Ben Watkins

Intrinsic Executive Search

Co-founded Intrinsic in 2006, to support B2B SaaS and tech firms by finding them new senior leaders and Senior Sales executives who drive growth. 

→ Assisting Hiring Managers in sourcing exceptional commercial talent, particularly in regions where they may have a limited network or need confidential replacements. 

→ Providing high-quality candidate shortlists within 3-4 weeks

→ Supporting clients who have tried advertising or contingency searches without success.

→ Closed more than 1,000 placements across 10+ European countries with a network of over 30,000 tech executives, in regions like the UKI, Germany/DACH, Nordics, Benelux, Spain and France.

→ Become a go-to headhunting partner for startups, scale-ups, turnaround, and corporates.

→ Expertise covers B2B software areas from Customer Experience, Business Analytics, Big Data, Compliance, ESG, Retail/CPG Software to Market Research, Open Source, Fraud/AML, and more.

SaaS Executive Recruiter

Salt - Previously Enigma Resources International

Hired to sell retained searches across new territories like Germany, France and  Benelux. 

→ Sourced and placed VP and Senior level Executives for B2B Tech firms.

→ Clients including FAST (Microsoft), Spotfire TIBCO, Human Inference, Lycos Europe, MicroStrategy, Watchfire, Vitria, Truition, FICO & Skype.

→ Grew revenue in mainland Europe from zero to 1 Million Euro +

Executive Recruiter Europe

eBay

FairMarket, Boston (NASDAQ - FAIM) Selling B2B and B2B2C, SaaS based Pricing Software into Travel, Telco, High-Tech and Manufacturing market spaces.   Acquired by eBay in 2003.

→ New Logos included: Mitel Networks, De Vere Hotels and Starwood Group Inc.

Senior Sales Executive

HALL KINION & ASSOCIATES INC

(NASDAQ - HAKI) Senior Recruiter, UK / Germany, France, Benelux, Nordics

→ Hall Kinion were one of the largest High-Tech Recruitment companies with 56 offices worldwide and a turnover of approximately $400 million.

→ Qualified for 3 x Club Trips, Won the Largest Company Deal and Top Recruiter in Europe Awards

→ Customers included: BroadVision, ATG, Commerceone, Ariba, Zygon, Interwoven, OpenMarket, JCP, Intershop, Misys

Headhunter, Enterprise Software

SaaS Recruiter / Helping SaaS firms hire senior talent from a network of 30k+ SaaS Execs

Are you struggling to hire great SaaS talent in Europe? Let’s change that.
► UK - Germany - Nordics - Benelux - France.
► A-Players from £90k to £250k base salaries.   
► CEO, CRO, COO, VP Sales, Director, Senior Sales, Marketing, Customer Success.
► Retained Executive Search.

FOR JOB SEEKERS:

► Receive CV feedback and a high-quality CV and LinkedIn Profile.  
► Check out my offers >>> bit.ly/executivesupport

SaaS Sales Executive Recruitment business.

We help SaaS firms attract and hire the Best Senior Commercial Talent into their businesses!  

UKI, DACH, NORDICS, BENELUX, FRANCE, USA

Intrinsic is a leading Global Boutique Enterprise Software Headhunting company which helps scale emerging High Growth Software / SaaS firms.

We cover Software areas such as Customer Experience, Voice of the Customer, Business Analytics, Big Data, Retail / CPG Software, Market Research, Surveys, Procurement, Open source, Fraud/AML, Integration, Trade & Risk Management, Content Management, Business Process Management and eCommerce market places

James Barker

GTM HIVE

I provide Sales and Marketing advisory, interim sales leadership and coaching to enterprise sales executives handling big-ticket sales items.

Owner

Plumery

Plumery is a new generation of Digital Banking platform. Combining the speed-to-market of a product, with a fintech-grade DevOps platform to empower your own Continuous Innovation and rapid feature development.

Advisor

Tech Market Access

Revenue services for enterprise-grade technology and Fintechs, including:
- Sales and marketing advisory
- Interim sales & marketing leadership
- Project Execution

Monument

Creating a sales and marketing strategy, hiring permanent exec and sales team, driving revenue activity

Chief Commercial Officer (Interim)

MeDirect Malta

Board Advisor

Fourthline

Fourthline is the only regulated provider of KYC. It's Identity Platform combines both AI-powered automation, with the option of being supplemented by outsourced analysts for the most comprehensive and powerful KYC solution available in Europe today.

Following their stellar raise, I advised and supported their European expansion plans.

Oper Credits

Oper is working to transform the mortgage market in Europe. Providing digitisation from contact-to-contract for both brokers and distributors.

The Oper platform provides a variety of capabilities, from out-of-the-box customer journeys, to broker and advisor tools.

Appway

I helped the Appway business integrate GTM capability into FNZ post-acquisition. Evolving the sales model and driving revenue for the Appway product set.

VP Sales EMEA (Interim)

Bud is startup providing Open Banking solutuons to banks and FI's
I led the Sales, Marketing and Client Management teams.

Chief Commercial Officer

Mambu

Mambu is now the leading provider of Core banking technology, a mission critical technology required by every financial institute to run. Opportunities are highly complex 6-7 figure investments.

I led a team of Sales leaders and senior sales contributors  across UK&I and Northern Europe (Nordics), overseeing 100% YoY growth and UK&I becoming the largest revenue driving sub-region.

During my tenure I opened the UK office and grew it to +30 staff. Revenue growth of x 8 across my tenure, culminating with Mambu achieving Unicorn valuation.

Commercial Director EMEA

Building Fintech businesses

I love the impact that a great salesperson can have - and I'm not just talking about revenue. When Sales function is well designed it can deliver amazing experiences to potential customers, help them solve problems, and make their businesses run better.

Great sales can be a huge force for good!

I've sold everything from Office Supplies door-to-door, through to >$20m software deals to the largest enterprises in the world, and everything in between.

I've grown teams from nothing to be the top performing regional sales offices - I've made mistakes, but I've had more than my fair-share of successes. 

- 2 Fintech Unicorn-making journeys
- Created and grown top performing sales offices in those businesses
- Closed an industry-record 8-figure deal
- Created team cultures that were both performant and highly personal

I now work with founders, leaders, and enterprise salespeople to share with them everything I've learned on my journey, and save them from, the bumps and knocks I took along the way. I specialise in enterprise sales motions, particularly selling into Banks and other Financial Services business, providing..

- Guidance on scaling sales and revenue
- Non-executive support and advisory 
- Coaching big-ticket salespeople on their largest opportunities

GTM HIVE Provides on-demand expertise to help SaaS Fintechs grow revenue quickly. We provide non-exec advisory, OR hands-on personnel at every seniority. 

Checkout our FREE knowledge hub of bite-size insights to help founders, and sales & marketing executives, grow their businesses.

The CTO was about to sign the biggest deal of my career and I got a call from my champion.

“Is it done and signed?”, I asked

“Er, probably not, he got fired.”

“H, H, How? W, When?" I stammered

This morning, he responded. We’re going to need to put things on ice until we find a replacement.

My heart sank. I’d been so close, and now I was going to need to call my boss, the CEO, and tell him a $3m deal had slipped from my forecast on signature day.

Not something any salesperson wants to do.

Over the next few weeks my luck turned from bad to worse. The new regional CTO came in and favoured our competitor, secretly engaging them and ghosting me.

The deal was slipping away. A year of my life, gone.

Then something equally unexpected happened. The new regional CTO had been overruled by the Group CTO - someone I hadn't met - and ordered to buy our solution.

Here's what happened.

When the opportunity had first started nearly a year earlier, we had done a paid PoC which I had turned into a showcase and taken round all the prospects global divisions, opening one opportunity after another.

In the end the Group CTO stepped in and said that there was so much interest from multiple divisions that we were going to become a group standard technology.

Ultimately I had to wait another 6 months for it to close, but it ended up being worth $20m. An industry and personal record.

Life in enterprise sales is naturally precarious, but multi-threading is the ultimate insurance policy. Not just multi-threading contacts, but parallel opportunities. 

The experience humbled me. Big deals don’t just 'fall into place', they come together because of all the invisible threads you’ve been weaving for months.

The Fintech Sales Guy - Sales training and revenue strategy for Fintechs

Massive thanks to my guests Paul Clark and Ewan MacLeod for joining me on stage to talk about what the buyer / seller experience should be in 2025 - some really candid exchanges!

The No.1 frustration was 'transparency'. It's clear that in 2025 technology buyers expect to have easier access to things like sandboxes, API documentation and subject matter experts.

And Sellers need the same from Buyers being upfront on their sales processes.

Thanks to everyone that attended the session. I was worried about closing day 2 of an event (usually the graveyard shift), but the room was packed with standing room only.

Final big thanks to FTT Fintech for an epic event - can't wait til next year!

I lost two potential clients in the last week for the most stupid reason - I told them the truth. 

Both were asking for something totally impossible, and I told them so. In fact, one wanted a programme of work that would take a team of five people 3-4 months done by one person in 3 weeks.

It hurts to lose business, but two things worry me more.

1. The amount of people out there that will tell buyers whatever they need to hear to make a quick buck. Fill their pockets, wait for the inevitable failure and vanish into the night, knowing from the start that it would be like this.

2. The amount of buyers that won't be warned, are certain a quick and cheap fix exist, and are determined to drive their ship into the iceberg before they accept it's there.

Saying what buyers want to hear might win the deal, but it never creates the outcome they need. 

If that costs me a few deals, I can live with it. What I cannot live with is building my business on false promises.

What an epic day! Massive congratulations to Victor Cruz and team for FTT Fintech event. 

Officially the first 2 day event I’ve EVER been to that was packed right until the last speaker. 

Can’t wait until next year!

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Any technology vendors at FTT Fintech need to grab front row seats for my panel at 3:30pm!

I’ve got two bank execs who are going to be spilling the beans on all the things that vendors do, or don’t do, that sabotages buyer trust and credibility. 

Grab a pad and pen becuase this should be your new playbook for engaging with technology execs in banks in 2025. 

Can’t wait to see everyone. 

Any last minute questions you want me to put to my guests?

After closing a $20m deal I thought it would be the best feeling in the world. But it wasn’t. 

It was relief. 
Exhaustion. 
Spent adrenaline. 

Then the commission cheque landed so I went out and bought a fast car. 
Something befitting a man of my ‘status’. 

It was totally hollow, so I sold it. I realised that there was never going to be a possession that filled the hole..

It’s funny. The things that you think will make you happy rarely are.

For me the best things are simple. 

Picking my kids up from school. 
Going for a run outside in the middle of the day. 
Deciding when and where I work. 
Reading with one of my cats on my lap. 

In my sales training I teach salespeople the strategies I used to close those large deals, but ‘meaning’ is something we all need to find for ourselves. 

(Does anyone else feel like my cat is judging me?)

We've all got a mate like ChatGPT.

Really confident, seems to know everything, but regularly gets caught out talking utter rubbish.

Here's an example from my weekend.

I took a photo of a piece of exercise equipment that was missing screws and asked GPT to identify what it was and what pieces I needed.

It immediately identified correctly what it was looking at - A Wahoo Kickr Core and even the parts in the picture.

Incredible, I thought.

It proceeded to tell me that the part I needed was M8 screws, so off I trotted to Screwfix.

I returned to put in the screws only to find they didn't fit, so I told GPT.

'Oh yes, the screws for your model are actually a smaller M6 size in 25mm length'. It said.

Right! So off to Screwfix I went, again.

Long story short, I went, came back, and tried to install the screws only to find that although they are the right size, they were too short (needed 40mm).

Situations like this have happened many times. And there are two takeaways I have to share.

1. Confident and competent are not the same thing: Chat GPT fools us by giving incredibly detailed and decisive answers. But thats not the same as being right. Like your mate in the local pub quiz that seems to jump to the answers, only to regularly be wrong, GPT can not be trusted.

2. The new Auto model is there to save their compute, but it's ultimately a bit of an idiot. Anything but the most simple question and you need to change the setting to 'Thinking' mode, otherwise you get the AI equivalent to Gilbert Grapes brother helping you.

You have been warned.

P.S I have an unused pack of 100 M8 and nuts and bolts looking for a good home.

Your employee shares might be worthless.

If you joined a company doing $60m of revenue and got awarded $20k of ESOP, and 4 years later the company was sold at the point it was doing $210m revenue, you'd think you'd be due a pretty nice pay day, right?

You're going to be badly disappointed.

Valuation is based more on growth rate than anything else. As growth rate slows, the valuation collapses.

When you got in it was growing 100% YoY and carried a valuation multiple of X15, but by the time it's sold 4 years later, the market has matured, competition had entered the market and growth had dropped to 20% YoY.

Thats still really healthy growth by any sane standard, but unfortunately it's likely to drop the valuation to a X5 multiple.

Probably even less.

That means the company you joined is worth more-or-less exactly the same 4 years later.

And your share award?

I guess $20k is better than nothing, right?!

Sorry, more bad news coming your way.

Because you didn't account two more things:
1. The $150m raised from investors at X2 preference - ie they get their money before anything else gets divided.
2. The strike price on the shares you have.

At the end of the day, you'll probably walk away with $6k. If that.

That's $1.5k for every year you grinded away growing that company.

Employees at startups sacrifice a lot in the hope that the rollercoaster will finish with a soft financial landing, but most don't fully realise how precarious the game is.

This scenario is A LOT more common than you think.

I'm not saying don't work in start-ups - I love the time I've spent in successful fast-growth businesses - but you need to learn how to really weigh the choices.

Don't be blinded by dollar signs in your eyes.

"Never pitch until you've done a thorough 30 min discovery call!"

I heard this last week, and I'm adding it to my big book of advice i disagree with. Here's my view.

If the prospect has agreed to a meeting, it's because they want to know about your offering.

Grilling them for 30 mins straight can be very one-sided.

Yes, you need to be able to position your solution effectively against their pains, but you also need to give them what they want - information.

The context is also hugely important.

If it's an inbound call and that person wants to introduce you to their senior management for a 2 hour presentation as a first meeting, definitely do a discovery call.

If its an outbound call and they've agreed to give up a precious 45 mins in their day to learn a little more via a remote demo, running a full discovery is a guaranteed to piss them off.

In outbound situations you might even have to run a discovery at the front of the demo in a single call.

Whatever the case my advice is the same.
Keep the first discovery proportional to the first meeting. Gather enough information to enable you to position that first meeting effectively - no more.

Discovery is not something that happens once as it's done. It's a continual process that doesn't stop until the contract is signed - Don't rush it!

Do you think there should always be a separate discovery call? What exceptions are there?

My insurer has put me in a BAD mood. 

They have played what feels like the normal insurance industry game of ‘just checking you’re paying attention’ when their renewal quote that went up by…

50%!!

No changes in cover. 
No claims. 
Exactly the same thing. 

I detest that the insurance industry in general seems to have built customer apathy or busy lives into their business model. 

Lure you in with a nice rate and the moment you glance the other way, BAM, they grab your trousers and try their luck. 

I like being loyal. 
I dislike the admin fuss of changing it if I don’t have to. 

But anyone that tries to hike my prices that much is shown an instant red card. 

What crappy business practices put you in a foul mood?

You can learn more from one good question than from 20 scripted ones.

“What’s the project called?”

If there’s a project name, there’s momentum. If there isn’t, there usually isn’t.

Sales is not only about extracting information.

It’s about recognising where the buyer is in their own internal journey and deciding whether it makes sense to proceed together.

Just because the prospect is in pain doesn’t mean they’re going to do anything about it. 

We all live with pain we’ve normalised.
The business world is built on tolerated inefficiency.

The sale only starts when the buyer says, out loud,
“This has to change.”

Until then, you’re not in a sales cycle. You’re in a chat.

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