Position Summary: The Sales Director is responsible for targeting and securing project agreements with specific multi-site national companies across North America to achieve personal and Company revenue growth goals. This position will develop prospects into customers by continually improving our relationship across multiple levels / functions. The position requires experience selling services and an understanding of key financial concepts to communicate attractive solutions with buyer groups including C-level executives. The Sales Director must work effectively with prospects, clients, strategic partners, and the functional groups within the firm. Importantly, the Sales Director will consistently develop professional credibility, loyalty, trust, and commitment by modeling the Company values.
Specific Responsibilities:
Prospect for new customers, which includes:
▪ Identifying prospects that meet the target account criteria in the areas of customer segment, industry segment, size, and prospect orientation. ▪ Collaborating with third party strategic alliance organizations when necessary to identify new prospects and improve the firm’s position with current prospects. Strategic alliance organizations could include lighting product manufacturers, distributors, energy efficiency consultants, and other non-lighting contractors.
Identify and qualify project opportunities with new prospects, which includes:
▪ Developing a thorough understanding of prospect short-term and long-term financial objectives and needs as learned through discussions with prospect’s corporate and decentralized facility, energy, and executive management teams; and/or ESCO Corporate and local teams (sales, development, project management). ▪ Communicating energy efficient lighting design build capabilities to address prospect needs and objectives and influence their lighting/energy strategies. ▪ Confirming mutual alignment between prospect needs and expectations and the firm’s capabilities in the areas of scope of work, implementation model, timeline, and financial criteria. ▪ Identifying concerns and potential competitors while differentiating solutions based on prospect strategy and needs. ▪ Determining prospect key decision makers, financial budget, timing requirements and other pertinent decision criteria. ▪ Conducting non-technical preliminary assessment to estimate project size and energy savings/payback in order to further qualify prospect before submitting proposal request to engineering department. ▪ Executing Engineering Development Agreement with prospect to include audit payment terms where applicable.
Leading preparation and delivery of proposal, which includes:
▪ Obtaining information needed by the firm’s department to complete audit and proposal including, but not limited to: timeline expectations, utility information, MRO information, and facility drawings. ▪ Communicating proposal strategy with engineering department in regards to prospect needs, proposal format, options, and design choices in order to maximize potential for securing an agreement. ▪ Assisting the firm’s department with audits where needed in order to further penetrate prospective customer and/or to obtain competitive information. ▪ Assembling the proper team to deliver the proposal and leading the preparation and delivery of the presentation and supporting financial analysis, tailored to the prospect.
Securing project approval, which includes:
▪ Addressing prospect questions regarding proposed project and outcomes. ▪ Negotiating final terms (financial, M&V, light levels, performance, and payment) of project and obtaining customer agreement to proceed with project. ▪ Acquiring any required customer financial information for proposals to be financed and providing needed corporate/financial documentation about the firm to prospect, if applicable.
Monitoring project implementation and project close out phases, which includes:
▪ Participating in internal hand-off meetings between engineering and operations departments and/or customer pre-construction meetings, where applicable. ▪ Working in conjunction with operations department to deliver project close out documentation and secure a completed quality control (QC) scorecard for the project. ▪ Obtaining a reference letter and/or press release approval for completed project. ▪ Assisting finance department in collection of payments due, when needed. ▪ Summarizing key project learnings for the firm, operations, and sales departments for continual process improvement.
Adhering to internal territory planning and administrative tasks, which includes:
▪ Creating annual sales plan and providing updates on progress versus plan objectives on a regular basis. ▪ Maintaining company CRM database with information including prospect company, contacts, project opportunity, and key activity details. ▪ Establishing effective communications with Company Management regarding sales initiatives, strategies, needs, and market intelligence that could affect sales efforts on a regular basis. ▪ Managing a personal development plan focused on continual personal growth and improvement.
This description is not intended to include all possible job responsibilities. The Sales Director may perform other job-related tasks other than those mentioned here.