High-end European luxury furniture MNC required Head of Contract Sales

The client is a leading brand in the high-end furniture business that had over many years built a very successful retail B2C business in Japan.

The Managing Director had spotted a growing opportunity in the Contract B2B space due to a growing appetite amongst clients for luxury furnishings in their places of business and was now looking for a strong leader to expand their business in this area.

The client’s brief was to target candidates from a very small, very specific list of direct competitors in the high-end furniture space.

The brief was further complicated by the fact that the client had several very good partner relationships with some of the top potential target companies, which were therefore off-limits.

Working with the client we were able to expand the brief by focusing not only on clients in the high-end furniture sector, but also drawing up additional targets by mapping out the supply chains of the client’s target customers and looking at the companies that sold into those customers. The client was actively engaged in the search throughout with timely feedback, referral suggestions and openness to out-of-the-box solutions to drive the search forward.

Within the first 30 days of search kick-off, we had established a very comprehensive map of the industry with in-depth coverage of the key-players and their movements not only in the contract sales segment, but useful market-intelligence on the industry overall and current trends affecting it.

From a talent perspective, the client was quickly able to realize the limitations in the initial budget outlined for the role and adjusted accordingly to meet market expectations. We were able to provide a range of profiles for the client to meet from, slightly less experienced, but high potential to potentially overqualified, but with the drive and willingness to work in smaller function to build a business.

We worked with the client and candidates to facilitate the process throughout and after several interviews. The client highlighted an individual they felt had shown the best fit to the needs of the role and most importantly the company’s culture and values.

The final step of the process was for the candidate to give a full sales presentation, as a way to see him in action in a real world situation. After an impressive presentation, the client moved to the offer stage, in which we successfully supported compensation negotiations, the checking of references and successful acceptance of the client’s offer.

From start to finish the search was concluded within 90 days to the client’s full satisfaction.​