Hydraulic Sales Specialist

Summary

Join Continental and make an impact as a sales team member, developing new business opportunities through our distribution channel to drive growth and exceed targets in sales, margin, accounts receivables, and cost management. This role involves developing and executing distribution strategies to maximize profitable growth and market share, driving customer centricity to establish ContiTech as the preferred partner. The position supports the Southeastern US region, requiring 50% travel and residing within one hour of a major airport. Responsibilities include segment strategy development and execution, customer acquisition, contract management, relationship building, budget achievement, customer feedback integration, market trend analysis, and promoting customer centricity. Technical responsibilities include application design, troubleshooting, training, and innovation recommendations.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree or higher, preferably in a technical discipline or minimum 10 years or more if no relevant bachelor’s degree
• 5 years of hydraulic hose sales experience
• Experience converting a major customer's business from a competitor and developing, presenting, gaining approval, and executing on major business cases
• Sales and Customer Relationship management and development
• Presentation skills including working knowledge of PowerPoint
• Strong negotiation skills
• Financial acumen including the ability to manage sales, margin, cost and working capital and to read and prepare business cases
• Strong communication skills
• Emotional intelligence and cultural sensitivity
• Market and knowledge of diverse industrial markets
• Experience with business planning and forecasting
• Experience executing along the sales cycle to hunt and close new customers and new business
• Ability to translate applications and opportunities into business cases for evaluation
• Ability to travel at least 50% of the time
• Legal authorization to work in the U.S. is required. We will not sponsor individuals for employment visas now or in the future for this job posting
• No relocation assistance is offered for this position

Responsibilities

• Develop new business opportunities thru our distribution channel to drive future growth to directly pay into exceed in the following targets: Sales growth at a minimum of 3% above the industry, margin, accounts receivables and cost management
• To be a key part of the segment team to develop and then execute our distribution strategy to maximize the BA Industrial Solutions Americas profitable growth and market share
• To drive customer centricity though the entire BA organization to establish a preference and premium for our products and solutions, establishing ContiTech as the preferred partner of choice in the industrial distribution market
• Segment strategy development and execution with their area of responsibility including deployment to and through their teams
• Responsibility for customer acquisition; managing contracts/ business proposals incl. Commercial negotiation
• Develop and maintain strategic and cooperative relationship with customers
• Leads the business to achieve budget (Volume, Sales, Growth, MOS, EBIT) and other planned targets and KPI´s
• Ensures regular customer feedback on forecast and adjusts input to operations and SCM
• Provides critical customer, competitor, and market trends to benchmark our performance
• Ensures feedback on customer satisfaction and escalation throughout CT BA and segment for improvements
• Plays an active leadership role in the segment to promote and drive customer centricity
• Technical application design and recommendations for improvement
• Troubleshoot application and performance issues
• Technical training to customers and internally
• Compile technical needs, customer pain points and make recommendations to drive innovation

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong hydraulics product knowledge
• Business development experience
• Minimum of 1 year of R&D, applications engineering and/or sales engineering experience
• Basic industrial rubber products knowledge (industrial hose, conveyor and power transmission systems, air springs)

Benefits

• Paid Time Off
• Tuition Assistance
• Employee Discounts, including tire discounts
• Competitive Bonus Programs
• Employee 401k Match
• Hybrid Work
• Employee Assistance Program
• Future Growth Opportunities, including personal and professional