Wildcard for Growth

CHALLENGE

To advise and assist a startup with potentially game changing technology, with applications for multiple global industry verticals to regain focus. Its temptation to secure a business development solution to capitalize opportunities for short-term gain was about to jeopardize any sound business strategy for sustained growth and organizational alignment.

ACTION

After being introduced to the company's highly tech-savvy leadership and support teams and evaluating the company's growth ambitions as well as products evolution, TRANSEARCH Netherlands launched the requested search for a head of Business Development. This first ever 'commercial talent' would drive sales in any possible application and grab any 'low hanging fruit'. The client's deep objective was to satisfy the investor, pay bills and employee salaries, and let growth come as a given.

Almost at the onset of the search, it became apparent that if its original plan had been developed, without question the company would be playing for today rather than planning for tomorrow.

Following the introduction of several highly qualified Business Development candidates, our Senior Consultant boldly asked if he could take the assignment decidedly 'off-script' by introducing a C-level 'wild card' into the board's deliberations about achieving its commercial goals.

Our experienced consultant introduced this distinctly different candidate - one with tremendous global experience and a bias for straight talk. This 'wild card' candidate quickly engaged the board in a refreshingly new and revealing conversation about creating a new roadmap for realigning and intelligently exploiting the startup's technological potential.

The introduction of our 'wild card' was the logical consequence of partnering in a consultative manner with our client. This, rather than focusing in a transactional way with its management and technically gifted founder. The tool deployed to optimize this partnering process was our proprietary TRANSEARCH Orxestra© method.

The outcome was that the Board of Directors could understand its best options for structural and long-term growth in the markets its novel products could help transform. In the words of one director, 'We had to see the breathtaking potential such a candidate could bring with our own eyes'.

IMPACT

This C-Level 'wild card' candidate completely changed our client's view of its human capital needs and its own possibilities. He brought analytical, constructive yet also starkly confrontational questions that moved our client's Board to a deeper level of 'dead honest', transparent conversations that suggested its two-year plan could require four years to fully realize. He tackled the strategic issues head-on, but he also demonstrated a very practical, pragmatic, and operational mindset as well.

Quickly, the company's Board Directors realized they didn't want a glorified sales person, but rather, a Commercial Chief Executive working side by side with the technically gifted founder.

The company hired our 'wild card' candidate. He has helped it strategize for entering two essential market spaces with the highest-yield, longest-term value. He has institutionalized clear KPIs. And while building faith and confidence in a new business plan, has helped our client secure significant Series B investment funding.

By aligning a new go-to-market focus with our client's team, business strategy and financing structure, the company's new 'Commercial CEO' has shifted mindsets internally and externally and created a platform for sustained and extraordinary growth.

CLIENT PERSPECTIVE

"If your TRANSEARCH team hadn't been diligent while also positively stubborn in its pursuit of the right, lasting solution for our company, we simply would not be where we are today... We invited six global search firms to compete for this assignment. We believed in TRANSEARCH and you took a risk we didn't ask for or even expect. You have now proven how a search firm can truly become a trusted partner. Thank you"