Director, Sales Readiness

Director, Sales Readiness

City: Chicago

State/Province: IL

Country: United States

Division: Corporate

Job : 14275

Since 1952, Lawson Products has worked hard to make our customers' jobs easier by improving their operational efficiency, productivity and overall performance. As a leader in the MRO industry, we partner with customers to make sure they have the right maintenance and repair parts on hand when needed.

We’re looking for a Director of Sales Readiness who will lead the sales readiness function for the Lawson MRO and Kent Automotive businesses in North America, ensuring that field sales representatives and district sales managers are prepared to apply their knowledge in live selling situations. This role: establishes and maintains a single leadership standard for district sales managers; leads a team of region-aligned readiness partners who provide coaching in the field;

governs a consolidated North American readiness calendar that manages demands on field selling time; and directs departmental effort based on analysis of sales performance data.

This role will work from a home office. We offer 401k plus vision, dental and medical benefits, as well as a paid holiday and PTO package.

Responsibilities:

• Assumes accountability for defined commercial outcomes and reports performance against them to sales leadership on a defined cadence.

• Analyzes sales performance data to diagnose capability gaps and direct departmental resources toward the districts and regions of greatest need.

• Develops the commercial case for readiness investment and quantifies the anticipated return in revenue and productivity terms.

• Evaluates existing content, programming, and recurring activity against demonstrated performance impact.

• Provides direct coaching to district sales managers in live settings, in addition to scheduled development sessions.

• Advises regional sales directors on the inspection and reinforcement of the leadership standard, providing assessment of district-level capability within their regions.

• Establishes and maintains the sales leadership standards, maintaining a consistent standard across all regions.

• Owns and governs a consolidated North American sales readiness calendar, publishing the readiness sufficiently in advance to permit regional planning and hold functional partners accountable to the published schedule.

• Evaluates and prioritizes competing requests from Segment Marketing, Product Management, and sales leadership, managing field selling capacity as a limited commercial resource.

• Designs and facilitates readiness content and live sessions personally.

• Partners with the CRM and systems function to determine which readiness resources have surfaced within the CRM and the field sales application.

• Evolves the sales readiness function beyond traditional learning platforms and approaches, designing and building a digital just-in-time readiness program that equips sales representatives with relevant and timely selling resources at the point of need.

• Curates product and technical content from supplier partners and maintains it to a consistent standard, in place of in-house authoring.

• Identifies qualified and interested product subject matter experts, partnering with field sales leaders, in order to build a deep learning network that drives category growth.

• Establishes territory optimization, coverage planning, and book rebalancing, partnering with Sales Operations, as a standard management practice rather than periodic initiatives.

• Leads a team of region-aligned readiness partners assigned to sales regions, maintaining direct relationships with regional sales directors and district sales managers and holding accountability for readiness outcomes within those territories.

• Onboards, trains, and develops the team…