The Opportunity
- Join a family-owned manufacturer of custom and specialty industrial coatings with over 50 years of innovation, serving global markets in a flat, entrepreneurial environment where you'll report directly to the CEO and have immediate impact on growth.
- Lead the sales organization at the director level, ideal for a seasoned professional or ambitious leader ready to advance their career.
- Build a lean, high-performing team focused on learning and continuous improvement, where you'll collaborate closely with marketing to drive sales discipline and. A fractional sales executive has assisted with a transition over the past year with emphasis on skills, systems, and execution, and a fully dedicated and accountable leader is needed going forward.
- Thrive in a culture that values relationships, technical expertise, and flexibility, offering the chance to build and lead a sales organization while exploring new territories and markets with the support of established products like high-temperature coatings and industrial solutions.
What You'll Do
- Lead and coach the sales team to upgrade performance, including ensuring consistent sales processes, CRM usage, setting clear expectations, and accountability for individual and team results.
- Hire and onboard new salespeople to fill open positions, focusing on identifying and recruiting talent that fits the team's needs and drives growth.
- Enhance the value of relationships with existing customers while exploring new opportunities in key regions and territories.
- Conduct hands-on field work, such as calling on accounts and exploring new areas to gather insights before assigning dedicated resources.
- Collaborate with marketing to align on lead generation, customer strategies, and overall commercial efforts, building trust and productive partnerships.
- Monitor day-to-day sales activities, ensuring effective effort and discipline across the team to support current accounts and expansion goals.
- Engage directly as the initial point of contact in new markets to accelerate learning and validate opportunities, transitioning to oversight as the team grows.
Candidate Profile
- Proven management experience leading sales teams, with a track record of running operations in the trenches and handling nuts-and-bolts activities.
- Demonstrated success selling either industrial coatings or other technically complex chemical industry products, typically to mid-size OEM customers (average annual account value in the 5-6 figure range) requiring strong comprehension, intelligence, and the ability to construct sales processes, ask probing questions, and handle multifaceted customer needs.
- Experience recruiting and hiring sales talent, including identifying prospects, making roles attractive, and evaluating fit beyond corporate-provided candidates.
- Growth mindset with discipline, energy, and aptitude for sales activities like leveraging CRM for prospecting, follow-ups, and reporting.
- Growth-oriented attributes: hungry, humble, smart; ambitious go-getter with a desire to help the team win, learn, improve continuously, build lasting relationships, and raise standards for self and team.
- Ability to adapt to new products, markets, or territories, ideally with prior exposure to multiple product types or expansions
- Willingness to travel regularly, especially in the first 90 days to build relationships at headquarters, with base near a major airport in the central or western US (1-2 time zones from Pacific Northwest preferred; no relocation required).
- Strong collaborative skills to work effectively with cross-functional teams like marketing and fractional advisors.
- Open to stepping up from a manager role to director level in a flat organization