Sales Manager (Great Lakes West)

About the Opportunity

We are conducting a confidential search for an established North American manufacturer. The business makes engineered consumable materials that go onto or into a customer's product during manufacturing. These are not commodity items, and you can't buy them off a shelf. Each application is qualified on the customer's own equipment, and the value case is measured in scrap avoided, rework eliminated, throughput held, and finish quality protected. Once a material is qualified into a process, it tends to stay, which makes this a business built on technical credibility and long account tenure rather than transactional volume.

Sales are predominantly direct to manufacturers and their tier supply base, with a smaller share moving through distribution.

Summary

Roughly half of this job is deepening and defending an existing book of accounts. The other half is opening new ones. You will spend most of your week in plants, walking production lines, watching a process run, and working out where the client's material solves a problem the customer has already accepted as normal.

You will sell across the whole plant, not to a single buyer. Process and manufacturing engineers decide whether it works. Quality decides whether it is acceptable. Operations decides whether it is practical. Purchasing decides what it costs. All four have to say yes.

Territory and Location

This position covers Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Home-office based. Candidates should live in or near Chicago. Fully remote with 50% travel.

Compensation

50/50 base-to-sales split with a first-year OTE of ~225k. Variable is split in quarterly and annual payouts.

Responsibilities

• Own an assigned geographic territory end to end: existing accounts, new business, pricing, and margin.
• Run on-site discovery through process walkthroughs, application assessments, and line observation to identify where the client's materials fit.
• Design and run product trials on customer equipment, and manage qualification through to first production order.
• Build working relationships across engineering, quality, operations, and purchasing at each account.
• Conduct account reviews that surface expansion opportunities and get ahead of retention risk.
• Carry customer issues back into the business and drive them to resolution with internal operations, quality, and service teams.
• Negotiate pricing and agreements while protecting target margin.
• Maintain a disciplined pipeline in CRM with an accurate forecast.
• Report competitive activity, pricing movement, and emerging applications from the field.
• Represent the company at trade shows, plant tours, and industry events.

Requirements

• Five or more years in outside B2B sales calling on manufacturers.
• Experience selling a consumable or engineered material that becomes part of the customer's production process. Not capital equipment, and not resale of another company's product.
• Direct experience running product trials on a customer's line.
• A record of selling across multiple functions inside a plant.
• Evidence of both growing existing accounts and opening new ones.
• Willingness to travel 40 to 50 percent within the territory during peak periods.
• Working CRM discipline and an honest forecast.

Helpful, Not Required

• Background in specialty materials, industrial chemistry, films, coated or converted products, or comparable engineered inputs.
• Customers in metal fabrication and finishing, plastics processing, glass, appliance, building products, or transportation supply chains.
• Familiarity with RFQ-driven cycles and technical pricing models.
• Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, or a technical discipline.