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MR Tanner Case Study: Hiring a Head of Sales to Build a Commercial Function From Scratch
MR Tanner, a privately held Phoenix infrastructure services company pivoting from public-agency paving into private commercial pavement maintenance, needed its first head of sales. There was no team, no playbook, no pipeline, and no sales infrastructure to inherit. Cowen Partners Executive Search placed a head of sales who had built a revenue function from scratch before and then run one at national scale, after recalibrating the target profile mid-search and resolving a geography constraint the client had not priced in.
Why MR Tanner Needed a Head of Sales It Never Had
The company needed a head of sales because its growth strategy depended on a revenue motion it had never run. When a 30-year paving contractor decides to become a regional commercial maintenance platform, the strategy rests on a revenue function that does not yet exist.
MR Tanner is a privately held infrastructure services company based in Phoenix, built over more than 30 years. Its core business is Arizona road construction and public works asphalt paving, sold to public agencies through a relationship-driven business development motion. The company recently acquired a concrete business with more than 50 years of history in the same market, further strengthening its position as a mature, well-capitalized operation with established estimating, operations, and marketing functions behind it.
The company is now executing a strategic pivot: evolving from a single-state paving contractor into a regional, diversified commercial pavement maintenance platform. Private commercial pavement maintenance sits at the center of that strategy. It serves private property owners rather than public agencies, including HOAs, REITs, property management companies, retail chains, and industrial facilities that need ongoing parking lot and roadway maintenance, and it carries recurring revenue characteristics the legacy business does not.
The strategic logic was compelling. The ownership group brought deep relationships across institutional property ownership and national property management, relationships that were warm and largely unworked. A commercial maintenance platform sold into that network would grow account by account, then replicate across the Southwest through organic growth and acquisition. The thesis was strong. What it needed was a commercial leader to bring it to life.
Why Head of Sales Candidates Turn Down a Build-From-Scratch Role
Senior sales executives decline these roles because a seat with no existing team reads as a step backward in operating leverage, whatever the upside attached to it. That, not compensation, was the central obstacle in this search.
The pivot brought a validated service line, an established brand in its home market, and a relationship network to sell into. It did not bring a commercial function, and the thesis depended on one. This was the first dedicated sales leadership hire for the division, and nearly every variable created meaningful complexity.
There was no team to inherit, no playbook, no pipeline, and no sales infrastructure of any kind. The hire would carry the bag personally on the most complex enterprise and multi-site pursuits, close the first flagship accounts, and build process, messaging, CRM discipline, and the eventual hiring plan around those early wins. The long-term expectation was a Phoenix-based team and a replicable model ready to expand into Texas, Oklahoma, and the broader Sun Belt. The seat also had to run two very different sales motions simultaneously: high-volume, short-cycle local accounts and long-cycle enterprise pursuits into REITs and national portfolio owners.
The client was explicit that the hire needed to come from inside the pavement and exterior services ecosystem. Pavement maintenance, asphalt paving, concrete flatwork, and closely adjacent parking lot and exterior property services were the target, ideally with an existing book of business in the space.
That requirement is where the search became genuinely difficult. Sales leaders with direct private pavement maintenance experience and a real record of building rather than inheriting are concentrated inside a small number of national platforms. Executives running large sales organizations are accustomed to walking into an established team, a recognized brand, and a national footprint.
Geography added a further constraint. The role was scoped as Phoenix-based and field-oriented, which focused the candidate universe on executives willing to plant roots in the market. Family complexity, including spouse careers, school considerations, and community ties, proved a more significant blocker than compensation.
Layered across all of it was a cultural bar the client treated as non-negotiable. A 30-year family business with a protected reputation in its home market would not accept an aggressive or transactional sales personality regardless of production numbers. Character had to be screened from the first recruiter conversation rather than discovered in a final round.
The company’s own network ran through operations, estimating, and public agency relationships rather than commercial sales leadership, so the reach it had was not the reach this search required. Rather than lose a season proving that, the client engaged Cowen Partners Executive Search on a retained, exclusive basis at the outset.
How the Search Was Built Before It Opened
Cowen Partners Executive Search built the market picture before the search formally opened. By kickoff, the client had a three-part talent map in hand covering industry platform companies, named pavement sales leaders, and adjacent-industry sales leaders. The search did not start from a blank page.
The kickoff itself did real work rather than simply confirm a job description. Several defining terms were unresolved or loosely held going in, including commission and override mechanics, ramp period expectations, Year 1 and Year 2 revenue targets, the timing and method of first out-of-state expansion, and the scope of the digital marketing agency relationship the role would own. All of them were settled through kickoff and the days following. The output was a written ideal candidate profile and position specification that both sides could recruit against, and that document became the reference point for every decision in the search.
The Six Dimensions the Head of Sales Profile Was Built On
The profile was built across six dimensions that sourcing worked from, screening tested against, and every client debrief returned to.
Industry experience called for ten or more years of commercial sales in pavement maintenance, asphalt, concrete flatwork, or closely adjacent exterior property services, ideally with a portable book of business in the space. Sales DNA required a genuine player-coach: someone who could personally close a complex multi-site pursuit and build and manage a team, rather than one or the other. Buyer fluency meant a working understanding of how HOAs, property managers, REITs, and private-equity-backed portfolio owners actually make vendor decisions, and how differently the short-cycle local buyer behaves from the institutional one.
Operating discipline called for a data-driven leader who could build pipeline visibility, qualification criteria, and CRM rigor from scratch. Leadership alignment meant a builder who wanted ownership of a revenue function and a credible path to Chief Revenue Officer as the platform scaled. And character was weighted as heavily as any technical dimension: relationship-driven, respectful with customers and employees, and capable of representing a family name that has been in the market for three decades.
Three profiles were immediate deal-breakers:
- No commercial services or pavement-adjacent background
- A pure sales management profile with no personal selling in recent history
- An aggressive or transactional operating style regardless of production numbers
Where Cowen Partners Looked for Builders Rather Than Inheritors
Rather than running a title search, Cowen Partners Executive Search worked a named target map in two tiers. Tier 1 covered the national pavement maintenance platforms where the exact experience lives, including the largest private-equity-backed consolidators and Phoenix market competitors. Tier 2 was deliberately adjacent: commercial roofing, commercial landscaping, facility services, and exterior property maintenance, all of which run the same motion of multi-site recurring service sold to property managers and institutional owners.
The opportunity was positioned under multiple titles in the market so that pavement veterans, adjacent-industry leaders, and private-equity-backed services executives each encountered a version of the role that read as a step up rather than a lateral move.
Outreach ran at the highest volume in the firm’s portfolio at the time, with hundreds of candidates identified, tracked, and screened against the same criteria in every conversation: what they had sold and at what contract size, a specific account they had won away from an incumbent maintenance vendor, their read on the institutional property buyer, whether they had built a team or inherited one, and their honest position on Phoenix. Four distinct slates were presented, with the target profile recalibrated between each based on what the market was returning. Finalists presented a 30/60/90-day business plan built specifically for the private commercial maintenance platform.
What Changed the Outcome: Written Market Intelligence and Candor on Geography
Two things stood out. The first was the written market intelligence. Rather than forwarding resumes, Cowen Partners Executive Search delivered documented candidate feedback and compensation benchmarking alongside a direct recommendation that the target profile shift away from sitting senior executives at larger companies and toward proven builders for whom this role represented a clear step up. That recalibration changed the shape of the pipeline and ultimately produced the placement.
The second was candor on geography. When distance emerged as a consistent pattern across candidate rejections, Cowen Partners Executive Search brought that data to the client as a specification question rather than absorbing it as a sourcing problem to be solved by working harder. That conversation produced a real adjustment before another name was sourced, which is what ultimately made the placement possible.
Who Cowen Partners Placed as MR Tanner’s Head of Sales
Cowen Partners Executive Search placed a head of sales with more than two decades of commercial sales leadership inside the pavement maintenance and infrastructure services ecosystem, including direct private commercial pavement maintenance experience that fewer than a handful of candidates in the entire search could claim.
Their record included building a revenue function from scratch as a co-founder, leading national sales organizations subsequently acquired by larger strategic buyers, and most recently serving as a senior executive at one of the largest private-equity-backed pavement maintenance platforms in the country, with direct responsibility for a large multi-location sales organization spanning dozens of locations and hundreds of sales professionals.
On culture the fit matched the record. The client wanted a leader who would be in front of customers rather than behind a desk, and this executive had spent years traveling a national footprint. It wanted an owner, and this leader had built a revenue function from nothing before running one at national scale. It wanted someone the family name would be safe with, and they cleared a character standard applied from the first conversation forward.
Where the profile and the record diverged, Cowen Partners Executive Search raised it directly with the client rather than working around it. The seniority of the most recent role sat above a conventional head of sales seat, and geography required a flexibility conversation. Both were addressed early and became productive discussions about scope, structure, and the path to Chief Revenue Officer before the offer stage rather than after it.
What the Head of Sales Owns Now
The placement gave the business something it had never had: a commercial function. The role carries full ownership of pipeline, bid-win rate, average contract size, and revenue for the private commercial maintenance platform, reporting to the President and Chief Operating Officer, along with the mandate to build the playbook, process, and team the division will scale on.
The ownership group’s institutional property relationships now have someone who understands how REITs, private-equity-backed portfolios, and national property management firms actually buy, and who can convert warm introductions into long-term contracts. The plan of a Phoenix team scaling into multi-market leadership is being executed by an executive who has managed sales directors across dozens of locations. And the acquisition-led Southwest expansion ahead of the company is being led by someone who has integrated acquired businesses into a national platform before.
Common Questions About First Head of Sales Searches
Why is hiring the first head of sales harder than replacing one?
Because there is nothing to inherit. A replacement hire walks into a team, a pipeline, a playbook, and a CRM. A first hire builds all of it while personally carrying the bag on the earliest and most complex pursuits. Senior executives running large sales organizations often read that as a loss of operating leverage, which is why the candidate pool narrows well beyond what titles alone suggest.
Should the first sales leader come from inside the industry?
Often, but the definition of the industry should be wider than the job title. MR Tanner required a pavement and exterior services background. Cowen Partners Executive Search worked that tier alongside commercial roofing, commercial landscaping, facility services, and exterior property maintenance, because all of them run the same motion: multi-site recurring service sold to property managers and institutional owners.
What should a search firm do when geography blocks the pipeline?
Bring it back to the client as a specification question, with the data behind it, rather than absorbing it as a sourcing problem. On this search, distance appeared as a consistent pattern across candidate rejections. Naming that pattern early produced a real adjustment to the requirement before more time was spent sourcing against it.
What Makes a First Sales Leader Search Different
Building the first commercial sales function inside an established, closely held business is one of the most consequential leadership searches a company can undertake. The incoming leader inherits a brand and a relationship network, and they build everything else from nothing. Finding someone who has done exactly that, inside a niche industry with a small and fully employed talent pool, in a specific geography, and with the character to represent a 30-year family name, requires a search process built around precision rather than volume.
Cowen Partners Executive Search built that process for this client from kickoff forward. By mapping the national market before the search opened, recalibrating the profile in real time based on what the market was actually returning, and being direct with the client about specification trade-offs rather than absorbing them as sourcing problems, we delivered a leader positioned to build something lasting.
For companies at their own commercial inflection point, that leader is out there. The work is building a search process precise enough to find them.
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