ThinkSafe seeks growth with new sales roles around the North Island

PICKED FROM 400 APPLICANTS: After five years proving its membership-based health and safety model, ThinkSafe has launched growth plans taking on five new sales representatives around the North island — including, pictured from left, Katie Cheffings, John McDermott, Kane Wright and Scott Kellner. Picture by Paul Rickard

A membership-based health and safety company is looking to grow nationwide as well as expand its global operations, all supported from its Gisborne base.

Just five years after starting up, ThinkSafe has recruited five new regional sales representatives and director Andrew Burns said the jobs turned out to be highly sought after, with 400 people applying for roles in Napier, Wellington, Hamilton and Cambridge.

“We short-listed them down to 30 and then held a whole lot of Zoom calls, almost like speed-dating — and then we selected 10 from that and did face-to-face interviews.

“They will be working from those territories but really they can work and source clients from anywhere, even from outside those regions or internationally.

“It's the first round of recruitment, we'll be doing another one soon — watch this space.

“We are already supporting international operations and we are in 90 industries, all over New Zealand and in eight countries elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere as well. We are hoping to get more people on the ground for coverage around the regions.

“We've been in Gisborne for five years now, so we really want to pick that model up and drop it all over the place.

“This is all supported from Gisborne — so as we grow, we will have more people working here to support that.

“We've already started to create local jobs having recently welcomed Marilette Dinkel to our administration team in the Gisborne office.”

Mr Burns said it was important to demonstrate the reliability of the company's business model before expanding.

“We've been holding back on doing this until we had the internal infrastructure to cope with the growth. We didn't want to launch and then have to pull back six months later.

“So, now we can go hard and go big, launch properly and expand.”

The expansion was all internally funded, meaning there was no need to go searching for investors for the subscription-based health and safety company.

“That was great — we managed to fund and sustain our own growth,” Mr Burns said.

“We are thoroughly market tested and the growth we've had has been from word of mouth and referrals.

“We have very loyal customers and a high renewal rate, so it's really exciting.”