VP, Sales- Iron Mountain, MI

Job Overview

The Vice President of Business Development will ultimately be responsible for supporting and sustaining Systems Control’s strong growth trajectory through the development and execution of a new-business commercial strategy.  Strategic, tactical, and inspirational leadership with external customers and internal constituents is critical to success, as is close coordination with their world-class engineering, manufacturing, and finance functions. 

The VP of Business Development will operate with a spirit of entrepreneurship while bringing strategic leadership and best practices to the organization.  

 #LI-CH1

A Day In The Life

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Identify and assess strategic market opportunities across the breadth and depth of the utility equipment landscape, working closely with the Board, Comvest/OAG, and Senior Leadership to define the commercial strategy and allocate resources
• Build a deep understanding of competitor and customer dynamics to tailor Systems Control’s value proposition and define its strategic position in the market
• Execute the strategy, drive growth, and improve commercial performance in close collaboration with Sales, Pricing, and the Product Design group
• Establish and gain access to top Utility customers, and establish and continually develop close working relationships at the most senior levels to better understand needs and priorities and deliver solutions
• Develop and maintain a robust pipeline of business development opportunities, including new customers, development of existing customers (through share or adjacency), and entering new products and markets
• Support the development of KPI’s and performance metrics-driven environment, where ambiguity is removed or minimized by clear, measurable goals and frequent analysis of progress
• Optimize resources, processes, cross-functional and customer relationships to continually improve revenue growth and gross margin attainment
• Deliver financial commitments to business operating plans, financial cycles, and medium- to long-term financial frameworks, including:
  • Actively lead the management of all controllable expenses
  • Lead Business Development’s participation in collaborative company forecast process
  • Lead proactive communication on any variances
• Periodic travel required

ACCOUNTABILITIES

• Sustain historical 15% growth rate pace by developing a broad base of blue-chip customers in a manner than is consistent with long-term success while mitigating and managing customer concentration
• Partner with Senior Leadership to build a short- and long-term strategic plan for the business including gaining alignment for the structure and development of the requisite sales team to execute the annual tactical plans
• Collaborate with the Business Development team to develop appropriate methodology and collaborate with Operations and Pricing teams to capture real-time feedback on pricing initiatives and strategies to drive margin improvement and increase market opportunities
• Define and deploy weekly/monthly KPI’s to analyze trends, performance and execution of sales
• Support internal team to specify, implement and execute a CRM system within the first 12 months that supports future scalability of the business
• Build accurate and reliable 6 to 12-month forecasts to support operations and internal planning efforts
• Leverage existing customer relationships to identify parallel growth market opportunities
• Negotiate contracts that represent the best interest of the business while managing and minimizing exposure and risk
• Solidify contractual review, PO review, acknowledgement and associate internal processes to protect the company from risk

What will help you thrive in this role?

EDUCATION & EXPERIENCE

• Bachelor’s Degree in business or a technical discipline.  MBA or other advanced degree is preferred
• 15+ years professional experience with at least 10 years in senior leadership positions; a minimum of 10 years of experience leading sales or commercial teams in an industrial and/or utility-oriented environment
• Significant experience with senior level relationships at large scale electric utilities
• Diverse functional experience is highly desired, including pricing, marketing, go to market strategy, revenue management, and sales

QUALIFICATIONS

• A successful candidate will have spent ample time working in similar business development roles, ideally focused on industrial sales and/or utilities, and in organizations with revenue more than $250M
• Proactive, responsive, and engage.  Driven and takes personal accountability.  High energy.
• Operates with a sense of urgency and expects his/her team to do the same, leading by example
• Entrepreneurial spirit and enjoys a fast-changing environment
• Direct communication and working style.  Advocates and selects the best idea, not necessarily their own idea.  Low on ego and apolitical.
• Collaborative, flexible and open-minded.  Able to thrive in a team-based environment.  Exhibits a high degree of autonomy with a proven ability to pull disparate pieces together across the organization and ‘get things done.’
• Establishes a high degree of personal accountability among his/her team and enables the team to hold each other accountable, challenging the status quo, and fostering an environment of new ideas and change
• Analytically-oriented perspective towards business development, integrating analytics and technology into decision-making and resource allocation
• Demonstrated ability to recruit, lead, manage, and mentor a high-performing, data-driven team.  Excellent coach and team leader who can champion change.
• Demonstrated selling and negotiation skills
• A successful record of progressive career advancement with expanding responsibilities
• Extreme customer focus; can be a model steward for Systems Control’s long legacy of close partnership with customers

SKILLS

• Ability to define and execute a strategy requiring close cross-functional coordination
• Experience in market/product strategy
• Strong analytical and financial skills
• Outstanding communication and presentation skills
• Familiarity with the utility landscape
• Strong negotiating and decision-making skills
• Experienced problem-solver
• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite