Managing Director

Luxury Door/Home Improvement Sales & Distribution
c£100,000 plus uncapped bonus and wealth creation/equity

Outstanding opportunity to join an exciting private business with a dominating position within the home-improvement market.

This family business has built a strong reputation for contemporary, unique products within the luxury residential door market. Their innovative products, modern in design as well as construction, offer unparalleled product quality, rich with USPs, pushing the boundaries of what is possible for external doors to add flair to the most exclusive, design-driven luxury properties to more modest homes. 

Considered to be the ‘Bentley’ of residential doors, their products are manufactured in two partner factories in Europe with whom they have negotiated an exclusive relationship, leaving their prime focus to act as a sales & distribution business selling through a network of independently-owned partners.

The business has seen strong growth, constantly re-investing to keep ahead of the competition. They have evolved to maintain a unique position in this high growth marketplace with a clear focus on brand building,  commercial performance; quality of product as well as service which is at the core of the business.

Positioned in this competitive but high growth sector, they have built a world-class reputation for the quality construction of their aluminium doors as well as constant innovation, keeping ahead of both competition and customer demands. Strong commercial and entrepreneurial passion runs through the business.

This is still a small energised and entrepreneurial culture, which every employee works diligently to foster. They are an opportunistic growth company that seeks to deliver unparalleled products and service whilst ensuring that superiority is replicated internally amongst all employees. 

Combining the above with design innovations a lithe strategy adept at responding to market conditions and an entrepreneurial, small-business mindset, they have a highly commercial approach to their entire organisation, constantly challenging themselves. This is a commercial environment intent on continuous improvement to drive future success.

A key element to that growth, vision, drive and market-positioning is the recruitment of a Managing Director, a newly created role to spearhead the onward growth this business is primed to enjoy. Having already seen higher than expectation growth in the last 2 years, the business is now on a trajectory to see their turnover treble in the next 2-3 years, with the appointment of the right MD!

The appointee will have full executive responsibility and take a high degree of autonomy in the overall running and leadership of the business. They will take ownership of the commercial strategy, designing and developing the sales strategy across all markets; direct and indirect.

This key role will drive the commercial growth of the business over the short to medium term and assure its long term success. The role as Managing Director is an outstanding opportunity to not only take a key role in an exciting, entrepreneurial and innovative business, but to be a key part of, and benefit from, the business’s future.

This executive appointee will take full responsibility for the business’s growth and development; supported, mentored and with input where requested from the Chairman, who himself possesses decades of leadership experience and success in this market, and has been successful in leading the business. It is however now planned that whilst he will continue as Chairman, the appointee will take total control of the day-to-day running of the business.

The Managing Director will be a sales driver. They will have come from a successful Sales/Business Development background, and still see that as their core skill. With high demand for their products, and a marketplace seeing unprecedented growth, the Managing Director will be the leader of all sales and commercial channels and drive the pace of commercial development.

With such a product-centric business, the customer truly is King. Sales sits as a backbone through the organisation, understanding the customer, their behaviors, their interests and the entire customer journey. The best commercial leaders understand the need for multi-directional information, understanding the market, the customer’s purchase habits and predicting future customer habits, trends and opportunities….even those that tomorrow’s customer doesn’t know themselves yet.

Key Responsibilities:

The priorities of this role include:

• Refine and develop the commercial and operational strategy for the business, identifying business needs, market potential and innovative strategies for long terms success for target sectors/target customers in line with company objectives.
• Deliver the results in accordance with the strategy and agreed plans identifying areas for profitable growth.  To assume responsibility for performance, conduct and motivation.
• To understand the market environment, to lead the commercial functions effectively, providing clear direction, motivation and enthusiasm to ensure all work towards common goals.
• To lead and develop the teams, ensuring maximum productivity, effectiveness and commercial skills to ensure a high-performance culture of business excellence and continuous improvement.
• Lead the sales operation on a continual basis to assess company performance against KPI’s for revenue, margin, order size and conversion.  Ensure an effective sales pipeline and lead tracking process.
• Undertake continuous analysis of competitive environment to fully understand competitor positions and strategy to develop market share.
• Ensuring the all internal systems, are effective and provide a competitive advantage.
• Manage the key relationships with European factories.

Specific Performance Deliverables and KPIs:

• The sales and profit performance of the Company.
• Enterprise Value of the business.
• Setting and delivery of the Sales & Commercial Strategy.
• Meeting various deadlines
• Accuracy of budgets and forecasts
• Customer satisfaction performance 
• Input into cost reduction solutions
• Improvement and delivery of management information

The person is everything. The brightest stars in this business are all about having the right attitude.

The appointee will have a proven, highly commercial, sales driving background with high-growth experience within the home improvement (or similar/complimentary) environment. This might well be their first MD appointment, but they will be able to demonstrate their readiness for such an ascension. 

He/she will possess excellent interpersonal skills, be hands-on when needed, possess strong analytical abilities, and be a robust decision-maker and a ‘finisher’. The role involves providing strategic and tactical commercial advice and revenue generating solutions to the entire business.

Experience of managing and developing teams is essential, as is a proven track record of driving profitable growth across numerous markets.

The successful candidate will have strong stakeholder influencing skills and be able to put across his or her view clearly, often articulating the benefit of commercial initiatives and activity in clear business terms and have the confidence to constructively challenge (and be challenged by) senior stakeholders.

The appointee will exude enthusiasm and demonstrate an outstanding work ethic – this is a culture where hard work and success is expected, celebrated and rewarded.

The appointee will have gravitas. It will be immediately obvious to all around them, internal and external, why they have been selected and appointed. Their appointment will be met by a sea of nodding heads. They will command and yet earn respect. They will be the centre of ideation within the business and will foster others to be the same. They will inspire everyone within the business. They will be motivating as well as motivated.

Alongside their leadership capabilities, they will be an ‘action’ style leader. Their attention to detail will be second to none and will be contagious. They will never see themselves as ‘too big’ for any task within the department and will gain huge satisfaction from developing their team in every regard, form and function.

Above all else, they will be excited by the opportunity of taking a broad sales focused executive role and leading the commercial, sales and marketing strategies for this impressive small business.

Person specification

Core Capabilities

• Sales growth
• Results driven
• Customer service focus.
• Leadership capabilities
• Planning and monitoring.
• Judgement and decision-making.
• Forward thinking.
• Excellent verbal and written communication, consulting and networking skills.
• Excellent negotiation and numeracy skills.
• Ability to work within a team
• Excellent people management skills.
• Integrity
• Self-motivated.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Degree educated desirable but not essential
• Experience of the home improvement or allied sectors
• Strong and demonstrable exposure multiple sales channels with notable exposure of selling ‘high-end’ products
• Experience of selling and dealing with very high-quality consumer service/products
• Demonstrable ability to lead process changes
• Excellent communication and listening skills, both internally and externally and appreciation of cultural requirements
• Ability to tailor communications to the appropriate audience.

This is a career defining, fantastic opportunity for an experienced, sales aware and commercial client-facing professional, with exposure to Home Improvement sector, to ascend to a General Management position (or cement their experience in general management) whilst adding significant value to an exciting, disruptive business, and reap the rewards to doing so.

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