FireAngel Safety Technology
Placing a National Sales Manager for FireAngel — finding a hands-on sales leader with the energy to challenge the market leader and build a team around them.
Client Overview
FireAngel Safety Technology is a UK manufacturer of connected home safety products including smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors and heat alarms. The business sells through electrical wholesale, builders merchants, DIY retail and social housing procurement channels, competing in a market with a dominant incumbent brand. FireAngel positions itself as a disruptive challenger, with a strong product innovation story particularly in connected and interlinked alarm systems.
The Brief
Operating at the time as Sprue Safety Products before rebranding to FireAngel, the business needed a new National Sales Manager to lead its UK commercial operation. The person needed to carry their own sales number while also recruiting and building a small team around them — a player-manager profile that required genuine sales leadership alongside continued personal commercial delivery. The business was in challenger mode against a well-resourced market leader, which meant the NSM needed the drive and resilience to compete aggressively rather than manage from a position of comfort.
The Challenge
Finding a National Sales Manager who could genuinely function as both a hands-on sales performer and a team builder is consistently one of the harder briefs in the market. Many candidates at NSM level have moved away from personal sales delivery and are focused on management and strategy. Those still carrying a number often lack the leadership credibility to recruit and develop a team beneath them. The challenger brand dynamic added further complexity — the NSM needed a specific appetite for disruptive commercial environments where they were fighting uphill against an established market leader, rather than the relative comfort of selling a dominant brand.
What Sales Recruit UK Did
Sales Recruit UK targeted candidates who had demonstrated success in challenger brand sales environments — people who had built market share against dominant competitors and who had led by example rather than from behind a desk. The SRUK Fit Score process assessed candidates across personal sales delivery track record, team leadership capability, challenger brand commercial mindset and the energy and resilience needed to sustain a high-activity sales culture in a competitive market.
The Outcome
FireAngel appointed a National Sales Manager who combined personal commercial delivery with genuine team leadership capability. Sales Recruit UK subsequently worked with the same NSM to recruit an Area Sales Manager to work alongside him — a clear indication that the placement had landed well and the new leader was building the team structure the business needed.