BD Director to Open the DoD Market for a Swiss Drone Maker

A Swiss manufacturer of tethered drones had spent 11 years building a US public safety customer base. The core customer base had been police departments and fire agencies, and now the product had a foothold across the country. The FAA restrictions on free-flying drones don’t apply to tethered systems, and that regulatory distinction had helped fuel the company’s growth. With Series B funding secured, the company was moving into the Department of Defense (DoD) market. They were developing a new defense-oriented product that would be on the market in 12 to 18 months. The US operation employs 40 people, 22 of them on the sales side.

The previous employee in the position did not last a full year. The replacement brief was to build a DoD pipeline from scratch with the new defense product still in development. To secure the right person meant finding candidates whose DoD relationships had actually delivered results. The client was clear: the incoming Director had to be the one who went out and created demand. Federal procurement in the defense sector is driven by contracting vehicles and OTAs that require deep domain experience. A lot of the screening was about validating claimed military connections and actual results from the DoD.

Outreach was directed at those with a track record of driving revenue in the defense market. Interviews explored candidates’ thoughts on winning business and understanding of DoD procurement. The hiring manager had detailed conversations on how each candidate would handle the first 90 days. A number of candidates were looked at in detail with the client feeding back specifics after each round. One candidate, who early on in the process raised concerns about the commission structure, was not hired. The successful candidate had a real DoD record, and backed up every claim with real world examples.

An offer was made and accepted with the new Director due to start in August. The incoming Director comes from the defense industry and has direct experience with government procurement and building relationships with the DoD. He is remote-based and will be focused immediately on the DoD relationships that the new product will need at launch. He will start as an individual contributor and then develop a team around the DoD function. The appointment was exclusively made through Keller Executive Search.