— Before you hire
Before you hire a sales
director,
read this
Three routes founders consider, compared honestly, before you
spend six months and a serious salary finding out the hard way
whether the problem was ever really about the person.
01 — The conclusion
The conclusion most founders reach
- Almost every founder in this position arrives at the same answer.
- The team is not performing the way it should. Deals move slower than they need to. The forecast is more hope than fact.
- The obvious fix looks like a stronger leader at the top of sales.
- Sometimes that is exactly right.
- A genuinely underled team, with reasonable process in place, often just needs someone senior enough to hold the standard.
- But more often than founders expect, a sales director gets hired into a function with no forecasting discipline, no defined standards, and no real accountability.
- That person inherits every problem the founder has been carrying personally.
- The only thing that has changed is the size of the salary attached to carrying it.
02 — What tends to happen
What tends to happen when a sales director joins a broken system
01
The first two quarters get spent diagnosing what you already knew was broken
02
Without commercial control already installed, decisions still escalate back to you
03
If that person leaves, the dependency returns to you overnight
04
The business gains a single point of failure, at a higher price
- None of this means hiring is the wrong move.
- It means hiring without fixing the ground underneath it rarely produces what founders are hoping for.
03 — routes
So what are the
real options?
For most founders weighing this up, the search lands in one of three places.
THE DIAGNOSTIC PERIOD (4-6 WEEKS)
01
Option one
Hiring full time
The traditional route, through sales
director recruitment.
- A full executive package, meaningful recruitment fees on top, and months of searching before anyone is even shortlisted.
- Recruitment fees alone typically run between 20 and 30 percent of first year salary.
- It can work well. It is also the slowest and most expensive way to test whether the problem was ever really about the person.
Speed
Months
Cost
Executive package + 20–30% fees
Risk
Single point of failure
02
Option two
A fractional sales director
Faster to bring in. Considerably cheaper
than a full time hire.
- The catch is that you are buying the capability of one individual.
- If their strength is pipeline, and your real gap is forecasting or leadership, you have solved a third of the problem.
Speed
Weeks
Cost
Meaningfully lower
Risk
One person’s shape of strength
03
Option three
Odinnu
Odinnu is not a substitute for recruitment,
and it is not a single person filling a seat.
- It is a single point of contact, Richard, backed by a bench of operators across commercial, finance and leadership.
- Brought in only where the business genuinely needs them.
- The sales function gets rebuilt first. Commercial control gets installed around it. Then Odinnu reduces its own involvement, on purpose, as the business stops needing it.
Speed
Diagnostic inside 30 days
Cost
No package. No recruitment fee.
Risk
Reduces over time, on purpose
Read more about who is actually involved: The Spearhead and The Bench.
See that whole process explained in full: How It Works.
See that whole process explained in full: How It Works.
04 — Answer honestly
Questions worth answering honestly before you recruit anyone
- Can the sales team run for two full weeks without you?
- Is the forecast a control system you trust, or a conversation you interpret every week?
- If someone senior started tomorrow, would they build on solid ground?
- Do you actually need a person, or do you need a system?
05 – System, not person
If the honest answer points to a
system rather than a person
- Talk to us before you brief a recruiter.
- Thirty minutes, no obligation attached.
- If there genuinely is nothing to fix beyond the hire itself, we will tell you plainly.
Check first whether your business is the shape we typically work with.
06 – The cost
The Real Cost Isn't the Salary. It's Starting Over.
Finding the right Sales Director takes 4-6 months. But the average tenure is just 18-24 months. Then the search starts all over again.
- Recruitment fees
- Internal time & resources
- Delayed growth & pipeline
- Lost opportunities
07 – The bench
A bench of operators,
not consultants.
Every specialist Odinnu brings in has actually run a commercial function, not just advised on one. Each of them runs their own business today, so they understand exactly what it means to be the one carrying it.
Emma
Pricing, Margin and
Customer
Profitability
Previous commercial leadership at Travis Perkins, HSS and CRH, delivering profit improvements of two to five percent through data and structure.
Henry
Revenue Growth and Export Expansion
MD level commercial leader, with revenue and export growth delivered across Europe, the Americas, Africa and ANZ.
Martyn
Revenue Growth and Export Expansion
Moved from Finance Director to Managing Director, growing an SME manufacturer into a business valued at one billion euros.
Gemma
People and
Leadership
Previous senior director roles at JLR. Now builds the leadership and accountability that lets a team run without the MD.
08 — Strategic
Our Strategic Partners
Where our clients need capabilities beyond the
operating core, we draw on this network directly.
Augmented Instincts
Cuts through the noise, bringing practical AI enabled insight to the real operating challenges of owner managed businesses, improving data and technology from within.
01 / 05
Rixxo
Building a B2B online sales channel that handles the real complexity of trade selling is harder than most expect. Rixxo has spent over a decade solving exactly that problem.
02 / 05
Make Strides
Develops the habits, judgement and confidence that make performance stick, through practical programmes and leadership development.
03 / 05
MMehr
Provides the commercial and operational expertise to enter and scale in Germany. They work from initial market assessment through to live commercial partnerships.
04 / 05
Enchant
Brings together CRM strategy, email marketing automation, data science and lifecycle marketing under one roof. Making customer retention measurable and built to scale.
05 / 05
09— Partner with us
Become a Partner
If you think you can add value and support small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs),
we'd love to hear from you.
A direct, professional conversation. Not a sales call.
10 — Contact
Get In Touch
Prefer to just send us the details rather than book straight in? Fill in the form below and Richard will come back to you directly.
- Or reach us directly
