Founding Sales Director

The best early salespeople do two things most people cannot do at the same time: they create pipeline from nothing, and they turn early curiosity into signed business. Parq is looking for a Sales Director who wants to own that full motion. This is not a traditional Sales Director role managing a team. This is an individual contributor role for a high-agency hunter who can open cold accounts, run sharp discovery, create urgency, and close deals in a market that is just beginning to understand what is possible. You will sell to building materials manufacturers across North America: companies that make the coatings, flooring, specialty chemicals, structural systems, and product systems that shape the built world. Their teams are buried under complexity. Product data is scattered. Compliance documentation takes too long. Technical questions bounce across departments. Bid support depends on whoever happens to know the answer. Sales reps spend too much time hunting for information and not enough time selling. Parq changes that. We have built the product intelligence layer for building materials manufacturers: a platform that unifies product data and deploys AI agents to handle the repetitive, slow, manual work that has been draining teams for decades. The agents do not replace experts. They free them. The right person for this role will not wait for the market to come to us. You will help create the market. Compensation OTE: $150,000 - $180,000 (dependent on experience) Base / variable: Structured to reward performance, self-sourced pipeline, and closed revenue Equity: Meaningful early-stage equity grant, dependent on experience Accelerators: Available for over-performance Relocation bonus: Available if moving to Austin Your role This is a full-cycle, self-sourced sales role. You will be responsible for building your own pipeline, opening target accounts, qualifying real opportunities, running discovery, shaping the business case, and closing initial deals. You will work directly with the CEO and founding team, and you will play a visible role in shaping Parq’s go-to-market motion. This role is ideal for a top-performing BDR, senior SDR, or early-career AE who has proven they can create opportunity from cold outreach and is ready to own revenue. You should be energized by a blank territory, not intimidated by it. Create pipeline from zero Build target account lists across building materials manufacturers. Prospect through phone, email, LinkedIn, referrals, trade shows, and account-based campaigns. Run disciplined outbound sequences using tools like Apollo, Clay, LaGrowthMachine, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Attio. Create conversations with senior leaders who may not yet know Parq or the category. Develop account-specific hypotheses around product data chaos, compliance friction, technical support burden, sales enablement gaps, and bid-response delays. Maintain weekly pipeline creation targets and report honestly on what is working, what is not, and what needs to change. Turn conversations into qualified opportunities Run discovery that gets beneath surface pain. Identify the real business problem, affected teams, current workflow, urgency, decision process, and economic impact. Qualify opportunities based on company fit, buyer power, problem intensity, use case clarity, and next-step commitment. Multi-thread across sales, product, technical service, marketing, R&D, compliance, IT, and executive stakeholders. Bring useful context into every handoff, demo, and internal deal review. Close early deals Own smaller and mid-market opportunities from first conversation to signed agreement. Partner with the CEO or senior seller on larger strategic accounts. Present Parq’s point of view clearly and credibly. Create urgency without pressure tactics. Handle objections around AI, data readiness, compliance, budget, IT involvement, change management, and internal ownership. Negotiate initial agreements, pilots, expansions, and multi-year paths where appropriate. Bring market intelligence back to the company Surface messaging patterns from live conversations. Identify objections, buying triggers, competitor mentions, and category confusion. Help refine ICP, outreach, talk tracks, sales materials, qualification standards, and demo flow. Bring product feedback from the field to the founding team. Help Parq learn faster than the market. What Success Looks Like In your first 30 days, you will: Learn Parq’s product, market, ICP, current customers, and core use cases. Build your first named-account list. Launch outbound campaigns across phone, email, LinkedIn, and event follow-up. Shadow founder-led sales conversations. Begin generating first meetings and market signal. In your first 60 days, you will: Consistently create qualified conversations with target accounts. Demonstrate a clear prospecting system. Run discovery calls with increasing independence. Build early-stage pipeline. Show evidence of messaging improvement and account prioritization. In your first 90 days, you will: Own a working pipeline of qualified opportunities. Advance deals through discovery, demo, validation, and commercial next steps. Close or materially progress initial opportunities. Show that you can create demand, not just manage it. Earn the right to own larger opportunities. You Bring 2 to 5 years of B2B SaaS sales experience in a BDR, SDR, AE, or hybrid full-cycle role. Proven ability to source qualified pipeline through cold outbound. Evidence of opening accounts from zero. Strong phone, email, LinkedIn, and live-event prospecting skills. Comfort speaking with senior buyers who did not ask to hear from you. Ability to explain a new category clearly without sounding scripted. Strong discovery instincts: you ask the second and third question. Commercial courage: you ask for the meeting, the next step, and the commitment. Rejection resilience: silence, no-shows, and objections do not knock you off course. Clean operating discipline: CRM hygiene, follow-up, pipeline notes, and forecast reality matter to you. Startup energy: you move before everything is perfect. Coachability: you take feedback, test it quickly, and improve without defensiveness. Bonus Experience prospecting into manufacturing, industrials, construction, building products, compliance-driven markets, or technical buyers. Experience working trade shows, conferences, or field events as a sales motion. Experience creating pipeline for a new category or unfamiliar product. Prior success as a top-performing BDR or SDR with a clear path toward closing. Experience closing smaller deals, pilots, paid trials, expansions, or founder-assisted opportunities. This Is Not the Role for You If You need warm leads to stay motivated. You avoid the phone. You prefer long research cycles over starting real conversations. You want a mature sales playbook handed to you. You think “strategic” means low outbound activity. You are uncomfortable with ambiguity. You want to manage people before proving you can create revenue. You blame marketing, territory, product, or timing before looking at your own execution. Tools We Use Specific experience with every tool is not required, but we value candidates who can effectively leverage and quickly learn new technology: Attio, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Apollo, LaGrowthMachine, HeyReach, Clay, Claude, Google Workspace, and Notion. We also welcome suggestions for additional sales tools when they improve execution. Who We Are Our founder started Parq after experiencing the compliance process firsthand - frustrated by how complex, slow, and expensive it was, and by how much that complexity fell on manufacturers who did not deserve it. Our mission is simple: give people their time back, help manufacturers compete on what matters, and make every product decision better informed, more sustainable, and less painful to make. We are a small team working out of Austin, TX. We take the work seriously and each other lightly. We are building something genuinely new, and we know that requires people who are energized by that, not intimidated by it. Our Principles Live Free: We practice living free - free to take action, push bounds, and bet big. Start With the Customer. Always: We obsess over the people we serve - their goals, pressures, and world. Serve How You Want to Be Served: Treat every person - customer or teammate - the way you would want to be treated. No Microsofting: There is no ops issue. There is only our issue. Start Before You're Ready: Speed is our greatest advantage. Do not wait. Curious and Convicted: Ask why before how. Question the assumption. Run the experiment. Then stand firm in what you believe. Interview Process Candidates should be prepared to discuss: Quota, attainment, pipeline source, activity volume, conversion rates, and examples of accounts opened from zero. A cold outbound sequence they personally built or improved. A deal or opportunity they created from scratch. A time they handled repeated rejection and changed their approach. A target-account exercise for Parq, including buyer, trigger, pain hypothesis, first-touch message, and path to a meeting. #J-18808-Ljbffr Parqhq