Interim Sales Director · Interim CSO
When sales
stops delivering.
A vacant sales leadership role, flat revenue, a team without direction. I take over sales leadership on an interim basis – in regulated, explanation-intensive markets, with full accountability for the number.
Or call directly: +41 76 537 53 33 (CH) · +49 171 199 55 33 (DE)
typical mandate
Interim sales leadership
What interim sales leadership actually changes
A sales organisation that stops delivering rarely has a motivation problem. It has a steering problem. Targets without follow-up, territories without potential assessment, quotes without a chase process, a CRM that gets maintained rather than used.
As an interim sales director or interim CSO I take over that steering – not as advice from outside, but in the line. I lead the team, talk to your customers, sit in the deal conversations and carry the number.
First 30 days: pipeline review, one-to-one with every field representative, analysis of the past twelve months by customer, product and territory. By day 90: a new target system, a revised territory structure, a follow-up process that actually happens. After that: deliver.
Where I come from
Sales leadership in regulated markets
My first ten years of sales responsibility were in the pharmaceutical industry, ending in 1993. Sales Director Germany, leading ten people across prescription and hospital business, and before that Regional Sales Manager Rx in North Rhine-Westphalia, leading fifteen.
What followed were more than thirty years of leadership in medical technology, dental and plastics – industries with the same logic: regulatory approval as a precondition, the hospital as a customer, products that need explaining, long decision cycles, and a purchasing function that is not the user.
If you are looking for a pharma specialist with current reimbursement and market-access practice, I am not your candidate. If you need someone to lead, structure and turn around a sales organisation, let us talk.
Typical situations
When interim sales leadership makes sense
- The sales director has left at short notice and recruitment will take months.
- Revenue has been flat for several quarters without a market explanation.
- The sales team has grown, the steering has not.
- A new product or market needs a sales structure that does not exist yet.
- A private equity investor expects growth the current organisation is not producing.
Reference case
Taking over sales leadership when no one is left
Dental · Interim COO & Sales Leadership
| Client | SME, 50 employees, manufacturer of industrial dental prosthetics |
| Situation | Revenue flat for three years, the managing director had been let go, sales leadership was vacant |
| My role | Interim COO with direct responsibility for sales leadership |
| Actions | Total focus on existing customers instead of new-business chasing, every non-essential project stopped immediately, sales tasks taken on personally rather than only delegated |
| Result | +27% revenue within three months |
| Timeframe | 3 months to the result, mandate continued beyond that |
Anonymised under a confidentiality agreement. Further details on request in a personal conversation.
Frequently asked questions