Crown Lift Trucks
Recruiting new-business-focused Field Sales Executives for Crown Lift Trucks in Scotland and Ireland — finding candidates who could thrive in long sales cycles and complex capital equipment deals.
Client Overview
Crown Equipment Corporation is one of the world's largest manufacturers of forklift trucks and material handling equipment, operating across more than 80 countries. In the UK, Crown operates through a network of regional branches providing direct sales, service and rental of its full range of counterbalance, reach truck, order picker and pallet truck equipment. Crown sells primarily to manufacturing, warehousing, logistics and distribution operations — environments where uptime, productivity and total cost of ownership are the dominant commercial levers. Capital equipment sales cycles at Crown regularly extend to two to three years as customers plan facility investments and procurement programmes.
The Brief
Sales Recruit UK has worked with Crown extensively over the years, placing Field Sales Executives across Scotland and Ireland. Crown's sales roles are demanding — long lead times, complex capital purchasing decisions and a need for highly disciplined pipeline management. The brief was consistently to find commercially sharp new-business hunters who could build and manage multi-year pipelines, navigate complex procurement processes, and represent Crown's premium brand credibly in front of operations directors and finance decision-makers.
The Challenge
Crown's roles required a very specific commercial profile — candidates with genuine new-business orientation who understood capex sales, the financing structures that make deals happen, and the patience to build momentum over extended sales cycles sometimes spanning two to three years. The forklift and material handling sector is close-knit, with many candidates cycling between the major manufacturers and dealers. Crown wanted fresh talent capable of transitioning into the sector rather than recycled industry candidates carrying established habits and expectations. Finding new-business-oriented salespeople with the right profile who could adapt to long-cycle capital selling consistently required looking beyond the obvious pool.
What Sales Recruit UK Did
Sales Recruit UK targeted candidates from capital equipment and technical sales environments outside the FLT sector — plant, commercial vehicles, industrial equipment — where long sales cycles, capex decision-making and consultative new-business development were the norm. The SRUK Fit Score process assessed candidates across new-business mentality, pipeline discipline, capital purchasing experience, and the resilience needed to build territory momentum over an extended timeframe. Cultural fit with Crown's values and operating style was weighted heavily given the long-standing nature of the relationship.
The Outcome
Sales Recruit UK has consistently delivered for Crown across multiple hires in Scotland and Ireland. The depth of understanding built across the relationship means the brief rarely needs rewriting — Sales Recruit UK understands Crown's way of working and the profile of candidate who succeeds there, which shortens every subsequent search and improves hit rate.