The Context

Through a pre-existing relationship between the Guided Solutions Leadership Team and the newly appointed CEO of an ambitious Nordic start-up, we were instructed to build a direct sales team across Key Western European markets including Netherlands, Germany, UK, Norway, Denmark & Sweden.

The company, based out of Finland, had developed a highly novel technology with potentially disruptive application centred on the Orthopaedic, Traumatology and Rehabilitation space. The technology had been originally developed by two PhD research students out of the University of Helsinki.

The technology had application within an over-saturated product area. On top of that, two multi-nationals had cornered the market with seemingly little appetite for the adjustment our client’s proposition presented.

The product had gone through numerous clinical trials, had achieved regulatory approval and was demonstrating market attractiveness through a limited distributor sales model. According to the data gathered, the product presented both an improvement in clinical outcomes and a reduction in price from a health economic point of view in comparison with alternatives already dominating the marketplace, and so the decision was taken to go direct in the markets mentioned above

The Campaign

The first challenge of the recruitment campaign was to identify individuals in each of the localities who could understand and reflect the regional attitudes of the specific customer base. All individuals who could potentially fit this mould then had to be cross-referenced with the overarching requirement that the company had for a fairly aggressive expansion of sales in order to satisfy Venture Capital investors and important timelines.

Each market represented a variation from the next and slightly different criteria had to be followed to match what the client required from each region. Quite logically, our search began within the two monoliths already dominating the market. We then expanded our search outwards to cover individuals within the clinical setting of the product who had a commercial aspect but potentially from a different area.