Business type
SaaS + Consultancy services
Solution type
Permanent & Fractional
Size of commercial team
10
Company stage
Bootstrapped
Founded in 2008, UK-based Airbox Systems provides specialist software to emergency services, helping responders share and interpret operational information, as well as consultancy services and software development to support specific client needs. Used by over 60,000 UK responders and supporting more than 200,000 high threat responses every year, Airbox is the UK market leader and has software subscription contracts with the UK Emergency Services. Privately-owned, Airbox has bootstrapped to over £8M ARR and 75 employees.
Airbox Need
Airbox is transitioning away from founder-led sales and public sector customers, but due to most existing sales originating from a small network of emergency services customers, they’ve never had a marketing team nor separated customer success and sales functions.
To transition from a start-up to scale-up, Airbox needed to completely rebuild its commercial engine – including hiring a commercial team and executing the right GTM strategy – to unlock significantly faster growth. In particular, Airbox needed to build distinct Sales, Customer Success and Marketing functions, so they had the right processes, accountabilities, data and structure in place to support fast growth.
Airbox knew multiple GTM leader hires would be necessary to build these foundations and that C-suite level input was required, but that they didn’t need the GTM leadership full-time. As a scaling business, Airbox also wanted the flexibility to hire different skills at different stages, knowing their needs would change every six months over the next few years.
Aware that ScaleWise were the market leaders in placing fractional CROs and CMOs, and having never hired fractional roles before, Airbox reached out to ScaleWise.
ScaleWise Impact
Airbox COO Joanna Mower worked closely with Tom Glason, ScaleWise CEO and Co-Founder, to iron out exactly what Airbox required over the next 12 months to build the foundations for commercial-led growth, including the key objectives for each GTM function and what ‘good looked like’ in each GTM leader role. This included separating Airbox’s existing Accounts team into separate Sales and Customer Success teams and building a marketing department from scratch. In addition, Airbox is very proud of its culture and wanted any incoming fractional hires to feel part of the team.
With a 12-month plan agreed, ScaleWise set about initially hiring an Interim VP of Sales and Customer Success as well as a Fractional Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Over the course of an ongoing engagement, ScaleWise had the following impact:
1. Hired successful interim VP of Sales and Customer Success in four weeks.
ScaleWise outlined the scope and responsibilities of the role, including pipeline management, sales best-practice implementation and sales team coaching, as well as the essential personal attributes to ensure cultural fit. After identifying suitable candidates, narrowing the pool and interviewing the top candidates, Airbox hired Sam Richards just four weeks later on an initial six month engagement working 3-4 days per week.
Sam hit the ground running and implemented the required commercial processes for the next stage of growth, including sales team accountability and customer journey mapping, as well as establishing partnerships and embedding a technical sales structure. With all key objectives completed, Sam and ScaleWise also prepared a detailed handover for the next VP of Sales Doug Rich to lead the next growth stage.
2. Placed fractional CMO that joined permanently after 6 months.
With ScaleWise leading the search, Airbox hired Amber Skinner-Jozefson in under a month. During her first six months, Amber introduced a CRM, streamlined the onboarding journey with self-serve materials and implemented digital marketing channels at Airbox for the first time. What’s more, Amber ensured everyone at Airbox – from C-suite to entry-level – was speaking about the company with a consistent tone and compelling messaging. The engagement was such a success that Amber was subsequently hired as Airbox’s permanent CMO with ScaleWise assisting the transition.
3. Conducted seamless transition from founder-led sales to commercial-led approach
After placing the two initial GTM leaders, Tom maintained regular contact with Airbox and facilitated leader transitions and contract extensions as needed. This included the seamless transition of Amber to the permanent CMO role and Sam’s handover to Doug Rich (also placed by ScaleWise) for the next stage of the commercial engine’s evolution (i.e. building out the private sector offering and international expansion).
Joanna Mower
COO, Airbox
“With ScaleWise, I know that we can easily get the exact GTM leadership we need for our exact stage of growth, which is just amazing. From the start, Tom’s knowledge of our growth journey was incredibly helpful and we’ve had a very seamless transition just as he predicted. Every candidate has been really high calibre and it’s been such an easy and fluid process. It’s so reassuring to have a trusted partner like ScaleWise and we’ll definitely be using them for our future hiring needs.”
