Success Story
Search: National Strategic Account Director
Story background
An emerging gene and cell therapy startup partnered with Mix to secure key leadership for its inaugural commercial field force. Operating in a highly specialized, one-time therapy space with a tight site-of-care enablement profile, the company required a national leader capable of navigating a unique and novel clinical environment.
The client needed support with:
Securing specialized leadership:
Accelerating launch velocity:
Meeting an aggressive executive timeline to quickly cascade into building out the rest of the commercial team.
Mitigating candidate hesitation:
Overcoming market friction stemming from a previous clinical trial hold to safely convey the promise of the company's robust therapeutic pipeline.
Our approach
To deliver against a highly compressed timeline and a very narrow candidate profile, we deployed an intentional, outbound-heavy recruitment campaign:
Precision mapping
We created a highly targeted list of cell and gene therapy organizations to identify passive candidates sitting squarely within the "Goldilocks zone" of second-line leadership experience.
Articulating the innovation narrative
We formulated a compelling messaging strategy that leaned into the client's future vision and unique scientific platform, successfully positioning the role over competitive VP-level offers in the space.
Agile workflow optimization
We partnered directly with internal stakeholders to streamline the screening process. Per the client's request to hit a strict April onboarding deadline, we adapted the workflow to compress the timeline and maximize efficiency.
The results
Through an agile, highly targeted execution strategy, we delivered an elite candidate pool and solidified the foundation for the client’s commercial launch infrastructure.
3 targeted finalists:
all female, secured within a highly restricted talent pool and presented to the client.
Strategic expansion:
we secured the winning candidate over a competing VP opportunity at another organization.
Top-down commercial execution:
we efficiently utilized the executive pipeline mapping from this search to accelerate the broader, concurrent expansion of the downstream field infrastructure, including Area Sales Directors, Strategic Account Leads (SALs), and Patient Access Leads (PALs) .