Your First German Hire Should Probably Not Be a Traditional Sales Director.

An international energy company decides to enter Germany. One of the first questions is usually: who should lead sales?

I would ask a different question.

Who should build the German business?

In an established market organisation, those roles may eventually become separate. At the beginning, they are usually not.

The first hire is testing the strategy

Headquarters may already have a market-entry plan. Target customers. Revenue assumptions. Pricing. Positioning. Expected sales cycle. Potential partners.

The first senior person on the ground has to test all of it. That requires more than sales ability. It requires enough commercial judgement to tell headquarters when the original thesis is wrong.

That is harder than it sounds. Organisations naturally become attached to the assumptions used to approve an expansion.

The role is inherently cross-functional

An early country lead may need to work simultaneously with customers, technology teams, legal, finance, regulators, partners, investors, and management at headquarters.

One day is spent with an industrial customer. The next with a potential local partner. The next explaining why the existing pricing model does not fit the market.

That is closer to entrepreneurship than conventional sales management.

Contacts help. Context matters more.

Companies frequently look for someone “with a strong network”. A network is useful. But relationships without commercial judgement have limited value.

The better question is whether the person understands how the market actually functions.

• —Who influences whom?
• —How are decisions made?
• —Which partnerships create legitimacy?
• —What must happen before customers commit?
• —Where is regulation material?
• —What is likely to be different from the home market?

That context is what allows relationships to become commercially useful.

Build first. Optimise later.

The first phase is about learning, positioning, creating trust, building pipeline, forming partnerships, and proving that the market thesis works.

Later, the organisation can optimise territories, processes, sales compensation and reporting.

Trying to professionalise everything before the underlying market model has been validated can create a very well-managed organisation around the wrong assumptions.

The first German leader should therefore be selected for the market that still needs to be built. Not the organisation you hope to have three years later.