From Market Leader to Commercial Machine: Installing the Revenue Architecture for a €100M+ PE-Backed Automotive SaaS Business

The Challenge

Founded in 2000, this French company is Europe's leading provider of automotive distribution technology, selling software across the full retail process: vehicle inventory management, DMS, after-sales, accounting, invoicing, CRM, and OEM digital platforms. Backed by a global private equity firm, it operates across 11 countries with 700+ employees and 10,000+ customers, and crossed €100M in revenue in 2022 through a focused M&A strategy and an expanding product ecosystem.

By late 2024, the business had the product and the market position. What it didn't have was the commercial leadership to defend and grow it. The investors needed to act on two fronts:

• Install commercial leadership: bring in a Chief Sales Officer capable of owning the full revenue architecture across 11 European markets at once
• Accelerate growth: turn a dominant market position into a scalable, repeatable, internationally consistent sales engine

They turned to The Big Search to find that leader.

Overview of the executive search

• October 2024 → January 2025
• PE Value Creation: Revenue Architecture Phase

Between October 2024 and January 2025, The Big Search ran the CSO search. The brief called for proven B2B SaaS sales leadership, a track record scaling multi-country revenue organisations, and the maturity to work as a genuine partner to the CEO and board in a PE-backed environment. Multi-lingual fluency and cross-cultural leadership were non-negotiable.

Executive search across European B2B SaaS, automotive tech and multi-market sales leadership

The hunting strategy targeted CSO, CRO, CCO, and VP Sales profiles from European B2B SaaS and vertical software businesses:

• Full sales cycle ownership across multiple European countries
• Track record scaling recurring revenue in complex, multi-product SaaS environments
• Experience building or restructuring commercial organisations at PE growth stage
• Vertical software DNA (automotive, healthtech, fintech, logistics or similar), with strong cross-cultural and multi-lingual credentials for a pan-European remit

Target archetypes included vertical SaaS platforms, European software scale-ups, PE-backed technology businesses, and multi-market digital solution providers across France, DACH, the Nordics, Southern Europe, and CEE.

We mapped 181 candidates across DACH, the Nordics, Southern Europe, and CEE.

First shortlist

50 days from kick-off

Of the 181, 93 were contacted, 31 reached consultant interview, 7 made the shortlist, 4 went to client interview, and 1 was hired. The full process, from scoping the role to signed offer, ran 90 days. The hiring manager pointed to "quick reaction, open conversations that helped to scope the search, availability, a good pool of candidates, and a very exhaustive and relevant candidate brief." The shortlist of 7 gave a genuine range across the market, and the client decided within a single interview round. At close: "I'm glad we made it, and it will be a pleasure to work with you again."

The placed candidate: a commercial leader with proven experience building the revenue engine

A 20+ year career at the intersection of SaaS growth, multi-market expansion, and revenue architecture, spanning founder experience and enterprise execution.

• SaaS revenue at scale — most recently Global Chief Sales Officer at a leading European and Latin American healthtech SaaS company (€275–290M ARR, 13 countries, ~1,200 employees), owning the full commercial architecture across enterprise and SMB segments.
• Pan-European credibility — career spanning Turkey, CEE, Southern Europe, DACH, and Latin America, with 5 languages and the cultural fluency to run commercial teams across 11 markets without friction.
• Founder-grade instinct — co-founded and scaled a pan-CEE fashion e-commerce business to 1,000 employees across 14 countries before exiting.
• GTM architecture expertise — designed and executed full GTM transformations as VP Revenue and GTM Strategy before stepping into the CSO seat.
• Academic foundation — DBA from SDA Bocconi and MBA from Vlerick Business School.

Most PE-backed software companies reach a point where the product has outgrown the commercial infrastructure. The platform works, the market is there, the customer base is loyal, but the sales organisation can't scale it yet.

Closing that gap took a clear brief, a focused search, and a willingness to go past the obvious candidates. This one closed in 90 days.

If your portfolio company is at that inflection point, let's talk.