BHID Group

Premium brands don’t just need more Sales Designers. They need the right ones: people who protect margin, honour the brand and turn every qualified lead into its full value.

This is how Citrus Connect went beyond recruitment for the BHID Group, the business behind Neville Johnson, London Door Company and Tom Howley. Through an in-depth sales consultancy project, we identified exactly what sets their top-performing Sales Designers apart, then built a recruitment strategy to find more of them.

Who is the BHID Group?

The BHID Group is home to three of the most respected names in UK luxury home interiors:

• Neville Johnson: bespoke fitted furniture and staircase renovations, crafted for discerning homeowners for more than 30 years.
• London Door Company: handcrafted luxury front doors, combining period character with modern security.
• Tom Howley: hand-crafted luxury kitchens, designed and made in Britain.

Headquartered in Manchester, the group sells through a national team of self-employed Sales Designers who visit customers at home and turn qualified leads into high-value, made-to-measure projects. In a market where every sale is bespoke and every home visit represents the brand, the calibre of each designer matters enormously.

The Challenge

Citrus Connect began recruiting for the BHID Group in 2023, starting with Sales Designers for London Door Company. As the relationship grew to include Neville Johnson and Tom Howley, a bigger question emerged: what does a genuinely successful Sales Designer look like?
Neville Johnson had always judged its designers on one number: a conversion rate of 10% or more. But conversion alone told only part of the story.

• Volume was hiding value. Some designers hit their conversion numbers through heavy upfront discounting, while others converted slightly fewer leads but secured far more value in every deal.
• No clear profile to hire against. Without knowing what really drove top performers, job adverts and interviews could only look for “good salespeople” in general terms.
• A reactive hiring process. Strong candidates in a competitive market were being lost to faster-moving competitors between invitation and interview.

Neville Johnson’s Sales Director, Mal Shaw, wanted recruitment tools built on evidence, so the business could attract more of the people who truly drive revenue and margin.

How Citrus Connect Helped

Citrus Connect supported the BHID Group in two ways: an independent sales consultancy project for Neville Johnson and London Door Company, and ongoing Sales Designer recruitment across all three brands.

Phase 1: Independent sales consultancy (2025)

Citrus Connect founder Leena Parmar worked closely with Mal Shaw on a research-led project to understand what sets the best designers apart.

• Listening to the sales team. Video interviews with designers across Neville Johnson Staircase, Neville Johnson Furniture and London Door Company, backed by G.E.M.S. motivational questionnaires.
• Challenging the KPI. The analysis showed that designers with similar conversion rates were producing very different value per deal. Together, Citrus Connect and Mal Shaw moved the measure of success from conversion alone to Average Revenue per Lead, which rewards both volume and the quality of each sale.
• Widening the lens. The new metric brought ten high-value designers into the study who had previously been overlooked, taking the total to 41 designers profiled.
• Five BHID Avatars. Every designer was mapped to one of five data-backed profiles: the Resilient Achiever, Empathetic Design Enthusiast, Experienced Adaptor, Strategic Communicator and Lifestyle Seeker.
• Competency matrices. Separate matrices for Staircase and Furniture, built around BHID’s four values: Driven by Detail, Focused on Solutions, Proud to Care, and Friendly and Approachable.
• A complete recruitment toolkit. Revised job positioning, avatar-specific advertising channels and messaging, an interview guide for spotting each avatar, a

workforce-planning model and practical steps to speed up time to hire.
The headline finding: every avatar contributes to success, but Resilient Achievers make up the largest share of above-average revenue performers in both Staircase (38.5%) and Furniture (34.8%). In Furniture, Empathetic Design Enthusiasts come a strong second (26.1%), proving how much design-led selling matters on high-value projects. The research also showed that Furniture designers’ revenue per lead rises steadily with length of service, making retention a direct lever for revenue.

Phase 2: Recruiting to the profile

The avatars now shape how Citrus Connect recruits for the group. Rather than screening on CV history alone, candidates are assessed against the motivations and behaviours that drive Average Revenue per Lead, with messaging tailored to attract each profile – the same approach we use to build and scale high-performing sales teams for other clients.

Why the Consultancy Made the Difference

Most recruitment starts with a job description. This project started with the people already succeeding in the role. That gave the BHID Group far more than a list of candidates:

• One agreed definition of success. Every candidate is now measured against what actually drives revenue and margin, signed off by the Sales Director.
• Adverts that speak to the right people. Messaging tailored to each avatar’s motivations replaces generic “uncapped earnings” job posts.
• More objective hiring decisions. An interview guide helps managers recognise each profile, rather than relying on gut feel.
• Insight beyond hiring. The findings on tenure, onboarding and the self-employed mindset now inform how designers are developed and retained once they join.

What This Means for Your Sales Designer Team

If you lead a team of self-employed or employed Sales Designers, the same questions apply to your business:

• Is your headline KPI telling the full story, or could high conversion be hiding heavy discounting?
• Do you know which personality profiles produce your best results?
• Are your job adverts and interviews built to attract those people?
• Does your hiring process move quickly enough to win the best candidates before your competitors do?

Citrus Connect’s sales consultancy, delivered personally by founder Leena Parmar, answers these questions using your own team and your own data. It works for self-employed, employed and mixed sales models, and pairs naturally with our specialist Sales Designer recruitment.

The Results

• A clear, data-backed definition of a successful Sales Designer, moving from conversion alone to Average Revenue per Lead
• 41 Sales Designers profiled across Neville Johnson Staircase, Neville Johnson Furniture and London Door Company
• Five BHID Avatars and two competency matrices adopted as practical recruitment tools
• A partnership that has grown from one brand in 2023 to three, with 28 placements to date
• Neville Johnson placements more than tripled in 2025, the year the consultancy project ran
• Every Tom Howley placement still in role at the 12-week mark

By starting with evidence rather than assumptions, Citrus Connect gave three of the UK’s leading luxury interiors brands a clear picture of who their best designers are, and a recruitment strategy built to find more of them.

If you lead a team of Sales Designers and want to understand what drives your top performers, book a call with our sales recruitment specialists to discuss consultancy, recruitment or both.