From DTC to the clinician channel: a first VP of Sales for an early-stage nutraceutical brand
An early-stage, science-backed nutraceutical company was selling entirely direct to consumer and had begun getting listed on formularies, with no sales leadership in place. They needed someone who could open the physician and clinician channel from a standing start.
The challenge
This was a first-of-its-kind hire on every dimension: first sales leader, first channel outside DTC, first equity conversation at that level. The company had never had a sales leader. Everything commercial ran through the founders. Revenue was entirely direct to consumer, so the practitioner and formulary motion was new territory with no internal precedent. The hire had to create the channel rather than manage an existing one, which ruled out leaders who had only operated with established infrastructure behind them. And the client had not settled on what the package should look like; early-stage equity added a variable most candidates wanted resolved before engaging.
Our approach
We built the search around companies that had already done what this client wanted to do. Comparable nutraceutical brands with strong sales volume through practitioner, clinician and formulary channels became the target map, and we went after the people who had personally opened those accounts. Screening emphasized builders over managers. The question in every conversation was whether the candidate had started a channel from nothing, not whether they had hit quota inside a machine someone else built. In parallel we worked with the client on compensation structure and equity, because at this stage those conversations do not resolve themselves; getting the package defensible before finalists reached the offer stage is what kept candidates engaged through a four-month process.
The outcome
The company gained dedicated commercial leadership for the first time and moved beyond its direct-to-consumer origins into the physician and practitioner market. Compensation and equity were defined through the search rather than improvised at offer stage, and the first-in-seat executive search closed in four months without compromising on the build-from-scratch requirement.