Commercial Leadership Team | Major Newspaper
NGS Global recruited a team of commercial leaders for a rapidly transforming European news publishing business.
Background
Our client was a major European news publishing business that has one of the highest and most loyal readership bases of any newspaper in the world, with 25% of the country’s population reading it on a daily basis.
A new CEO was in the process of completely restructuring the sales and product department with new remuneration structures and sales targets. Moreover, he was undertaking a large-scale, transformative digitization process. The company had been a traditional print media business for many decades, and the CEO was strategically developing an enhanced and sophisticated range of digital product offerings and subscription models for both B2C and B2B.
The Need
The CEO urgently needed three seasoned and progressive business development executives to drive adoption and revenue through a range of both traditional and digital offerings: a Chief Sales Officer, a Director of Key Account Management, and a Regional Director of Sales.
The CEO was most interested in digital sales executives, as long as they had some exposure and knowledge of traditional media. However, he was also very open to business development leaders from a range of industries. His sales team needed to be highly commercially astute, as well as have deep experience in B2B product development, and to show agility, commitment, and drive.
Strategy and Approach
Although our team on the ground knew a lot of people in the industry, they knew that the successful candidates could come from other sectors. The search team were structured and detailed in their approach, undertaking extensive and original research. NGS Global’s diligent search process uncovered a wide range of exceptional potential candidates from industries ranging from FMCG to telecom.
Whilst the opportunity to work for a top-tier, household brand-name media company obviously had its appeal in the market, the fact that the organization was pivoting and undertaking a reprioritization process (along with a reassessment of executive compensation) required a very nuanced pitch to candidates. We focused on the fact that the roles had significant upside growth within the context of a company-wide digital transformation project.
Outcome
NGS Global recruited three exceptional candidates, including a Chief Sales Officer from the media industry who had almost 40 years of experience and a phenomenal reputation.
Our NGS Global Value-Add
• Deep understanding of the client’s requirements from both a technical and cultural perspective
• Original research
• Deep understanding of the industry
• Search execution by senior partners who understood how to sell this unique opportunity to highly qualified candidates.
Contact Georg Unger (Project Lead)
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