Building a sales leadership layer for a Series A Contech business

Fresh from its Series A and scaling quickly towards its next stage of growth, Outbuild needed a frontline sales leader who could take ownership of its Mid-Market AE team. FMC Talent helped them find the right person, from brief to accepted offer in just three weeks.

The challenge

Outbuild was growing quickly. Following its Series A, the business had its sights firmly set on the next stage of its journey and needed its commercial team to scale with it. 

Jean (VP of Sales) was looking for someone who could properly take ownership of the AE team. This wasn’t a case of adding another layer of management for the sake of it. Instead, this was about hiring a frontline leader to support their growth and give Jean the space to focus on the wider commercial strategy rather than the day-to-day management of every rep.

The new Mid-Market Sales Manager would lead the AE team, develop the reps, improve deal quality, bring greater consistency to how the team sold and forecasted, and inject fresh thinking to shape the function for the future.

And there was another important piece of the puzzle: construction technology experience.

Finding someone with strong SaaS sales leadership credentials is one thing. Finding someone who also understands the construction market, its buyers, and how technology gets sold into it narrows the field considerably.

Luckily, that’s exactly what our Digital Construction team are experts at.
 

The process

We ran our Full Search methodology on this project, to help them secure exactly the right person quickly.

• Built around Outbuild. Think bespoke marketing materials, advertising, and a candidate pack designed to showcase their employer brand.
• A deep dive of the market that mapped relevant, off-market talent alongside people we already had in our network.
• First-stage assessment that took the pressure off the Outbuild team. This meant that by the time they saw a candidate, they knew it was someone worth investing time in.
• A streamlined process. Regular project meetings, an active Slack channel, and close communication on both sides kept the process moving.

Our proactive, headhunting approach meant that within a short time from taking the brief we were able to share a candidate with a well-aligned background. They had an ideal combination of experience managing a mid-market function, knowledge of the construction space, and the kind of hands-on management style that would work well for Outbuild. 

Jean and the team quickly interviewed them, and the rest is (as they say!) history. 

'We spent a decent amount of time talking through what we were looking for, and Joe did a good job of understanding our specific branch of the scheduling world and what we do. We looked at the goals we wanted to achieve and worked backwards from there, which was really helpful. I also appreciated that Joe took the first filter, because that’s the most time-consuming part for us.' 

   Jean Laurent

   VP of Sales, Outbuild

The results

Within three weeks of being briefed, our candidate had accepted the offer and within five weeks they’d walked through the door to start their new role. One candidate seen, one hire made.

For a business moving quickly towards its next growth milestone, months spent searching for the right sales leader weren't really an option. By responding quickly, we helped Outbuild solve an important leadership gap quickly rather than it becoming a bottleneck as the AE team continued to grow. 

Now they have a leader in place who’s capable of developing the team and supporting Jean in shaping how the function scales from here. 

And the partnership hasn’t stopped there. We’ve since helped Outbuild grow the team further with an Enterprise Account Executive hire, and we’re excited to keep partnering with them as they build for the future.

Three weeks to hire them. Five weeks to have them in the building. We like to think that’s a job well done.

Don't just take our word for it

'It’s been really easy to work with FMC, and I’ve always felt there was a reason behind every candidate we were introduced to. With the Sales Manager role, Josh was the one person we talked to from FMC because it was such a good fit. Josh is a 10/10 candidate - he's been awesome and he's been doing really well with the team. We're going to continue to grow, and for key roles I'd definitely hit FMC up again because it's been great.’  

   Jean Laurent

   VP of Sales, Outbuild