Chief Sales Officer (CSO)

Europe’s leading e-commerce shipping platform Sendcloud is entering a new phase: growth, without giving up the financial discipline it has worked hard to build. The Chief Sales Officer owns the go-to-market strategy that unites its two segments – SMB and Enterprise – into one commercial story, doubling net ARR to 150 million euros.

About Sendcloud

In 2012, three friends – Bas, Rob, and Sabi – ran a webshop together. They soon hit the same wall: shipping was exasperating and expensive, and competing with the big retailers felt impossible. Determined to level the playing field, they built their own solution: Sendcloud. Fourteen years later, that start-up has grown into Europe’s leading shipping platform with over 170 carriers, working for more than thirty thousand merchants on a single mission: to solve shipping globally.

The Netherlands and Belgium were followed by Germany, Austria, and France. That expansion pace earned the company the number one spot in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 in 2017, with a staggering 5,463 percent growth. During the e-commerce boom between 2020 and 2022, the company shifted into an even higher gear: it raised 150 million euros, grew the team from 125 to 400 employees, and launched in Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In the years that followed, the company acquired three companies – Tracey, Lox, and Isendu – building the foundation for AI-driven features such as shipping intelligence and support automation.

Growth hasn’t slowed down, on the contrary. Today, Sendcloud is active in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Austria, France, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom. The Netherlands is the largest market, France its fastest absolute grower, and the United Kingdom is the market with the most growth potential. The Nordics, Poland, Portugal, and Ireland are next on the roadmap, with the United States as a longer-term ambition.

The team now counts more than four hundred professionals representing over fifty nationalities. Most work from the Eindhoven headquarters, complemented by offices in Munich and Florence. The culture is down-to-earth and entrepreneurial, with short lines between teams and plenty of room for personal development and growth.

Vacancy: Chief Sales Officer (CSO)

Sendcloud has proven it can grow without losing financial discipline. The next chapter is about doing both at the same time – pushing growth harder without giving up that discipline. The CSO makes that happen, owning the strategy that pushes growth in countries where Sendcloud already has a foothold, and building a first foothold in the markets still ahead of it.

The CSO takes over new-business acquisition across SMB and Enterprise. For Enterprise, the scope is end-to-end, including CSM, solution engineering, and marketplaces; SMB customer success remains with the Chief Customer Officer. Both segments should work toward one goal: moving net ARR from 75 to 150 million euros.

Sendcloud runs on two commercial engines: SMB and Enterprise, and each runs on its own logic. SMB is the volume engine: high-velocity, largely self-serve, already reaching one in six Dutch webshops, with plenty of room to grow further in every market. Enterprise is newer and longer-cycle, selling into big merchants and marketplaces that need a completely different pitch. Both need to scale at the same time, each on its own terms, without one crowding out the other.

That is where the real challenge for this role lies: pulling SMB and Enterprise into one coherent commercial story, without flattening the differences between segments and markets. The CSO understands what customers in each segment are looking for, and turns that into a single, integrated go-to-market strategy. Nobody expects her/him to out-expert the specialists; their job is to weave their knowledge into one effective plan and push the team to achieve higher growth together. Success shows in the numbers, in a commercial engine that runs more efficiently, and just as much in people who keep developing and excelling.

The CSO leads the VP of SMB Sales and the VP of Enterprise, in a role that is first and foremost that of an architect: connecting and orchestrating the moving parts into one commercial success strategy. While the VPs run their own engines, the CSO sets the direction and the energy the whole commercial organization moves on. She/he also works with the COO and the VP of Operations on RevOps, with the VP of Marketing and the VP of Partnerships on the wider go-to-market plan, and with the Chief Customer Officer on balancing new and existing business. The CSO is also the one who takes Sendcloud’s growth story to the board and investors, backed by reliable numbers and a clear, credible narrative.

Sendcloud embraces three core values: ‘no bullshit’, grow & win, and have fun. In this company, there is no room for egos. The CSO’s leadership style fits that naturally: structured and clear enough to bring predictability, driven by data and clearly defined goals, and holding people accountable without being a bogeyman. Her/his energy is contagious, pulling the best out of teams and keeping the pace high, working from the Eindhoven office at least four days a week.

“I’m not after someone who’s already made it. I want someone hungry, someone who’s still building their track record, not coasting on a third playbook that worked somewhere else. Adaptability matters more to me than experience on paper.” – Rob van den Heuvel, founder & CEO

The building blocks are already there: go-to-market plans per market, country leads in place, and sales motions already running. The CSO’s job is to bring these individual parts together into one more effective commercial engine, built to push what’s realistically achievable in new business and commercial scale, in the short, medium, and long term.

Interested?

Sendcloud is working with Top of Minds to fill this vacancy. To express your interest, please contact Sjoerd Kooistra at sjoerd.kooistra@topofminds.com.