AIB Electrical
Recruiting a Solar Sales Director for AIB with a shareholder succession path — and the SME-fit mindset to take it.
Client Overview
AIB is a privately-owned UK electrical and solar products business, supplying solar PV product, electrical accessories and related components into the installer market. As the UK solar market has scaled, AIB has grown its solar product supply business significantly, working with installers, EPCs and the wider renewables supply chain. The business is owner-led, family-run in feel, and at a point in its lifecycle where the owner is thinking seriously about succession.
The Brief
The owner of the business was looking to bring in a senior leader who could take charge of the growing solar product supply operation, develop the solar market further, and grow into a shareholder and junior partner with a clear succession path. The eventual intention was that this person would take over the running of the business when the owner retired. AIB also needed supporting field sales and internal sales hires to build out the wider commercial team underneath the senior appointment.
The Challenge
The obvious move was to search inside the UK solar industry for senior solar sales leaders. Sales Recruit UK exhausted that pool, but the problem was appetite rather than availability. Many strong solar candidates were already entrenched in comfortable senior roles inside corporate-backed solar businesses and lacked the entrepreneurial appetite to join a privately-owned SME with an equity component. The role called for someone with genuine commercial vision who could see the upside of joining an owner-operated business with real career and ownership progression.
What Sales Recruit UK Did
After running the obvious solar-industry search, Sales Recruit UK pivoted to look beyond the immediate sector. The SRUK Fit Score process was retuned to weight entrepreneurial mindset, SME cultural fit and genuine appetite for a long-term equity-led career move alongside the obvious sector competence. Sales Recruit UK brought forward a candidate already known to the team, someone Sales Recruit UK was confident would relish exactly this type of opportunity.
The Outcome
Sales Recruit UK secured an outstanding candidate. The candidate has been in post for several years and is now the owner's right-hand person inside the business, holding a shareholding and operating to a clear succession plan. The working relationship between owner and successor reads as if the two have worked together for decades. The candidate has had a material impact on the business, not only growing sales but introducing proper commercial systems and methodologies that had not previously been in place.