Rated a Top Recruitment Agency in Australia by Our Clients

Stage: Aussie Start-Up, New Region Launches

Aussie tech start-up, The Martec had experienced early success with their AI driven employer branding platform. They were to looking to expand local operations and launch offices in Vietnam, the US and the UK.

Key Challenges

• Rapidly shifting business priorities meant requirements could change quickly
• Competing against established SaaS companies for talent with established employer brand and greater budget
• Finding talent who could succeed within an emerging sales model (transitioning from founder led sales to sales team)

Outcomes

Salient deployed a global recruitment team across London, Singapore and Australia to deliver hires across sales, customer success and technical leadership. Salient met with the executive team weekly to discuss the business objectives and align a hiring plan to achieve product, sales and customer retention goals.

Salient supported the martec in making 22 sales and technical hires across Australia, London, the US and Vietnam.

“Salient get the unique challenges faced by an early stage startup. Working with a single recruitment agency across multiple regions was far more effective than juggling different agencies in different regions. They were able to cover both technical and sales recruitment and as a team, they understood our culture, business challenges and delivered a seamless program of work across multiple time zones and cultures”.

Raaj Govintharajah, CEO & Founder

Growth Stage: Scale Up, New Region Launch

Experience Management SaaS company Qualtrics entered the market with a pre-planned investment curve for APAC growth. Pressure was on the business to achieve aggressive growth targets over three years, leading up to a planned IPO. With a hiring philosophy focused on ‘raising the bar’ with every hire, they were on the hunt for one of Australia’s top recruitment agencies to help.

Challenge

When the CRO was selecting a recruitment agency, he was looking for someone who could help them tackle the following challenges:

• They needed to hire large tranches of sales and tech talent quickly, without compromising on calibre.
• Whilst they had a significant amount of brand equity overseas, they were not known in the local talent market
• Maintaining consistent cultural fit and hiring standards across multiple regions
• Providing visibility to global executives of risks to hiring plan

Solution

Salient built a project team across our offices in Singapore and Australia to build and manage ongoing pipelines of talent across sales, customer success, implementation, marketing and leadership to achieve weekly hiring goals.

To build the local employer brand for Qualtrics in APAC, Salient built a series of content assets which showcased authentic peer to peer stories through the lens of their people. These content assets were used to nurture current and future talent pipelines.

Outcomes

86 hires were made across APAC to build a world class founding team for Qualtrics in the region

Stage: Lean Market Entry

With a rapidly expanding customer base in Australia, martech SaaS company Insider was looking to build a landing team in Sydney. They were seeking a highly rated recruitment agency who could support them with sales, customer success and leadership recruitment.

Key Challenges

• Whilst Insider had a huge amount of brand equity in Europe, they were relatively unknown to the local sales talent market here.
• With a business model focused on opening multiple regions simultaneously, ensuring the landing team had the capability to operate autonomously was key.

Outcomes

Working closely with co-founder Serhat, Salient deployed a SaaS sales recruitment project team to hire a country manager, enterprise sales team and sales development team within short time frames. Salient assigned dedicated pipelining specialists to each role and a senior partner to execute the country manager search.

To build Insider’s talent brand in the region, Salient created a series of content assets for each hiring pipeline. This included video interviews with Serhat and the founding team for Australia.

“Salient are a true business partner for us. As a sales recruitment agency, they understand what it takes to scale a SaaS business and how to match the right people at each stage of the journey – they are also really good people which is important”.

Serhat Soyuerel, Co-Founder & CRO, Insider

Stage – Aussie Start-up

North Star is a matech consulting company with a focus on the Braze platform. The Co-founders Chris and Lewis were looking to scale the business rapidly across the ANZ region. Initially they were seeking a sales recruitment agency, but over time wanted a technology recruitment agency who could support them to build their professional services team. Salient was able to provide both.

Challenges

• Competing against vendors for sales talent – perception
• Needed to hire at high velocity without compromising on quality

Salient

Salient ran a 2 year engagement focused on nurturing key pipelines of sales talent across enterprise sales, mid market sales, customer success, implementation and sales leadership to achieve hiring goals. Salient supported North Star to build a local talent brand by creating a range of content assets, telling stories through the lens of their people.

Salient hired 48 people across ANZ to support their growth. North Star was acquired by Braze in 2023.

“I’d describe Salient as consultative, clear, efficient, and thorough. I’ve really enjoyed building our team with Salient – they’ve delivered in spades.

“Jaye, Enterprise Sales Director”

Growth Stage: Scale Up, New Region Launch

Openspace is a high growth SaaS company, transforming how the construction industry analyses and captures jobs. With significant funding, their focus was shifting to build sales and go to market teams across APAC. They were looking to scale quickly across Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia with sales talent who fit their culture and could execute on ambitious growth goals.

Challenge

Openspace were seeking a leading recruitment agency in Australia to support them in building their teams here. Specifically, they wanted a partner who could help them in with the following challenges:

• They had limited brand equity in the APAC market given their concentration on growth in the US
• Ensuring sales talent were the right fit to succeed in landing teams for new regions (particularly in a remote working context)
• They wanted to maintain consistency in hiring practices when launching multiple regions at once without using fragmented partners

Salient Outcomes

Assembling project teams of specialists in key pipelines, Salient was able to support Openspace to hire SDR’s, Account Executives, Solution Engineers, Customer Success Managers and Marketing leads across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Japan.

Salient’s specialist focus across sales recruitment and technology recruitment provided an end to end solution.

Stage – Scale-Up, New Region Launch

ERP SaaS company NetSuite was looking to build a bi-lingual graduate sales program in Australia and Singapore. This program would accelerate lead coverage and provide a feeder funnel of sales talent for the fast growing region.

Key Challenges

Whilst NetSuite had a strong internal recruitment function, they did not have the infrastructure to support sales recruitment of specialised graduate talent.
Whilst NetSuite was now well known within the SaaS talent community, they were not known as a sales graduate employer of choice.

Outcomes

Salient ran a series of customised sales assessment centres to assess sales competences and potential of bilingual graduates in the region. Through a series of simulated software sales role plays and exercises, graduates were recruited for success as sales development representatives as well as potential account executives upon promotion.

To support Netsuite in building their graduate employer brand in the region, Salient built NetSuite a number of content assets over the 3 year period, to provide peer to peer insights on the life of a sales graduate at NetSuite.

Salient hired 32 bilingual sales graduates over a period of 3 years for NetSuite with an 86% promotion rate into quota bearing roles. These graduates were based out of a centralised hub in Singapore, and provided coverage into markets such as Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Japan.

“Salient supported us in building a highly successful sales program – the quality of talent we have introduced to the business is exceptional. Would highly recommend Salient to any SaaS business looking to build a program like this”.

Liz Wolahan, APJ Business Development Director

Stage – Scale-Up

Marketing SaaS company ExactTarget had an aggressive scale plan for the APAC region, leading up to an IPO. With a business plan to achieve a headcount of 100+ within a 3 year period, ExactTarget wanted a sales recruitment agency who could mitigate risks to this plan and ensure they achieved their targets. Challenges

• Limited brand equity within the local region
• Lack of cultural alignment on hiring within previous new region launches
• Needed to hire sales talent at high velocity without compromising on quality

Outcomes

Salient ran a multi-year engagement focused on nurturing key pipelines of sales talent across enterprise sales, mid market sales, customer success, implementation and leadership to achieve hiring goals. Salient supported ExactTarget to build a local talent brand by creating a range of content assets telling stories through the lens of their people.

Salient hired 92 people across APAC to support their hyper growth trajectory.

Salient’s unique focus on saas, sales and technology recruitment provided ET with an end to end solution to build a rapidly growing SaaS business in region.

Stage: Scale-up, New Market Launch

US SaaS vendor, Shipbob, were looking for a top recruitment agency in Australia to help them launch into the region.

Key Challenges

• Limited brand equity within the local region with sales talent
  Lack of cultural alignment on hiring within previous new region launches
  Needed to hire at high velocity without compromising on quality

Outcomes

Salient assembled a project team of individual pipeline specialists across sales, customer success and implementation. The sales leadership search was run by a Director. All hires were made within the target timeframe to kickstart the region.