Sales Operations Manager

The Role

A US private-equity-backed manufacturer in the life-safety and communications sector is building a commercial operations function from zero. This seat has never existed in the company. There is no predecessor, no playbook, and no template to inherit.

You will report directly to the VP of Sales and work alongside an existing Salesforce administrator who is technically capable but has no strategic partner. Your job is to be that partner: to own how leads enter the business, how they are qualified and routed, how the sales system is structured, and how performance data feeds back into commercial strategy.

This is a systems role, not a sales role. You will not carry a quota. You will design the machine the sellers run inside.

The company is deliberately imperfect. The current primary call-to-action across all marketing material routes to a shared inbox that fourteen sellers read manually. Lead ownership is informal. Follow-up is unmeasured. Segmentation exists in strategy documents but not in the system. You are being hired because someone has to fix this, and nobody currently has the bandwidth or the systems thinking to do it

What You Will Own

First 90 days

Replace ad-hoc lead intake with two controlled inputs: a standardized web form and a validated list-upload path for trade shows and purchased lists.
Build the lead qualification framework across three distinct sales motions — transactional, project-ready, and budgetary/quote-seeking — and configure routing so each motion follows the right path.
Establish lead ownership, response SLAs, and disposition discipline in the CRM.
Stand up the first honest funnel report: source, stage conversion, cycle time, seller-level throughput.

Months 4–12

Define what "great" looks like for this function and hold the organization to it. Nobody will define it for you.
Partner with the Salesforce administrator on data model, automation, and reporting architecture — you set direction, they build.
Sit inside strategy and segmentation discussions as the voice that says what the system needs in order to execute the strategy.
Support incoming fractional or project leadership as the execution owner who makes their recommendations stick after they leave.
Build the case for, and eventually lead, additional analytics or operations capacity underneath you.

Non-Negotiables

1. Hands-on Salesforce ownership. Not "exposure." You have personally built reports and dashboards, configured lead assignment rules, modified fields and objects, and worked inside flows or process automation. You can direct an administrator credibly and correct them when they are wrong.

2. End-to-end lead lifecycle experience. You have owned intake, qualification, routing, SLA enforcement, and disposition — not one slice of it.

3. Analytics capability without a team. For at least the first year you are the analyst. Pivot tables, conversion math, cohort and funnel analysis, clean data validation. You build the report yourself and you can defend the numbers.

4. Process design and adoption. You have documented a process, trained the people who resisted it, and made it stick. Designing without adoption does not count.

5. Influence without authority. You will operate with a VP of Sales, a VP of Marketing, and a company president. You must be able to disagree with senior people, propose an alternative, and hold your position professionally.

6. Executive-grade written English. Your reporting will be read by the executive leadership team and the private-equity sponsor. Structure, precision, and brevity are part of the job.

7. Stability motivation. This is a senior-scope role that is not a stepping stone to a sales leadership title. We are looking for someone who wants to build deep ownership in one place over three-plus years, not someone using it as a promotion ladder.
8. Schedule. Minimum six hours of daily overlap with US Eastern business hours.

Strong Advantages

• Lean, Six Sigma, or Kaizen background — the client's leadership is process-trained and this is their shared language
• Experience in a quote-driven, project-based, or channel/distributor sales motion (manufacturing, industrial, construction-adjacent)
• CPQ or quoting workflow exposure
• Marketing operations familiarity: form capture, UTM discipline, lead scoring, HubSpot/Pardot/Marketo
• Practical AI tool fluency for research, analysis, content, and workflow automation
• Prior experience being the first person in a newly created function

NOT FIT IF

• Your background is sales or telemarketing and you are looking to move into operations
• You are a Salesforce developer or administrator without commercial judgment
• You need a defined playbook, a manager who sets your priorities, or an existing team to delegate to
• Your goal is a VP of Sales title within two years

Success Measures

Horizon Measure

30 days Current-state lead flow mapped; every leak documented with owner and impact
90 days Controlled intake live; three-motion qualification framework in production; first funnel report published
180 days Routing SLAs met consistently; seller adoption verified; segmentation feeding system configuration
12 months You have defined the gold standard for this function and the organization is measuring against it

How to Apply:

Send your PUBLICLY SHARED RESUME
Send 1 min loom intro Video talking about why you are great fit for this role ( DO NOT SEND RECYCLED VIDEO)
This is a test if you are actually reading the instructions properly, Subject for the application ( SO-Integrity )