Case study · Think Construction
How Artful Concern helped Think Construction avoid the wrong senior hire and get the owner 10 hours a week back
[QUOTE PENDING — Matthew Moss. Space held at roughly forty words; longer or shorter will reflow without moving anything around it.]
Matthew Moss, Owner
10+
Hours a week of owner time re-invested into company growth, reported by the owner
2
Shortlisted candidates interviewed by the owner before a final decision
<90
Days for the new hire to exceed their onboarding plan
About
Think Construction is a full-service general contractor and construction-management firm based in New York City.
Think Construction focuses on high-end, intricately designed projects that require meticulous attention to detail and a hands-on approach.
The Challenge
The owner, Matthew Moss, owned the entire sales process from top-of-funnel business development through to the final contract. As the business grew, his highest-value business development time was constrained by administrative work.
His initial plan was to hire a sales leader to take the whole sales function.
What we found
The answer to the scaling question was a leadership one. It required a different kind of leader in the Director's seat than the one who had built the company to where it was.
The Director, David, reached the same conclusion. He decided he was not the leader for the next chapter of growth and chose to retire, creating space for the next right leader to step in.
The Director's retirement created a much harder problem. A business that runs through one person does not survive that person leaving. It survives the transfer of what is in his head, and that transfer has to happen while he is still there.
The Solution
We ran a comprehensive assessment of every responsibility in the sales department, then worked backwards from the owner's ideal future state. We defined where he wanted to spend his valuable time to make the biggest impact, and we defined the repeatable tasks that didn't benefit from his attention.We started with stakeholder interviews across every department, which told us what the team on the ground needed from leadership to grow, who was actually doing what, who was hungry to be empowered, and which processes needed to be matured. We delivered a fact-based recommendation of what would need to change for the company to double and triple sales.
The assessment resulted in two distinct roles: a near-term Sales Operations Manager and a future Sales Leader. We prioritized hiring the near-term Sales Operations Manager to maximize the owner's time on high-value business development.
We translated the assessment into recruiter-ready documents: job posting, job description, interview scorecard to assess candidates, and a 90-day onboarding plan.
Translating the owner's vision into documents for him to quickly review
Fully managing the recruiter and recruitment process, providing data-driven weekly status updates
Pre-screening candidates and calibrating with the recruiter before the owner conducted a single interview
Joining the owner in his interview to ensure the conversation produced the right signal about the candidate
The owner was able to move quickly and confidently, hiring the second candidate he met, because we focused on alignment and clarity before recruiting.
Throughout the process, we ruthlessly protected the owner's time
The Timeline
Search kicked off, candidate hired and started
Q4
New hire exceeded the pre-defined 90-day onboarding plan; the owner felt the impact of time back within the first 90 days
Q1
The hire is thriving in the role, improving sales operations and further enabling the owner to focus on business development
Q2
Assessment and division of responsibilities
Today
The Results
Out of the admin
The owner is completely out of the administrative half of the sales process.
Time redeployed
The 10 hours a week went back into top-of-funnel business development and strategy focused on company growth.
The hire stuck
The Sales Operations Manager exceeded his 90-day onboarding plan and is still in seat.