Challenge: Attracting An Industry "Star" From A Prestigious Company To A Company In The Middle Of A Turn Around.

  Situation

Our client, a large UK based Global Systems Integrator, was confronting eroding profit margins in their Retail Systems Integration Consultancy. Their goal was to sell and deliver solutions earlier in their clients’ business cycle, helping to design solutions rather than just implement them. They retained us to help them hire a Partner-level Marketing Director who could design solutions and lead sales teams to successfully sell to C level Retail Business executives.

There were several challenges to finding a pool of candidates for this role. Many potential candidates were unwilling to attempt to transform a Retail consulting practice during a downturn in the Retail industry; they were already tired from the Market turmoil of the past several years.

Additionally, Retail executives tend to have experience in Database marketing, rather than Business to Business marketing. Our candidates would need to be expert in both.

  What We Did

We worked closely with our client to determine what was “Need to Have” versus “Like to Have” in the jobs’ specifications. We determined that the appropriate blend of technology, retail and marketing expertise with which to sell consulting in down market would most likely come from senior marketing or sales executives at Application Service Providers (ASP’s) in Retail Customer Relationship Marketing. We focused on recruiting on several market leading firms in this space whose market capitalization had fallen substantially.

  Results

We were able to attract several candidates fitting this profile to meet with our client and see the opportunity in being a change agent in a large, stable company. Our client hired one of them to their mutual satisfaction.