Vice President of Sales

Strategic Role Expectations
• Translate company strategy into clear commercial priorities, growth plans, and execution rhythms for the North American sales organization.
• Lead the commercial organization with a focus on transparency, scalability, strategic growth, profitable growth, and disciplined execution.
• Create alignment across Sales, Customer Experience Services, CRM, forecasting, pricing, customer management, and organizational processes.
• Continuously assess current state performance, identify gaps and growth blockers, and implement scalable improvements that strengthen commercial effectiveness.
• Analyze market trends, competitive landscape and technological developments to proactively shape the regional strategy.
• Strengthen ODU's positioning as a premium, high-end and solution-oriented provider within target industries.

Key Responsibilities
Commercial Strategy & Market Development
• Develop and execute the North American commercial strategy, including target markets, customer segments, applications, competitive positioning, channel strategy, distribution approach, and growth priorities.
• Identify and prioritize market, industry, customer, and channel opportunities that support sustainable and profitable growth.
• Promote ODU's value proposition as a provider of customer-specific interconnect and system solutions, creating differentiation beyond individual connector products.
• Align sales resources, investments, and organizational focus with the most attractive strategic growth opportunities.
• Evaluate market dynamics, customer trends, competitor activity, industry developments, and emerging applications to inform business strategy.

Sales & Revenue Management
• Assume full ownership of revenue, order intake, margin development and regional profitability.
• Establish and oversee the commercial operating cadence, including pipeline reviews, sales forecasting, account planning, territory management, and performance management.
• Drive accountability for revenue growth, bookings, profitability, forecast accuracy, strategic account performance, and execution of growth initiatives.
• Ensure consistent execution of sales processes, business development activities, customer engagement strategies, and regional performance expectations.
• Develop and manage sales KPIs, incentive/bonus process inputs, performance dashboards, and countermeasures when results are not meeting expectations.

Financial Understanding & Profitable Growth
• Lead commercial decision-making related to pricing strategy, margin optimization, revenue quality, and profitable growth.
• Partner closely with Finance to evaluate business performance, forecast risks, pricing decisions, margin impact, and growth opportunities.
• Ensure the sales organization balances revenue growth with profitability, quality of revenue, and long-term customer value.

CRM, Analytics & Forecasting Discipline
• Establish high standards for CRM utilization, data quality, daily dashboard usage, reporting accuracy, and sales process discipline.
• Leverage analytics, pipeline metrics, forecast trends, customer data, and market intelligence to drive informed decisions and timely action.
• Own the forecasting process and ensure timely, accurate visibility into commercial performance, forecast risk, and future business opportunities.

Customer & Market Knowledge
• Develop a deep understanding of customer needs, buying behavior, application requirements, industry trends, and market challenges.
• Build and maintain executive-level relationships with key customers, strategic accounts, partners, and industry stakeholders.
• Lead engagement on strategic accounts and high-value opportunities that are critical to long-term growth and market position.
• Strengthen ODU’s market presence through customer partnership, industry engagement, and credible commercial leadership.
• Ensure high customer satisfaction and long-term customer retention.

Leadership, Organization & Cross-Functional Alignment
• Build, lead, coach, and develop a high-performing and scalable sales organization, including Regional Sales Managers and commercial team members.
• Define team structure, accountabilities, role clarity, and processes that support growth, responsiveness, and execution consistency.
• Create a culture of accountability, transparency, collaboration, customer focus, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Develop future sales leaders through coaching, mentoring, talent reviews, succession planning, and leadership development.
• Ensure strong cross-functional alignment across Sales, Customer Experience Services, Marketing, Product Management, Operations, Finance, and global ODU leadership.

Executive Leadership & Corporate Contribution
• Serve as an active member of the Executive Management Committee and contribute to enterprise-wide strategic planning, organizational development, and business performance discussions.
• Partner with executive leadership to identify commercial growth blockers and implement business solutions that improve scalability and performance.
• Champion company initiatives, model ODU values, and support a high-performance culture across the organization.
• Travel domestically and internationally as required to support customers, teams, industry engagement, and global alignment.

Key Performance Indicators
• Revenue and bookings growth
• Strategic account growth and customer expansion
• New customer acquisition and market penetration
• Customer retention and quality of customer relationships
• Gross margin performance and pricing effectiveness
• Forecast accuracy and forecast discipline
• Pipeline quality, conversion rates, and opportunity velocity
• CRM data quality, dashboard usage, and reporting discipline
• Sales process adoption and execution consistency
• Sales team engagement, retention, and leadership bench strength
• Cross-functional collaboration and execution of strategic initiatives

• Qualifications
  • 15+ years of progressive sales or commercial leadership experience in a B2B environment.
  • Significant experience leading regional, national, or multi-territory sales teams.
  • Demonstrated success developing and executing commercial growth strategies across markets, customers, channels, and applications.
  • Experience in technical manufacturing, interconnect, connector, cable assembly, industrial, or related engineered-product markets preferred.
  • Experience within highly regulated industries such as Medical, Military / Defense, Aerospace or other regulated technology markets strongly preferred.
  • Experience selling customer-specific engineered solutions, including complete interconnect systems, cable assemblies and value-added technical solutions.
  • Strong understanding of sales operations, CRM systems, forecasting methodologies, commercial analytics, pricing strategy, and account management disciplines.
  • Proven ability to drive profitable growth through strategic customer development, market expansion, and disciplined sales execution.
  • Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, International Business, or related field preferred; advanced degree a plus.
• Knowledge, Skills & Competencies
  • Strategic business and commercial planning
  • Executive-level communication, influence, and stakeholder management
  • Market development, competitive analysis, and growth strategy
  • Experience with solution selling and consultative sales approaches for engineered customer-specific solutions.
  • Strategic account management and executive customer engagement
  • Financial acumen, margin awareness, pricing discipline, and revenue quality management
  • CRM discipline, data analytics, forecasting, and performance dashboard management
  • Sales process design, pipeline management, and performance accountability
  • Organizational leadership, coaching, and talent development
  • Change leadership, process improvement, and organizational scalability
  • Cross-functional collaboration across Sales, CES, Marketing, Product Management, Operations, Finance, and global stakeholders