I have used DANA Associates to recruit for new business sales positions, which are the hardest sales positions to fill. The candidates that have been sent to me for interviews have shown a history of over-performance, ambition, intelligence and have been well-prepared for the interview.

Denise Grant, President of DANA Associates, is also a motivating and effective executive, therefore she tends to attract and send candidates to me that embrace those same qualities. Candidates that I have hired, who were sent by DANA Associates, have been very successful in their roles at my past employers, Forrester Research and ZoomInfo.

I will continue to work with Denise to meet my talent needs.

Brett Wallace
Director of Sales
SaaS

When we made the decision to hire a new sales leader, we realized that the process of ferreting through resumes from an online job site was an incredible waste of resources. Instead, we decided to use a recruiter. DANA Associates and Denise Grant were our first choice because they focus exclusively on sales.

From day one, Denise challenged me to think about what I really needed. She put our wants and needs into the context of the real world and the current market. She was never afraid to challenge my assumptions or my decisions if she felt I was shortchanging my company. She was attentive, willing to meet face-to-face at a moment’s notice, constantly providing feedback, and generally helpful in making what turned out to be an excellent hire.

DANA is focused on making sure that their clients succeed.

Joe Rando
President
SaaS

I have worked with other search firms before, but what distinguishes DANA is their exclusive focus on sales and the vetting process of the candidates. This was the first time working with them, and we felt confident that whoever was sent to us was someone we would consider hiring. They took the time to really understand our unique business needs and it showed in the quality of candidates provided. Denise clearly worked very hard to vet candidates and not waste our time. It was never a concern for us that she would push a candidate on you just to get a deal done and make a placement. She had authenticity in how she went about the process, which was very compelling.

Sean Riley
Chief Operating Officer, Veson Nautical
Software

In hiring, sales people aren’t easy because they are good at talking about themselves. Enterprise software sales-people are even more difficult to hire; there’s a lot more to it than good patter and an easy manner.

There are several obvious reasons to use a recruiter; discretion, consistency, expertise in screening. Denise was able to demonstrate several other reasons within a few minutes of chatting on the phone. In short, DANA Associates not only brings a wealth of experience in understanding and evaluating salespeople, not only listens very carefully to your expressed needs, but also takes very seriously the hard work of distilling successful, on-target candidates.

With DANA you get people who really understand the business of hiring for sales positions, and want nothing more than for you to succeed. Happily, Denise and her team are experts at helping you describe the kind of sales-person you want. I strongly recommend DANA Associates for placing sales professionals.

Duff Johnson
Management Consultant
Enterprise Software

In the field of sales recruiting, Denise Grant is in a league all her own. Denise brings a level of energy, focus, discipline and client service to her work that few professionals deliver in almost any field. Her exceptional hands on approach, vast experience, sharp business mind, and fearless style virtually assures a successful outcome. Denise is not just a recruiter, but a true consultant, perhaps even better described as a coach, who continuously challenged my thinking and worked with me every step of the way to ensure each aspect of the recruiting process was well thought-out and executed.

The ability to deliver highly qualified and thoroughly screened candidates is only a small part of what you get when you hire Denise. Truly you get an extremely competent professional who can contribute to every level of the sales recruiting process, and who can quickly and efficiently fill a position with candidates that would otherwise be extremely challenging to find. I cannot recommend her highly enough.

Mitch Solomon
CEO
Technology Market Research and Strategy Consulting

I have worked with Denise Grant of DANA Associates as both a client and as a candidate. She is smart, quick and effective, taking into account both the personality of the candidate and the environment of the client to ensure long-term success. Denise has the unique ability to identify and deliver impressive and capable candidates, keeping my interests in mind in pursuing those candidates. She effectively manages the job search process from the beginning of the search to its fulfillment; she doesn’t waste my time.

Ann Trautenberg
CEO
Branding, Messaging and Research

What was outstanding about working with Denise Grant was her ability to listen deeply and quickly understand my organization’s specialized requirements. Her assignment was to find a senior level sales manager and a senior salesperson for the Hult International Business School, of which I am Global Head of Sales and Marketing. My company, although part of a large established parent organization, is very analogous to an entrepreneurial startup with the environment and needs of a small company.

Denise was able to ‘capture my expectations’ and present candidates that understood strategy and had managerial capacity. Since I am based in Switzerland and travel extensively, her availability, flexibility and quickness made a tremendous difference. DANA Associates was a really good fit for my needs …good follow-up, clear and easy communication, immediate responsiveness. I will definitely come back to DANA Associates to meet my U.S. placement needs.

Pierre Francois Robert Tissot
Global Head of Recruiting & Marketing
Education Management

As the head of sales at an international company, I have many years of experience managing distributed sales organizations, but I have never hired a full time US-based sales executive to report to me. Denise worked with me over a number of weeks to understand my needs and help refine requirements for the position as well as manage my expectations. Her consulting guided me on candidate qualities, compensation, and the interview process, even on aspects of presenting our company to a candidate.

DANA Associates’ network was invaluable in sourcing the right group of candidates, something hard to achieve on our own. The candidates were highly qualified and the information about them was comprehensive. In turn, the candidates were informed and understood the job requirements. Denise is totally committed. She works around the clock and does what is needed to get the job done with frequent communication.

I highly recommend DANA Associates for recruiting senior sales professionals for international companies.

Alexey Rybakov
VP Business Development
Professional Services

Initially I worked with Denise Grant of DANA Associates as a candidate seeking my next career move. Almost immediately after starting my new position, I returned to DANA Associates to staff my sales organization, and have since hired two fantastic sales professionals. I found Denise to be meticulous in her attention to both the candidate and client; she always ‘does her homework’ to gain a thorough understanding of the hiring organization so that she will only present candidates that are the right match. Given the intensity and complexity of the DANA placement process, I also knew that the candidates she presented would be strong, tough, and a ‘cut above’ most sales professionals.

Stephen Wynn
Executive Director of Recruitment
Education

I have known Denise Grant for over twenty years, and have used her services to fill sales positions for a number of different companies, all of which have high-end solution selling requirements. She has consistently been able to source exceptional sales professionals, who are smart, unique, know the reality of the business, and are able to ‘ramp up quickly’. Regardless of the specific organization for which I might be hiring, Denise always knows what I need and like in a sales professional. Shortly after starting the search, she will frequently call to tell me ‘you have to meet this person’; she is rarely wrong. She is able to find those unique sales professionals, who understand solution selling, and how to find a workable solution for their clients. When I have to hire in the greater Boston area, Denise Grant is the first person that I think of working with.

Matt Kenslea
Director
E-Learning

As an HR manager at a financial services company, I used DANA Associates a number of times to search for the right candidate for sales positions in our organization. When we were hiring, particularly to fill a critical sales role, there was significant pressure from senior management to get ‘the right candidate’ for that job. Unlike any other recruiter that we have ever worked with, Denise Grant knows the placement business.

I can’t say enough about the screening process; she educated herself so that she fully understood our company, the people, and the sales role. She thought of everything, and only sent candidates that she knew would fit the bill. Denise made certain that she kept current about changes in our organization, and never once wasted our time. I hold Denise Grant in very high regard, and have never known an executive recruiter, who is so proactive and insightful!

Kristen O’Hara
Human Resources Manager
Financial Services

I am a partner in a commercial real estate company that owns a number of retail centers in New England. I recently worked with Denise Grant of DANA Associates to recruit a Retail Leasing Representative. In addition to utilizing our more traditional recruitment approaches, my partners and I decided to broaden our search and retain the services of Denise Grant, an executive search professional more oriented towards the non-real estate sales community.

Denise brought considerable energy to the search process. An excellent communicator, she connected with me after each candidate interview to learn what I perceived as that individual’s strengths and weaknesses. But she also found me in-between interviews to explore what I was not seeing in candidates, what I was learning in the process and what skills and personality traits I wanted to see going forward.

Denise reads her candidates and clients effectively and was thoughtful in sending me candidates that met the needs I had communicated I wanted. She is direct and refreshingly honest. She did not try to sell me what I didn’t want and always respected my time by doing her homework thoughtfully. Denise ultimately delivered my desired candidate.

Joel Kadis
Partner
Real Estate

Whether as a job seeker or as a hiring manager, Denise Grant of DANA Associates is the first person that I reach out to for help. Excellent at asking intelligent, and at times probing, questions Denise goes to great lengths to understand our research business and to determine the qualities and skills that I am seeking in a prospective employee. Bringing her own ideas and thinking to the search process, she takes the time to get to know the candidates and presents only those that will be a good match for my organization.

Denise doesn’t waste my time; she saves it! In fact, I hold her in such high regard that when asked to recommend a search professional to a job seeker they have to be in a specific league before I will send them to DANA Associates. They have to be high caliber, ‘Denise-worthy’. Over the twenty years that I have worked with her, she has also become a personal and professional mentor, coaching me on aspects of my own career planning and the skills that I need to bring to my role as the hiring manager. Having worked with other search professionals, what I most want to say is: Denise Grant is in a league of her own!

Sharon Blank
Director of Sales
Online Publication Research

Our company is a leader in the development and manufacturing of microwave absorbing materials and has an extremely specialized, technical environment. This was not a typical sales search for what we required was an individual that was highly skilled and had expertise in both engineering and sales. From the very beginning, Denise Grant brought greater value to our project than merely supplying us with candidates to fill this position. She was able to identify through both telephone and in-person interviews with the GM, VP of Sales, Sr. Sales Engineer, and me that we had different expectations and ideas about what the ideal candidate would be.

Even more importantly she helped us reach a shared understanding of what we were looking for and what we needed for our organization; this was huge. Denise is very intuitive, and had the strength to be direct and forthcoming in her interactions with us. By identifying the inconsistencies, and helping us to ‘get on the same page’, she was able to send us candidates that were ‘exactly as advertised’ and met the very specific criteria that we had determined.

We ended up interviewing only three candidates; they were very different from each other, yet each met the job criteria and filled the bill exactly. Her process for identifying and interviewing prospective candidates is very effective; we were so pleased with one of the candidates that we stopped our search, and hired him immediately. Denise is so impressive; she is powerful, assertive and such a valuable asset to any organization searching for sales professionals.

Mary Osward
Manager
Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing