Expanding into global markets can offer companies new opportunities to diversify their operations, reach new customers, and tap into new talent. However, global companies who are unfamiliar with the cultural differences and selling style in the U.S. may find it difficult to hire the right sales reps for their company.
If you want your company to grow or expand into new U.S. markets, or are hiring sales reps in multiple cities, then you should consider partnering with a recruiting expert.
Below is a case study featuring a global client that wanted to expand their operations in the U.S. This post will describe how Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search helped them navigate the sales hiring process in the U.S. and manage a large recruiting project that spanned across many time zones and locations.
BACKGROUND
WERMA is a global manufacturer of industrial signal devices with over 65 years of experience.
Their headquarters are located in Germany but they’ve expanded their presence in the past 10 years to include six subsidiaries across the world.
In 2016, they identified new growth opportunities in their U.S. subsidiary that would require changing the way they were selling and doing business here. Their new strategy was to move upscale into value-added products such as process automation and software integrations.
WERMA felt that their current U.S. sales reps didn’t have the strategic selling experience needed to make this type of sale. They were going to have to start from scratch and hire new sales reps, but they needed to have the right sales hiring plan and approach in place first.
HIRING CHALLENGES
While WERMA had experience hiring globally for their other subsidiaries, they knew they were going to encounter
specific obstacles that were unique to their U.S. market, including:
- Identifying and hiring sales reps experienced in dealing with direct client relationships and selling industrial solutions to original equipment manufacturers (OEM).
- Adding self-sufficient, motivated sales professionals due to the limited U.S. infrastructure and geographically distributed team.
- Coordinating the hiring process across multiple geographic areas, including the HQ in Germany, U.S. operations office in upstate New York, and candidates from across all time zones of the U.S.
After identifying these potential hiring challenges, WERMA came up with a sales hiring plan to help meet their growth goals and increase their success.
The plan was to hire four experienced Regional Sales Managers to cover territories across the U.S. over an eight-month period.
With multiple sales reps to hire and coordination across multiple geographic areas, WERMA decided to engage a sales recruiting partner for assistance.
“When it comes to beacons and sounders, we know our stuff, but when it comes to sales recruiting, we are the first to admit that we are out of our element. We really needed a firm with sales expertise to help us out and make sure we hired the right candidate for the job,” said Michael O’Neill, President at WERMA-USA.
FINDING A SALES RECRUITING PARTNER
After deciding to use an outside recruiter for their national search, WERMA quickly narrowed the search to 5 recruiting firms that had both sales expertise and national presence.
To make the ultimate decision, WERMA created a list of traits to evaluate their ideal recruiting partner based on what was unique about their brand and company culture, including:
- A firm with personality and a strong sense of professionalism
- A skilled sales recruiting firm with a proven track record of screening for technical aptitude and interpersonal skills
- Sales recruiters that could sell the position – WERMA prides themselves on being a company where people choose to retire and they wanted to convey that to candidates
- A recruiting firm with expertise in helping international companies expand into the U.S.
After reviewing the firms against these criteria, they knew Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search was going to be the right fit to meet their goals. Not only was Naviga’s expertise and culture a match, but Naviga’s owner also had past experience working and recruiting in Europe.
The “icing on the cake” for WERMA was Naviga’s offer to come and speak to them at their U.S. office in Syracuse, New York. Naviga met with WERMA’s local team, as well as top executives and owners from Germany, to share their ideas for the search and gain confidence that the partnership was an excellent match.
“We hadn’t even signed a contract yet and Naviga offered to visit us in upstate New York. They made us feel pretty special. After meeting with the Naviga team, I was extremely impressed by their professionalism and the overall sense that they could do the job. I knew they could represent our company and I just didn’t get that feeling with any of the other sales recruiting firms we talked to,” described O’Neill.
BENEFITS OF USING NAVIGA
Once the search was underway, Naviga impressed WERMA with the number of qualified candidates they were able to find, despite the challenging requirements and experience the candidates had to meet.
WERMA moved every candidate Naviga submitted to face to face interviews.
Naviga made WERMA’s job much easier by organizing and managing the recruiting project and all of the moving parts and timelines.
Naviga coordinated the entire team from both companies towards a target interview date which was months in advance.
This interview date had to coincide with German executives’ travel plans to the US, schedules of executives in the U.S. office and had to work for 4-5 top sales candidates per market, totaling over 15 candidates.
Naviga also organized the travel plans for the candidates coming from all over the U.S. so that everyone could meet at a central location in Chicago, Illinois.
Michael credits Naviga attention to detail and ability to work with international companies to the success of the project.
OUTCOME
Overall, WERMA hired four Regional Sales Managers in a year through Naviga, almost doubling the number of full-time employees they had working in the U.S.
With Naviga’s help, WERMA is well on their way towards their long-term growth goals – quadrupling U.S. sales by the year 2020.
“The change has been night and day, quality and quantity, since bringing on the four Sales Managers Naviga found for us. We are now focused on strategic areas and are in front of our customers consistently – driving news sales and retention of clients. The sales hires lived up to their word, couldn’t be better, and we’re having double-digit growth year after year,” O’Neill said.
Whether you need support for hiring resources in the U.S. with a headquarters in other parts of the world or need assistance coordinating interview days for multi-city hiring, Naviga is the strategic recruiting partner to achieve your goals.
