn’t the role. It was what currently drives them, what frustrated them at their most recent industry station, and how they think about the client’s product. The last point was the deciding filter.

Some senior profiles are mercenaries. They produce revenue in the short term by running through their network — but they invest no substance, because they know they’ll be gone again in two years. To recognise this, you need to have stood in sales yourself long enough to hear the difference in the first call. It isn’t whether a candidate knows the product. It’s whether they want to explain it — for three years, in every dealer training session. Both candidates in these mandates passed that filter without our having to look long.

The timeline:

Week 1: Mandate signed at the end of March, immediate profile development and identification of the inner candidate circles. First contact with three candidates per mandate.

Week 2: In-depth interviews with the candidates, personal clarification of interest, motivation to move, realistic expectations. First profiles sent to the client.

Week 3: First interviews between client and candidates — both mandates running in parallel.

Week 4: Deeper conversations and negotiation of terms. With both candidates it was clear from the outset that the client’s salary band wouldn’t be exceeded — we’d established this in the first calls.

Week 5: Both employment contracts signed. Early May.

What didn’t happen during all this: no last-minute renegotiation, no counter-offer from the current employer that won the candidate back, no surprises at the closing stage. That’s not coincidence. When the right candidates are approached from the start and the right questions are asked early, you don’t end up in those situations.

WHAT THE CLIENT DID RIGHT.

For all the credit the personal network deserves — five weeks would not have been possible without the right client on the other side. That’s a point that often gets left out of stories like these. So briefly:

The decision-maker was an industry professional himself. Not a market and candidate expert across regions — that wasn’t his job. But he could place our proposals fairly, because he understood from his own experience what a role of this kind actually requires. The brief and the candidate profile were clear from the start, communication was direct, decisions were made on the basis of facts — quickly, but not impulsively, and without weeks of deliberation.

A search doesn’t only take a long time because the right candidates are hard to find. It often takes a long time because the client isn’t in a position to bring it to a close quickly. In this case, the speed on both sides was the result of professionals on each — a boutique on one side, and a decisive industry professional on the other.

WHAT EXECUTIVES SHOULD TAKE AWAY FROM THIS.

Search speed is not the result of hurry. It is the result of knowing the right candidates before the mandate is even signed. A search that begins with an empty funnel takes months, often over half a year. A search that begins with a curated shortlist from a personal network takes five weeks.

The price for this is discipline: we don’t take every mandate. A maximum of twenty per year, of which a maximum of twelve are Executive Search. Because a personal network in a narrow industry isn’t infinitely scalable — and because every mandate we accept must be handled with the substance that makes this kind of speed possible in the first place.

A note on assurance for clients: on Headhunting and Senior mandates of this kind we provide a six-month retention guarantee. On Executive Search mandates for C-level positions, eighteen months. Neither is a marketing promise. It is the consequence of the logic: if we know the candidates personally and vouch for them, we can vouch for the appointment too.

A headhunter costs money. A wrong appointment in a new sales territory costs an entire season. In an industry where the season runs once a year, that’s a calculation that works without a spreadsheet.

———

A question for the managing directors here: how long does a senior sales search typically take in your business — and what does the cost of vacancy run to per month?