Senior Technical Sales Manager

Job Summary

ABL and Pre-Sales Team: The pre-sales solutions team is on a mission to create exceptional service experiences for customers and partners, thus turning opportunities into orders for ABL. Guided by our unwavering commitment to excellence, integrity, and collaboration, our mission as a pre-sales team is to drive order growth and foster enduring relationships with our customers. We strive to understand and anticipate our customers' needs, delivering solutions that turn opportunities into orders. Through our proactive and customer-centric approach, we aim to inspire trust, exceed expectations, and set the stage for a successful sales journey. We believe that our success comes from ensuring that our customers quickly, easily, and accurately get the information they need to secure an order.

Your Mission: The Technical Sales Manager’s mission is to help increase our order capture rate through impeccable service and to clear the path to order activation.  This team will understand that capturing an order is not merely a transaction, but an opportunity to create a lasting impression, foster trust, and cultivate meaningful relationships through high level empathy and project-level understanding

Key Tasks & Responsibilities (Essential Functions)

Improve Sales Effectiveness: 

•Fostering strong relationships and consistently deliver exceptional experiences.  Embody the “we’ll take care of it” attitude.  Aim to cultivate customer loyalty, ultimately securing the customers trust and winning their orders.

• Leverage your technical expertise, comprehensive product knowledge, and solution-oriented mindset to drive successful conversion of opportunities into orders.

• Collaborate closely with the Sr. Specification Sales Manager to identify and nurture potential opportunities, actively contributing to the growth of the project pipeline through designated tools.

• Support the creation of no charge sample orders, working in close partnership with customer support associates to ensure timely delivery of high-quality samples.

• Diligently monitor and oversee the specification registration process, ensuring seamless management of registrations. Proactively engage with agents to ensure they are effectively managing their registrations, while swiftly addressing any conflicts in partnership to resolve them amicably.

Provide Specialized Support: 

• Facilitate customized product and design requests, utilizing advanced tools such as the Product Configurator and system resources to streamline bill of material and submittal generation (RFA request-for-assistance) as required.

• Serve as a dedicated, trusted, and reliable point of contact, readily available to address and fulfill all pre-sales needs of both agents and customers, ensuring exceptional support and seamless communication throughout the process.

• Extensively train on ABL products gaining comprehensive knowledge to address feasibility inquiries, ensuring our customers make informed decisions when selecting products for their unique requirements.

Technology you will leverage:

• Power BI. You must have proficiency in using the application to understand sales data and order capture rate.
• Agile Applications. Our agents rely heavily upon Agile, the processes it enables, and the business rules it enforces. To aid our customers with their needs, you will need to understand and utilize a variety of Agile Applications such as RFA tool, Quoting Tool, Project Container, and various others. You will need to develop breadth and depth in both the processes and the technology. Technical Sales Managers will need to be proficient and utilize Agile to assist in customer resolution.
• Item Explorer and Windchill.  These applications are essential when understanding product feasibility and deep technical knowledge.  Technical Sales Managers must be proficient in navigating these applications.
• ADC, acuitybrands.com and our brand websites. Agents and their customers rely on these applications and websites for key information and to place orders on ABL. Must have expert knowledge of the information available, use of the tools, and roadmap will serve you and your customers well.
• Salesforce. We have and will continue to add key customer support and engagement activities in Salesforce. We will use the platform to define our standard work and build complete customer stories such that anyone can speed up on a customer or agent account quickly.

What we are looking for in you:

• Naturally empathetic. The ability to step into someone else’s shoes and walk a few miles can make all the difference between someone who is successful in this position and someone who struggles. By truly being able to understand the customer’s needs, you can also produce the best solutions.
• Just Take Care of It Attitude.  Exhibiting a willingness to own a question or problem and not stop until the customer is satisfied.
• Technical and Process Expertise. Expert knowledge of our business processes and deep, relevant domain knowledge of one or more Acuity systems or tools. You need to fully understand anything that could impact on the customer experience at any point and how we can resolve it.
• Customer advocacy. Customer Success team members must be strong, natural advocates. Your entire job is to fight to improve customer experience, which can sometimes be more difficult than it sounds.
• Trusted and transparent advisor. With your expert knowledge, you can find the answers, solutions, and reasons why, and work with your partners to craft a transparent, honest, and empathetic message between agencies and customers.
• Business acumen. Elevated level of business acumen, organization skills and interpersonal abilities.
• Pace. Ability to multi-task and work independently, without guidance, in a dynamic, demanding environment. And act with urgency to solve the customers’ problems.
• Empowered. Ability to lead and drive (directly or indirectly) to achieve results and solve problems. May lead projects (or project steps within a broader project).

What you should have:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent work experience or (certifications)
• Solid understanding of internal ABL organization, industry specifics, and business strategies
• Excellent problem-solving and critical thinking skills
• Superior communication and interpersonal skills
• Ability to remain calm and focused in stressful situations
• 6-8 years’ customer service/support and/or sales experience
• Experience collecting, accessing, and interpreting data to provide insights to customers and partners

Travel Requirements

Other

“Good Afternoon Roger.  Thanks for letting me know about a unique and incredibly complicated 20,000 square foot project you are working on.  I would love to help!  I understand this application requires specialty lighting.  I have already reviewed all of the design drawings for the space and based on your complex requirements, I would suggest modifying X product to y length to fit the space perfectly.  This product meets all the requirements of your lighting specifications and looks elegant in the space.  I can create some drawings for you to review all the technical details and will have that ready in 48 hours.  Right now, I will send you lead time, pricing, availability, and nomenclature should you choose to use this fixture.  If you require anything further, I am always here to help you – just give me a call or send me a message.  I look forward to working with you further on this project.”

We value diversity and are an equal opportunity employer.  All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regards to race, color, age, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, ethnicity or national origin, disability, pregnancy, religion, covered veteran status, protected genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law. 

Please click here and here for more information.