Tableau

Industry
Data & Analytics Software

Location
United States

Roles placed
Sales Directors, Account Executives, Sales Engineers

Placements made
(leave blank, or add the real count if you have it)

The challenge
Tableau was growing fast in a category that was still being defined. Data visualization was not yet something every company budgeted for, so their sellers had to create demand rather than respond to it.

That made hiring harder than the growth rate suggested. They needed people who could sell a new way of working to buyers who were not looking for it, and they needed sales engineers who could demonstrate the product convincingly enough to make the case in the room.

What we did
We supported Tableau’s US growth over an extended period rather than through one-off searches, placing sales directors, account executives, and sales engineers as the organization expanded.

Because the engagement ran for years, we understood how the profile changed as the company matured. The seller who thrives when a category is unproven is not always the one who thrives once it is established, and we recruited to the stage the company was actually at rather than to a fixed job description.

Sales engineers were a particular focus. In analytics, the demo is the sale, and we screened for people who could translate technical capability into a business case in front of a room.

The result
Tableau grew from an early-stage analytics company into one of the most recognized names in the category, and was ultimately acquired by Salesforce.

We supported that growth in the US throughout, across sales leadership, individual contributors, and pre-sales.