Sales Manager – Industrial / Capital Equipment
Location: Greater Los Angeles Area | On-site initially
Base Salary:$115,000–$140,000
OTE:$165,000–$205,000
Build the Sales Organization — Not Just Manage It
A well-established, privately held industrial equipment manufacturer is entering an exciting new phase of growth and is seeking a Sales Manager to help build the commercial organization needed to support its next stage.
This is not a traditional sales management position where you inherit a mature sales structure and simply manage to an existing playbook. The company is looking for an entrepreneurial sales leader who can build the playbook—developing the team, processes, systems, outbound strategy, channel partnerships, and accountability needed to significantly scale the business.
The organization has an established customer base, strong inbound demand, and a solid reputation within industrial and technical markets. The opportunity now is to build a more proactive, scalable sales engine around that foundation.
What You'll Do
- Lead, coach, develop, and hold accountable an established sales team.
- Build a structured sales strategy tied to revenue growth, pipeline, conversion rates, deal size, and team capacity.
- Establish meaningful KPIs, forecasting, pipeline management, and sales accountability.
- Develop the sales organization beyond its historically inbound-driven model.
- Build outbound business development capabilities and determine the right future team structure.
- Recruit, hire, and develop additional sales talent as the organization grows.
- Develop and expand relationships with distributors, resellers, OEMs, strategic partners, and major accounts.
- Identify new markets, applications, and revenue opportunities.
- Improve CRM utilization, sales processes, reporting, automation, and analytics.
- Establish clear sales stages, lead routing, handoffs, and opportunity-management processes.
- Partner closely with executive leadership on pricing, market positioning, growth strategy, and commercial planning.
- Work cross-functionally with operations and other departments to improve the customer experience and win rate.
- Remain close enough to customers and the sales process to understand what works, while ultimately focusing your time on building and leading the organization rather than carrying an individual book of business.
What We're Looking For
We're looking for a builder, not simply a manager.
The strongest candidates will have experience helping a smaller or mid-sized B2B organization scale and can demonstrate measurable accomplishments such as growing revenue, building a sales team, opening new markets, developing distribution channels, improving conversion rates, increasing deal size, or implementing stronger sales systems.
Ideal experience includes:
- Proven B2B sales leadership experience within industrial equipment, capital equipment, manufacturing, aerospace, defense, or another technical environment.
- Experience building or significantly improving a sales organization, rather than only managing an established team.
- Demonstrated success growing revenue and creating scalable sales processes.
- Experience hiring, coaching, developing, and holding salespeople accountable.
- Success developing new markets, outbound strategies, distributor networks, OEM relationships, or strategic partnerships.
- Strong understanding of CRM systems, sales technology, reporting, analytics, automation, and modern sales tools.
- Experience establishing KPIs, pipeline discipline, forecasting, and sales operating cadence.
- Ability to operate effectively within a smaller entrepreneurial business where leaders wear multiple hats.
- Comfort balancing strategy with hands-on execution.
- Strong commercial instincts and the ability to identify new opportunities for growth.
- Existing relationships within industrial, manufacturing, aerospace, defense, or capital-equipment markets are a plus.
A specific degree is not required. Demonstrated success, leadership ability, commercial aptitude, and the ability to build and execute are considerably more important.
The Right Leadership Style
This opportunity will be particularly attractive to someone who is:
- Entrepreneurial and energized by building something.
- Competitive, driven, and highly accountable.
- Resourceful and comfortable operating without a large corporate infrastructure.
- Technically curious and able to understand industrial products and applications.
- Confident enough to lead while remaining humble enough to learn.
- Comfortable creating structure and accountability without unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Able to translate a high-level growth objective into an executable sales strategy.
Why This Opportunity Stands Out
The company has already built a successful business and established customer demand. The next challenge is creating the commercial organization capable of supporting substantial additional growth.
You'll have the opportunity to influence how the sales team is structured, who gets hired, how leads are generated, how channels are developed, how the CRM is utilized, how performance is measured, and how the overall sales organization evolves.
This is a highly visible role working directly with company leadership, with significant autonomy and the opportunity to take on greater responsibility as the business grows.
For someone who wants to look back several years from now and say, "I helped build that sales organization and scale that business," this is that type of opportunity.
Compensation & Benefits
- Base salary of $115,000–$140,000, depending on experience
- Target total compensation of approximately $165,000–$205,000
- Performance-based variable compensation
- Health insurance
- 401(k)
- Paid vacation and sick time
- Paid holidays
- Opportunity for increasing responsibility and long-term career growth
This position is expected to be on-site initially to build relationships with the team, learn the operation, and establish the sales infrastructure. Longer-term flexibility may be possible based on performance, team effectiveness, and business results.
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