Director of Sales Operations & Channel Management

We begin with dreams. Dreams drive our motivation. Dreams are our future. The world's dreams, people's dreams, our dreams. Our passion creates ideas that make dreams come alive. Technology and products that were only dreams become reality.

All for dreams. Dreams challenge and the Nidec-Group will continue to meet the challenge. For the world's and people's tomorrows; the world's first, the world's best technologies and products; we will continue our part in creating a better society.

Job Summary

The Director, Sales is a senior commercial management role responsible for defining and executing sales strategy to drive revenue growth, market expansion, and customer retention. This role leads sales teams and initiatives to achieve top‑line results while ensuring disciplined execution, strong customer relationships, and alignment with enterprise objectives.

Job Description

Job Description

SPECIFIC JOB RESPONSIBILITIES

• Define and Implement Channel Strategy: Collaborate with Americas Sales Leaders and Business Development to develop and execute the company's distribution and systems integrator strategy, aiming to achieve growth and market share goals. A Go-To-Market strategy to be created segmenting Specialist Distribution vs. General Distribution to help in better aligning OEM/EU new customer growth and management by application type, solution scope, and support requirements Develop Sales Strategies: Create and implement sales strategies to drive revenue growth through indirect sales channels.

• Develop Pricing Strategies to support Go To Market plan, by Channel Type and segment (Specialist, Generalist)

• Collaborate with Nidec Drives field sales team to support Channel partner(s) on new customer prospecting, tracking, and development of new accounts, ensuring the Channel is prepared with the right resources to farm and manage new account business from Nidec.

• Distributor Partner Management

• Work with Regional Sales Directors and Area Sales Managers to identify and develop new distributor partners, manage existing partners, and terminate relationships when necessary.

• Promote positive distributor order growth through communication and participation in distributor events.

• Oversee the distributor Point of Sales Reporting program, including program mechanics, reporting back to distributors, and leveraging POS information to drive sales growth.

• Ensure partners are trained on the company's products and sales techniques.

• Maintain distributor contract and policy documents.

• Monitor distributor websites to ensure Nidec Drives is represented optimally.

• Collaborate with Nidec Drives marketing to keep distributor locations and "where to buy" information up to date and accurate.

• Represent the company at channel trade organization events and activities.

• Work with Sales, Strategic Marketing, Business Development, Marketing, and MarComm to develop programs supporting our channel partners.

• Product Knowledge and Training: Stay current on the company’s products, applications, pricing, and selling benefits. Inside Sales Team Management:

• Inside Sales Specialists: Lead and manage the inside sales team to drive sales growth. Setting clear goals, monitoring performance, and ensuring accurate and timely support for field sales teams and channel partners. The team will be responsible for providing pricing and availability information, assisting with product cross-referencing, and preparing quotations to support sales efforts. Additionally filling the gap in product escalations.

• The position also focuses on fostering collaboration, maintaining strong communication, and driving a high level of customer service to deliver exceptional experiences and meet revenue targets.

• Bridging the gaps between field sales, fulfillment, and the needs of our customers by facilitating stock rotation returns and aiding our customers in escalations.

• Channel & Sales Development Representatives: Lead and manage the team to ensure alignment with the overall direct sales and distribution strategy. Provide strategic guidance, support, and training to enhance their effectiveness in driving sales growth through distributor channels. Monitor performance metrics and implement improvement plans as needed to achieve sales targets. Focus on proactive activities, including lead follow-up and distribution to the channel, and executing prospecting campaigns with the Strategic Marketing team.

• Proliferation of sales enablement tools (Customer Portal, Online Configuration Tools, etc) will be part of the CSDRs regular outreach and training of partner network.

• In support of a Channel Strategy, map out how outside and inside sales will work as a team to support channel partners, and roles/responsibilities by role. The plan may include need to establish dedicated inside sales team members and/or Regional Channel Managers, to to more closely support, manage, and own Channel growth goals by key Region.

• The Inside Sales Team will support Regional Channel Managers with day-to-day activities.

• Marketing Collaboration: Collaborate with marketing teams in the US and UK to develop sales tools and campaigns that enhance and promote the effective sales of the company’s products and services through distributors, as well as enablement and best practices for self-service tools available to our customers.

• New Business Development: Actively collaborate with vertical market managers and business development to facilitate the execution of prospecting campaigns by the CSDRs to drive new revenue growth and feed channel partners with leads.

• Annual Distributor Profile Program: Own the Annual Distributor Profile Program, ensuring comprehensive and accurate profiles are maintained and utilized for strategic planning and growth. Implement directly through Channel sales team (Inside Sales Specialists and regional Channel Sales Managers).

• Budget Management: Provide and operate within the department's expense budget.

• Sale Enablement and Service Level Management: Establish market leading service levels for pre and post-sales support of channel and key customers, developing metrics to track our ‘Ease of Doing Business’

• Quote to Orders Reporting, reviewing Price & Availability quoting metrics, to understand quote volume trends, product trends, and lead times required to win new business.

• Order Inquiries logging and tracking of metrics, including enquiries raised, enquiries open/closed, response time, and customer satisfaction rate

• Escalation Management & Cross Functional Service Level Tracking

• Act as the Sales & Channel voice-of-customer to fulfillment team, providing team level input on customer sentiment, urgency, and priority for fulfillment to execute against

• Manage escalations relating to Customer needs and customer problem resolution, specifically with price and availability quotes and technology adoption

• Process and Technology Improvement Project Management– AI/Customer Service Tools

• Develop and maintain a Company technology strategy for enabling best in class pre and post orders execution support, including solution configuration, price & availability quoting and visibility, and pre and post order customer inquiry management, escalation, and resolution. This will require knowledge of the evolving Artificial Intelligence landscape and commercial solutions. Customer Enablement technical strategy should incorporate the needs of Sales, Technical Support, and Operations input/output to aid in customer service levels and revenue generation.

• Responsible for learning and enhancing current technologies and adopting new technologies related to Customer Enablement team functions and customer-facing tools

• Owner of customer-focused self-service tools: Customer Portal/CPQ Tool, GTM Tools (Sales Enablement, Training, Business Intelligence and outreach tools), EDI interfacing, and other solutions to make Nidec Drives a better partner for our customers.

• Stay abreast of industry best practices and emerging trends in customer enablement and learning and development

• Create and deliver customer training related to self-service tools, publishable in Customer Portal for customer self-servicing

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CUSTOMER AND TRAVEL REQUIREMENTS

Customers:

• Galco

• Motion Industries

• Power Mation

• Applied Industrial

• Applied Automation companies

• PEMS

• Partner Systems Integrators

• Association for High Tech Distribution AHTD membership management and participation

Travel:

• Greater than 40%

• Requires overnight travel

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REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS AND EXPERIENCE

• Four-year degree in: Business, Engineering, or Industrial Distribution, with a Master's degree (Preferred)

• Minimum of 10 years of experience working within industrial distribution and sales, 10year management experience preferred

• Able to work well cross-functionally and manage coordinated efforts successfully with other members of leadership

• Strong written and oral communication skills, Microsoft Office, Salesforce, familiarity with AI tools

• Project/Program Management

• Strong analytical skills

• Excellent organizational skills

• Skills in strategic planning, market analysis, negotiation, and conflict resolution

Additional Job Details

Management – M4

Organizational Impact

• Recommends tactical and operational strategies that will directly impact the achievement of overall business unit, department and/or job family group results
• Directs the execution of strategies established by functional and/or executive leadership
• Establishes operational plans for department and/or job family group with short- to mid-term impact on results (e.g., 1-3 years)
• Work requires a high degree of responsibility for resources, and frequently influences business decisions made by senior leadership
• Typically responsible for moderate revenue and/or expenditures in multiple areas or over multiple teams with moderate oversight, with signature authority Communication & Influence
• Communicates with parties within and outside of own business unit, department, and/or job family, and typically has responsibilities for communicating with parties external to the job family group, which may include clients or partners
• Works to influence others to accept job family group/business unit’s view/practices and agree/accept new concepts, practices and approaches. Requires ability to communicate with executive leadership regarding matters of significant importance to the organization
• May conduct briefings with senior leaders within the business unit/job family group. May at times be required to negotiate regarding operational issues Innovation & Complexity
• Responsible for making significant improvements of processes, systems or products to enhance performance of business unit, department and/or job family group
• Problems and issues faced are numerous and undefined, where information is typically difficult to obtain
• Problems are frequently complex. Problems typically impact multiple business units and/or job family groups
• Problems are typically solved through drawing from extensive prior experience and analysis of issues Leadership & Talent Management
• Manages a department or job family or a large team that includes multiple teams led by other people leaders
• Responsible for creating workforce and staffing plans for department/job family group/team to ensure availability of talent necessary to accomplish departmental business results
• Typically has hiring, firing, promotion and reward authority within own area, in accordance with Corporate Guidelines Knowledge & Experience
• Requires advanced management and leadership knowledge to lead cross-department project teams or manage across multiple job family group
• Typically has mastery within a specific technical or broad expertise across multiple related disciplines
• Typically requires a bachelor’s degree or equivalent professional certification and 10 years of prior relevant experience

Equal Employment Opportunity and Affirmative Action at Nidec Nidec is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and Affirmative Action Employer encouraging diversity in the workplace. All qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to their age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, color, genetic information, religious creed, national origin, physical or mental disability, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. For more information regarding your (EEO) rights as an applicant, please visit the following website: http://www1.eeoc.gov/employers/upload/eeoc_self_print_poster.pdf

Work Shift Schedule

No Soliciting

Nidec will not accept unsolicited resumes from individual recruiters or third party recruiting agencies in response to Nidec job postings. No fee will be paid to third parties who submit unsolicited candidates directly to our hiring managers. Pre-approval from the Nidec Talent Acquisition team is required before any external candidate can be submitted and such candidate must be submitted to the Nidec Talent Acquisition team.