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Explore our vision: Incredible, effortless recruitment
£75k-£120k
Typical base salary
12 wks
Replacement guarantee
A track record of building teams
You want proof they've built and scaled a team in a market like yours. Individual quota history matters far less at this level.
Commercial range, not just selling
Forecasting, pricing, process design, board-level reporting. Ask how they built a sales process, not just how they hit target.
Fit for your size of business
An SME Director works without the support a corporate one leans on. Screen for that early, because it's where most senior hires come unstuck.
How to run the hire
1. Define the mandate, not the title.
Before you advertise, agree what this Director must deliver in 12 months - a number, a team rebuild, a new market. Write it down.
2. Build a scorecard.
List the four or five outcomes and the behaviours behind them, and score every candidate against it so you compare like with like.
3. Source beyond applicants.
The best Directors aren't job-hunting. Use referrals, targeted approaches and a specialist recruiter's network rather than an advert alone.
4. Test commercial thinking.
Give a shortlist a 90-day-plan or strategy exercise for your business. It exposes who thinks in outcomes and who talks in slogans.
5. Reference the results.
Ask past employers about revenue delivered and team retention, not just whether they were nice to work with.
Agency fees for a Sales Director are typically 20-25% of first-year salary, reflecting the seniority and the depth of search involved.
At Coburg Banks the fee is agreed and capped upfront, and there's nothing to pay until your hire actually starts - so a higher offer to secure the right person never raises your bill.
Expect 6-12 weeks from brief to start date. You'll usually have a vetted shortlist inside the first two weeks.
The variables are notice periods (Directors often serve three months), how specific your sector requirement is, and how quickly your own board can move through interviews.
For most SME and mid-market Director roles, contingency works perfectly well and carries no upfront cost.
Retained search earns its fee on the hardest, most confidential or most senior briefs, where a guaranteed, structured process and exclusivity truly change the outcome. We'll tell you honestly which your role needs.
Yes. We recruit Sales Directors UK-wide, with particular depth across the Midlands and North West where much of our network sits.
Most senior searches run nationally anyway - the right Director is worth relocating or building a remote arrangement around, and we factor that into the shortlist.
A Sales Director owns the revenue strategy and the sales team that delivers it.
That means setting targets and the plan to hit them, building and coaching the team, forecasting accurately to the board, shaping pricing and go-to-market, and often carrying a small number of strategic accounts personally. In an SME they're hands-on; in a larger business they lead through managers.
Useful questions include:
Walk me through a sales team you built from scratch - who did you hire first and why?
Tell me about a year you missed target. What did you change?
How would you structure our sales process in your first quarter? and What's your forecasting method, and how accurate has it been? You're testing for evidence and self-awareness, not polish.
Tell us about your role and a specialist sales recruiter will call you. No fee until your hire starts.
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