Playbook · Hiring
Most Head of Sales hires fail because the role was never properly defined and the screen was never properly run. This playbook walks a founder or CEO through the eight steps that consistently produce a Head of Sales who stays past the eighteen-month mark.
Audience
Founder / CEO, Board / investor
Time on task
8 to 10 weeks
Context
Written by Rachel Lunn from ten years running senior commercial searches inside a global organisation and now Evara's retained search practice across Yorkshire and the North West. The steps are sequenced; do not skip ahead. Most failed Head of Sales hires lose the search at step one or step four, not at the offer stage.
Before you start
What you will have at the end
Before drafting a job description, decide whether you need a builder, a fixer or an operator. A builder takes you from founder-led sales to a repeatable motion. A fixer rescues a stalled function. An operator runs a working motion at greater scale. The wrong archetype is the single biggest cause of senior commercial hiring failure.
Checklist
Failure mode this step prevents
Hiring an operator into a role that requires a builder. The candidate cannot work without a process they have not been hired to design.
A scorecard captures the outcomes, the success criteria and the behaviours that win in your environment. It is the single document the search, the screen and the first twelve months are run against.
Checklist
Failure mode this step prevents
Sending a job description into the market that does not match the conversation candidates will have at second-stage interview.
Most Heads of Sales in Yorkshire and the North West are passive. The deepest pools sit in Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool, with smaller specialist clusters in Preston (aerospace), Burnley (industrial), Huddersfield (engineering) and York (insurance and biotech).
Checklist
Failure mode this step prevents
Relying on inbound applications and recruiter CV-blasts. The Head of Sales you want is currently employed and not on a job board.
Approaches to senior commercial talent must lead with the commercial opportunity, the leadership environment and the growth path, not with the title and salary band. A narrative-led approach lifts response rates from passive senior candidates by a factor of three or four.
Checklist
Failure mode this step prevents
Sending the job description to the long-list. Senior candidates ignore generic outreach and assume the business is ill-prepared.
A commercial screen probes the numbers the candidate has actually delivered, the deals they personally led, and the operating cadence they ran. It is not a competency interview. The screen is where the wrong people get filtered out before they reach the CEO.
Checklist
Failure mode this step prevents
Letting a charming candidate skip the screen. Charm wins interviews and loses quarters.
Two formal references are a tax. Three back-channel references from people who managed, hired and were sold by the candidate are a real check. Triangulate before the offer is sent, not after.
Checklist
Failure mode this step prevents
Skipping back-channel references. Formal references rarely surface the real issues.
Senior commercial offers are won and lost on accelerators, ramp protection and equity, not base. A clean offer pack closes; a vague verbal loses to a counter-offer in week three.
Checklist
Failure mode this step prevents
Stretching base to win a candidate who is not committed. They take the counter-offer and you have a week ten resignation.
Senior commercial hires do not fail at month twelve. They fail at month three, when the operating cadence has not been installed and the team has not been won over. A written 30-60-90 plan agreed before day one is the single highest-leverage onboarding artefact.
Checklist
Failure mode this step prevents
Treating day one as the end of the search. The most expensive sales leadership failures happen between day thirty and day ninety.
Eight to ten weeks from kick-off to offer accepted, with a further two weeks of notice in most cases. Faster than that usually means the screen has been compressed; slower than that usually means the role was not properly defined at step one.
No. Contingent recruiters compete on speed and CV volume, which is the wrong economic incentive for a senior commercial hire that costs six figures over its first twelve months if it fails. Retain a single specialist firm and align the fee to the outcome.
Eighty thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand pounds base for a typical scale-up Head of Sales role, with on-target earnings of one hundred and thirty thousand to one hundred and eighty thousand. Leeds and Manchester sit at the upper end. See our salary benchmarks for current ranges by city.
Yes. The eight steps hold across senior commercial searches. The talent pool, comp envelope and scorecard outcomes change with seniority; the structure does not.
Related Evara work
Sectors this is most relevant to
Sales recruitment, GTM recruitment and revenue advisory for SMEs UK-wide. We reply within one working day.
Email Rachel Lunn