Hiring a Country Manager in France
Your first hire will define your local culture, recruit your first twenty people, and represent you to clients who have never heard of you. Most companies get the profile wrong.
A Country Manager is not a sales director with a local passport. For the first year, they are your company in that market, and the arbitrations they make will set a culture you will spend years correcting if it goes wrong.
The two casting errors
The pure salesperson. Excellent in meetings, signs the first clients, and cannot structure an entity, recruit a team, or hold a conversation with a French accountant. After a year you have revenue and no organisation.
The large-company executive. They ran a subsidiary of two hundred people with a head office that decided everything. With you they will be alone, on a tight budget, expected to sell personally for six months. They have not done that in fifteen years.
Look for someone who has opened a market, not someone who has managed one.
The profile that works
A hybrid, which is what makes it rare: someone who sells personally for six to twelve months, then recruits and manages. Someone who can push back on a head office with opinions about a market it doesn't know.
Three questions that filter effectively:
- « How many clients did you personally close in your first twelve months? » A precise number, or move on.
- « How did you build your first team? » You want someone who recruited, not someone who inherited.
- « Tell me about a disagreement with your head office. » Those who never had one never carried any weight.
What it costs
| Context | Base | Total package | Equity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Market opening, team to build | €85 – 120k | €120 – 170k | 0.2 – 0.8 % |
| Established subsidiary, 10–30 people | €110 – 150k | €150 – 210k | 0.1 – 0.4 % |
| France + Southern Europe | €140 – 190k | €190 – 270k | 0.1 – 0.3 % |
Add roughly 45 % for employer contributions on top of the base. A €120,000 package costs the company about €175,000 per year.
The first ninety days
What to expect, and what to give them.
Weeks 1 to 4: immersion at head office, not in France. They need to know the product, the people and the decision-making before representing any of it.
Months 2 and 3: first client conversations, market mapping, and an honest report on what does not translate. Listen to that report, it is the most valuable thing they will produce all year.
Month 4 onwards: first hires, and a revised plan built on what they learned rather than on what the deck assumed.
A Country Manager to hire?
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