About the Role
This is a systems role, not a sales role. You won't carry a quota. You'll design the machine the sellers run inside: how leads enter the business, how they're qualified and routed, how the sales system is structured, and how performance data feeds back into commercial strategy. Today, lead intake is ad-hoc, ownership is informal, follow-up is unmeasured, and segmentation lives in strategy documents but not in the system. You're being hired to fix that.
You'll partner with senior commercial leadership and work alongside a capable Salesforce administrator who needs a strategic counterpart. This is a senior-scope seat for someone who wants to build deep ownership in one place over the long term—not a stepping stone to a sales leadership title. Schedule requires a minimum of six hours of daily overlap with US Eastern business hours.
What You'll Do
Lead Intake & Routing
- Replace ad-hoc lead intake with two controlled inputs: a standardized web form and a validated list-upload path for trade shows and purchased lists
- Build a lead qualification framework across three distinct sales motions—transactional, project-ready, and budgetary/quote-seeking—and configure routing so each motion follows the right path
- Establish lead ownership, response SLAs, and disposition discipline in the CRM
Reporting & System Design
- Stand up the first honest funnel report covering source, stage conversion, cycle time, and seller-level throughput
- Partner with the Salesforce administrator on data model, automation, and reporting architecture—setting direction while they build
As the Function Grows
- Define what great looks like for this function and hold the organization to it
- Sit inside strategy and segmentation discussions as the voice for what the system needs in order to execute the strategy
- Support incoming fractional or project leadership as the execution owner who makes their recommendations stick after they leave
- Build the case for, and eventually lead, additional analytics or operations capacity
What We're Looking For
Non-Negotiables
- Hands-on Salesforce ownership—you've personally built reports and dashboards, configured lead assignment rules, modified fields and objects, and worked inside flows or process automation. You can direct an administrator credibly and correct them when they're wrong
- End-to-end lead lifecycle experience—you've owned intake, qualification, routing, SLA enforcement, and disposition, not just one slice of it
- Analytics capability without a team—for at least the first year, you are the analyst. Pivot tables, conversion math, cohort and funnel analysis, clean data validation. You build the report yourself and can defend the numbers
- Process design and adoption—you've documented a process, trained the people who resisted it, and made it stick
- Influence without authority—you can disagree with senior stakeholders, propose an alternative, and hold your position professionally
- Executive-grade written English—your reporting will be read by executive leadership and the private-equity sponsor; structure, precision, and brevity are part of the job
- Self-directed operator, comfortable working without a defined playbook, setting your own priorities, and executing hands-on without a team to delegate to
- An operations and systems background (not a sales or telemarketing role looking to transition into operations), paired with commercial judgment
- Motivated by building deep, lasting ownership in one function over three-plus years
Preferred Qualifications
- Lean, Six Sigma, or Kaizen background—leadership is process-trained and shares this language
- Experience in a quote-driven, project-based, or channel/distributor sales motion (manufacturing, industrial, or construction-adjacent)
- CPQ or quoting workflow exposure
- Marketing operations familiarity: form capture, UTM discipline, lead scoring, HubSpot/Pardot/Marketo
- Practical AI tool fluency for research, analysis, content, and workflow automation
- Prior experience being the first person in a newly created function
