Manager - Aftermarket Sales (Chicago)

Job Overview

The Aftermarket Sales Manager is responsible for leading FreightCar America’s outside sales team and driving disciplined, profitable sales growth across the full Aftermarket Parts portfolio, with a heavy focus on distribution sales. This role translates commercial strategy into clear sales plans, account and territory priorities, customer engagement expectations, and consistent execution. The Sales Manager will coach and develop the sales team, manage performance, use sales analysis to identify growth opportunities, ensure Salesforce and commercial process compliance, and oversee select key customer relationships. The successful candidate must be able to think strategically while working tactically and collaborate across the organization to convert customer and market insights into action. Chicago-based hybrid is preferred; fully remote may be considered for the right candidate.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities (Other duties may be assigned)

• Lead, coach, and develop the outside sales team to achieve sales growth, customer development, and market expansion objectives across the entire Aftermarket Parts portfolio, with a heavy focus on distribution sales.
• Translate commercial strategy into actionable annual and quarterly sales plans, including clear priorities, targets, and activities for territories and key accounts.
• Establish and enforce disciplined account planning, territory coverage, customer contact and visit cadence, opportunity follow-up, and execution standards.
• Manage all aspects of sales team performance, including goal setting, regular one-on-one meetings, coaching, performance evaluations, development planning, participation in hiring, and recommendations regarding corrective or disciplinary action.
• Drive consistent adoption and compliance with Salesforce, ensuring customer activity, opportunities, account plans, and other required information are accurate, timely, and actionable.
• Perform sales analysis by customer, territory, product, and salesperson to identify wallet-share expansion, cross-selling, new account, retention, and reactivation opportunities; use findings to guide team priorities and actions.
• Oversee select key customer relationships and support Account Managers during important customer visits, opportunity development, negotiations, and issue resolution.
• Provide the Commercial Director with customer, market, competitive, pricing, and opportunity inputs that support revenue and profitability decisions; ensure the sales team complies with approved pricing and commercial guidelines.
• Work collaboratively with Customer Service, Inside Sales, Supply Chain, Operations, Engineering, and other functions to resolve customer issues and execute sales growth initiatives.
• Monitor customer needs, market trends, and competitive activity; recommend new products, sales channels, value propositions, and commercial actions based on internal and outsourced capabilities.
• Manage relationships with independent sales representatives; monitor engagement and sales performance to maintain a productive sales channel.
• Travel approximately 30%–50%, including overnight travel, for joint customer visits, field coaching, internal meetings, industry events, and conferences.

Qualifications

• Proven success leading, coaching, and holding sales professionals accountable in a business-to-business sales environment.
• Demonstrated ability to develop sales strategies and convert them into practical account, territory, and customer engagement plans.
• Strong analytical capability, including the ability to evaluate sales performance, identify trends and gaps, prioritize opportunities, and recommend corrective actions.
• Proven track record of driving sales growth, developing new business, expanding existing customer relationships, and supporting pricing and margin discipline.
• Experience in industrial distribution, manufacturing, transportation, or another technical B2B sales environment is preferred; rail industry experience is a significant plus.
• Strong leadership presence with the ability to set clear expectations, coach different experience levels, address performance issues, and build a culture of ownership and execution.
• Ability to rapidly learn technical products, customer applications, industry requirements, and the operational considerations that influence customer decisions.

Education/Certification

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, business, marketing, or a related discipline is preferred. Equivalent relevant sales and leadership experience will be considered.

Work Experience

• Minimum of 8-10 years of progressive sales experience, including at least 3 years of direct experience managing salespeople. Experience leading a geographically dispersed outside sales team is preferred.

Skills and Knowledge

• Strong working knowledge of CRM platforms and disciplined sales process management; Salesforce experience is preferred.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook, including the ability to analyze sales data and communicate clear conclusions and action plans.
• Confident communicator with strong written, presentation, negotiation, coaching, and influencing skills.
• Ability to balance strategic thinking with hands-on tactical execution in a fast-moving, growth-oriented environment.
• High level of accountability, sound judgment, adaptability, and willingness to travel to customer and field locations where the use of personal protective equipment may be required.

This position is eligible to earn commissions in accordance with the Company's commission plan and applicable policies. The compensation range listed represents total target earnings, including both base salary and target commission opportunities.

DISCLAIMER: This is not necessarily an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties, skills, efforts, requirements or working conditions associated with the job. While this is intended to be an accurate reflection of the current job, management reserves the right to revise the job or to require that other or different tasks be performed as assigned.

FreightCar America provides equal employment opportunity to all individuals regardless of their race, color, creed, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by state, federal, or local law.