DECIDE
Did the business identify the right commercial problem?
COMMERCIAL PROOF
What does a better sales hiring decision look like in practice?
Not every good result begins with a placement.
Sometimes the right result is changing the role before recruitment starts.
Sometimes it is learning from a hire that didn't work.
Sometimes it is seeing the behaviours predicted at interview appear in the job.
And sometimes it is reaching Week 8 or Week 12 with far more confidence than you had on the day somebody accepted.
Your Wavelength looks for evidence before, during and after the hire.
This is what that evidence can look like.
3 minutes. Immediate clarity. No obligation.
WHAT WE MEAN BY RESULTS
A placement is an event. A good decision has consequences.
Traditional recruitment often measures success at the moment a candidate accepts.
That is too early for us.
A salesperson can interview brilliantly and still struggle in the role.
A vacancy can be filled quickly and still have been the wrong vacancy to fill.
A new hire can miss early revenue while demonstrating exactly the behaviours and trajectory the business needs.
And a business can avoid an expensive mistake by changing its mind before recruitment begins.
That is why we look at results across the full decision:
DEFINE
Did we establish what success really required and assess candidates against useful evidence?
PROVE
Did the evidence emerging after appointment support the original hiring decision?
The result isn't the CV.
The result is the quality of the decision.
DECIDE — PORTMAN TECH
The obvious next hire wasn't necessarily the right first hire.
Portman Tech entered the conversation with new-business growth in mind.
But the commercial discussion exposed a different immediate priority.
The business had an established customer base, leadership time was still being pulled into day-to-day customer activity, and there was an opportunity to strengthen relationships and create better visibility of expansion opportunities.
That changed the hiring conversation.
Customer Success became the more immediate priority before adding another new-business salesperson.
WHAT THIS PROVES
Commercially intelligent recruitment should be willing to challenge the vacancy itself.
The job is not to fill the role the client first mentions.
The job is to help the business make the right commercial decision.
Start with the commercial problem.
Not the vacancy.
DEFINE — FIND & FINANCE
A failed hire became evidence for defining the next one properly.
The previous salesperson had not produced the commercial outcome the business needed.
Rather than simply replacing one salesperson with another and hoping for a different result, the previous experience became useful evidence.
The next role could be defined around what would actually need to happen for the commercial result to improve.
That meant looking beyond the final number and identifying the behaviours underneath it, including:
WHAT THIS PROVES
A poor hire should leave the business with better evidence for the next one.
Define the behaviours behind the number before you hire against the number.
- opportunity creation
- networking
- follow-up discipline
- pipeline activity
- evidence of the required behaviours at interview
The failure was not treated as something to forget.
It became input into a better hiring decision.
LONG-TERM COMMERCIAL EVIDENCE — PAPIRFLY
Supporting the commercial team behind a journey from £2m turnover to a £100m+ exit.
Your Wavelength began working with Papirfly in 2017 as the business looked to build its commercial capability in the UK and, later, the US.
Over the following five years, we supported recruitment across Business Development, Global Marketing and Customer Success as Papirfly scaled.
By 2022, the business had achieved a £100m+ exit.
The significance isn't that recruitment alone created that outcome.
It didn't.
It's that Your Wavelength became a trusted recruitment partner during a sustained period of commercial growth, helping Papirfly bring key people into the business as its ambitions, structure and scale changed.
“Your Wavelength played a crucial role in helping us bring in key talent at Papirfly over a five-year period. During that time, we scaled the business to a level where we achieved a £100m+ exit.”
Phil Owers
CEO, Papirfly 2008–2022
Phil's experience of Your Wavelength's strategic approach ultimately led him to become a Strategic Advisor to Your Wavelength.
WHAT THIS PROVES
The value of commercially intelligent hiring compounds when the relationship extends beyond filling one vacancy.
The requirement changes as the business changes.
The hiring strategy should change with it.
READ PAPIRFLY →PROVE — GREEN CIRCLE MARKETING
Recruitment predictions became observable workplace evidence.
Green Circle were making an important field-sales appointment.
The role required more than interview confidence.
The recruitment process identified four primary behavioural predictions:
WHAT THIS PROVES
Recruitment becomes more useful when its predictions can be tested after appointment.
- strong relationship building
- commercial judgement
- disciplined territory management
- coachability
Product knowledge was also identified as an area likely to require development.
By Week 8:
4/4 primary recruitment predictions had been confirmed through observed workplace behaviour.
The identified product-knowledge development area was progressing as expected.
0 unexpected performance concerns had been identified.
The client could see increasing confidence in the appointment without pretending the commercial story was already finished.
“I'm very confident that we have the right person.”
Gráinne Leonard
Irish Channel Team Lead
Green Circle Marketing
“It's been a real success.”
Deirdre Barry
Operations Director
Green Circle Marketing
Full sales targets had only recently come into effect.
The significance was not that every final commercial outcome had already arrived.
It was that the behaviours predicted during recruitment were appearing in the environment where they actually mattered.
READ THE GREEN CIRCLE STORY →PROVE — HFR SOLUTIONS
From micromanagement to trust in 12 weeks.
HFR had experienced the opposite of what it needed from a previous commercial hire.
The business had lacked confidence in whether the work was being done and the salesperson required ongoing management.
The replacement appointment created a very different early experience.
Twelve weeks in, the employer's assessment was:
WHAT THIS PROVES
Revenue is important.
But it should not be the first evidence that tells you whether a hire is moving in the right direction.
“I don't need to manage him at all.”
The business reported no reservations or concerns about the appointment.
The salesperson's own assessment of the move was equally clear:
“one of the best decisions I've ever made.”
Revenue was still developing.
But the leading evidence was already visible.
Early activity included:
- opportunity creation
- outbound activity
- commercial strategy development
- new meetings
- referrals and introductions
- developing commercial understanding
- progression from learning into independent activity
The employer could see the difference between the previous management-heavy experience and a salesperson they trusted to get on with the job.
READ THE HFR SOLUTIONS STORY →WHAT THESE RESULTS HAVE IN COMMON
Different businesses. The same discipline.
These examples are not identical.
And they should not be.
One involved changing the hiring priority.
One used previous failure to define the next role more intelligently.
One demonstrates a long-term recruitment relationship through substantial business growth.
One validated behavioural predictions after appointment.
One showed a very different level of trust and independence from the employer's previous experience.
The common thread is not a standardised outcome.
It is a standard of decision-making.
Across each engagement, the questions become:
What problem are we actually solving?
What should success look like?
What evidence would make us confident?
What are we seeing in reality?
What should we do next?
Better evidence doesn't remove judgement.
It gives judgement something stronger to work with.
COMMERCIAL EVIDENCE, NOT MARKETING THEATRE
We don't need to declare victory before the evidence is ready.
Sales results take time.
Markets differ.
Sales cycles differ.
Roles differ.
Managers differ.
That means a responsible results page should not pretend every hire can be reduced to the same revenue statistic.
Your Wavelength looks at the evidence appropriate to the stage of the decision.
Before recruitment, a good result may be clarity.
During assessment, it may be stronger behavioural evidence.
At Week 8, it may be confirmation that the behaviours predicted during recruitment are appearing.
At Week 12, it may be credible pipeline, commercial progress and reduced management dependency.
Ultimately, revenue matters.
But declaring success too early is no more intelligent than ignoring early warning signs.
We would rather show the evidence we actually have than manufacture certainty we don't.
WHY THE RESULTS LOOK DIFFERENT
The evidence changes because the decision changes.
Your Wavelength's methodology follows three stages.
DECIDE
Before recruitment:
Are we solving the right commercial problem?
DEFINE
Before appointment:
What does success require, and what evidence does the candidate actually have?
PROVE
After appointment:
Is workplace behaviour supporting the hiring hypothesis?
The results on this page sit at different points in that journey.
That is deliberate.
DEEPER EVIDENCE
Follow the decision from recruitment into the real world.
PAPIRFLY
Supporting the commercial team behind a journey from £2m turnover to a £100m+ exit.
A five-year relationship supporting commercial recruitment across Business Development, Global Marketing and Customer Success as Papirfly scaled and ultimately achieved a £100m+ exit.
READ PAPIRFLY →GREEN CIRCLE MARKETING
From a high-risk sales hire to confidence they had the right person.
How Green Circle defined an important field-sales appointment, assessed the person against behavioural evidence and stayed close enough after recruitment to test whether the original predictions appeared in the role.
READ GREEN CIRCLE →HFR SOLUTIONS
From micromanagement to trust in 12 weeks.
How HFR replaced a management-heavy previous experience with a salesperson showing early independence, commercial activity and stronger alignment between the role promised and the role experienced.
READ HFR SOLUTIONS →THE QUESTIONS THAT MATTER
A useful result should make the next decision easier.
Evidence is most valuable when it changes what the business knows or does next.
DID WE SOLVE THE RIGHT PROBLEM?
Was the commercial need correctly understood before recruitment began?
DID WE DEFINE SUCCESS PROPERLY?
Did the business know what outcomes and behaviours it was hiring for?
DID THE CANDIDATE PROVIDE USEFUL EVIDENCE?
Was the decision based on more than career history and interview confidence?
DID THE PREDICTIONS APPEAR IN THE ROLE?
Did observed behaviour support what recruitment suggested?
DOES THE EVIDENCE JUSTIFY THE NEXT DECISION?
Should the business retain, support, redirect or ultimately replace?
A good recruitment process should leave the business knowing more than:
“We liked the candidate.”
FOR FOUNDER-LED BUSINESSES
The evidence matters most when the hire matters commercially.
Your Wavelength is designed for privately owned and founder-led businesses where a sales hiring mistake has a meaningful consequence.
That may mean:
- growth slows
- founder selling continues for longer
- management time disappears
- pipeline fails to develop
- customer opportunities are missed
- confidence in sales hiring falls
- another six months is lost
This approach is particularly relevant when:
- you are hiring your first dedicated salesperson
- a previous sales hire has not worked
- you are replacing a salesperson
- the founder still carries too much of the commercial load
- you are unsure what commercial role the business actually needs
- you want better evidence before committing
- you are prepared to support the person after they start
BEFORE YOUR NEXT SALES HIRE
What evidence would tell you you've made the right decision?
The Sales Hiring Risk Assessment looks at the decisions around your next sales hire before they become expensive.
It helps identify where clarity, evidence, assessment or onboarding risk may already exist.
3 minutes. Immediate clarity. No obligation.