Canto
Client background
Canto is the #1 Digital Asset Management software, with over 25 years heritage and over 2500 customers. Canto offer a legacy on-premise solution and a new cloud solution to help medium to enterprise businesses organize content and media files, manage metadata, keywords, tags, and migrate files to share easily to departments around the globe.
The challenge
With a new round of funding and having already proven the customer value proposition Canto was entering “scale phase” targeting greater than 100% year/year growth for the next several years. SaaS DAM is still a fragmented market with no clear market leader and Canto is very well positioned to break out and become the category leader, but they needed a VP of Sales to lead them there. Their current sales leader was leaving to continue his studies which opened the opportunity to change the seniority of the role to enable them to focus on aggressive future growth.
The solution
Engage spent time to fully understand the value proposition of Canto’s solution, meeting with numerous members of their leadership team to get complete understanding of the vision and culture they wanted to build. Only then were we able to tailor a search, specifically targeting those that reflected the profile we created together.
Initially, Canto wanted to seek a leader from a competitor with the right knowledge and understanding of the market to be able to step in to the role and make an impact from day one. However, after discussing potential target businesses to headhunt we concluded that to position Canto as the number 1 DAM in a crowded space, we needed a VP with fresh eyes, who had experience of leading a number 1 SaaS solution; given there is no clear leader in the DAM space yet, our target markets changed and the DAM experience became irrelevant.
The Outcome
With the product experience secondary, Engage spent time to meet all prospective candidates in person, screening in depth their sales methodologies, their track record, their values, their management style and motivations, allowing the role to be filled within 4 weeks;
The team at Engage PSG proved their value from the start of the recruitment process. Natalie and Jeremy both ensured they had a thorough understanding of our product and business which enabled them to identify some excellent candidates; using candor and professionalism, as well as their clear understanding of the market and our needs ultimately led to the hire of our VP of Sales.
Natalie and Jeremy were very responsive, facilitating good communication between us and the candidates, all of whom came to us both excited and well informed on the position and our company.
Ultimately, they were great ambassadors for Canto in a crowded market and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them. I’ve worked with five recruiting firms in the past three years and the team at Engage PSG stands head and shoulders above the rest.
In short, we were extremely picky in our VP search, Natalie’s team was great to work with and they found a stellar candidate who’s now making a big impact at Canto. Don’t hesitate to reach out if I can clarify any of the above.
Nick Pyne, Previous Sales Leader
Canto
London – UK Headquarters
91 Wimpole Street,
Marylebone,
W1G 0EF
Los Angeles – USA
7th Floor,
Pacific Design Center – Red Building
750 N San Vicente Blvd,
Ste 800 West Los Angeles
CA 90069
Sydney – Asia Pacific
Level 2,
333 George Street,
Sydney,
NSW 2000
