Sales (Re)structuring & Selection in Westland

In many Westland companies the director is the sales department. He knows the growers, the exporters and the buyers personally, and that works — until the company sells two things at once. Trade runs in hours and on trust; an installation or a greenhouse runs in months and through a financing decision. We pull those apart and give each its own process, with its own stages and its own exit criterion, so a long technology track is not judged every week against yesterday's turnover. Then comes staffing. A salesperson taken seriously here can hold a conversation about a cropping cycle without pretending to be a grower. We test that in a real conversation, not on a CV. And because many companies here are in their second or third generation, we design the process to be handed over to whoever takes it on.