Position: Product Manager – Sales and Customer Technologies
Location: Addison, IL Duration: Full Time Hire
Description: Our client is a growing national distributor holding a dominant position as a full-service resource for the industrial, OEM, MRO and mobile industrial equipment industries. They are seeking to hire a passionate Product Manager to lead in driving enterprise value creation through Sales & Customer facing technologies. This position will work closely with business and technology leadership to understand the enterprise objectives and drive the product roadmap for Sales and customers to create enterprise value. Key objectives of this role will be to drive sales force efficiency and effectiveness, support the growth of digital revenue, enhance the customer experience and adoption of digital tools into the business. This person must have a customer-first mindset, obsess on how to improve the sales force and is accountable for adoption and reporting out KPIs. A successful candidate must be a strong facilitator and capable of translating user needs into business opportunities, own the product roadmap, prioritize & govern new features and capabilities. This role has high visibility directly into the CIO and Executive Leadership Team.
Responsibilities: Product Roadmap & Strategy
Support and enhance the sales processes to increase revenue, drive automation, improve customer experiences and increase leads, opportunities and quotes across the enterprise
Drive strategies and multi-year vision to build best-in-class Sales & Customer Tool roadmap including Feature Roadmap, Product Release Plans, and Backlog Grooming
Spend time in the field with the Sales team to understand customer needs and day to day sales process
Obsess on Sales & Customer needs to drive the product roadmap
Lead voice of sales to inform the product roadmap. Conduct user research and usability studies, collaborating with the sales team and IT throughout the process
Conduct research, validation, and white space analysis to identify opportunities for new or existing features and functionality
Ensure that sales initiatives are fully integrated with the strategic-planning process, including leadership commitment and resource allocation
Drive application portfolio management and architecture for sales tools
Develop the annual Sales & Customer Tool operating and capital expenditure budget
Delivery, Adoption & Value Creation
Oversee requirements discovery, solution design, user story writing, feature development, and user acceptance testing
Lead Agile teams as the SCRUM master following the Agile development process. Including backlog grooming, sprint planning, standups, demos and retrospectives.
Identify need and work with third party vendors on key sales initiatives
Ensure and conduct high quality training and change management of Sales products to achieve business outcomes
Sales & Customer Tool Communication and Promotion
Monitor and evaluate product performance to facilitate continuous iteration and improvement
Develop KPIs and scorecard to measure sales force efficiency and effectiveness that align to the effectiveness of our digital and sales applications.
Single point of contact for IT to support and lead strategic sales initiatives including Cross Selling, Competitor Focus, Target Account Selection, Hot Markets, WIG1 reporting, Accelerated Organic Growth, Prospecting
Report status on and manage key stakeholders for, Cross Selling, Sales team expansion and other strategic sales initiatives
Scope of application products but not limited to:
Custom Mobile Sales App & Sales Assistant
CRM (~8: Infor, JT, Rubber Tree, MITS, UDGLink)
Sales Reporting (Power BI, Other)
Lead Management (Interlinx, Lead Method, Infor CRM)
Required Skills:
Degree in computer science, information systems, business administration or related field, and/or equivalent work experience
5+ years of experience in digital product management or similar role
Understanding of core Sales processes and enabling technologies
Strong analytical, prioritization, and negotiating skills
Experience in usability, UX and customer-focused design
Strong experience in Agile, Project Management/SCRUM
Experience with Agile application development methodologies
Excellent collaboration, relationship, stakeholder management, interpersonal, written and verbal communication skills