Inside Sales Manager - Steel Industry
North-Shore-Steel
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Job summary
North-Shore-Steel in Houston, TX seeks an Inside Sales Manager to lead advanced manufacturing and wear products sales, drive revenue growth, and manage pricing and quoting discipline.
You will coordinate with Sales, Supply Chain, Operations, and Product Management to develop turnkey solutions, mentor a technical sales team, and ensure customer commitments are met with technically sound proposals.
Qualifications
- Proven experience leading inside sales, estimating, or technical sales teams.
- Strong understanding of fabrication, machining, welding, and wear products.
- Ability to interpret customer specifications and manufacturing requirements.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Responsibilities
- Develop commercial plans to grow revenue and margin for advanced manufacturing and wear products.
- Lead and coach Inside Sales Specialists and support staff.
- Ensure timely RFQ responses and accurate quotes.
- Collaborate with Operations and Supply Chain to align capacity and pricing.
- Drive solution-selling and turnkey manufacturing opportunities.
Skills
Tools
Job description
Reporting: Director of Sales & Marketing
Location: Houston, TX
Job Type: Full-Time
Level: Manager / Individual Contributor Leader
Our organization sells steel products and services to steel fabricators, original equipment manufacturers, mines, quarries, and other end users nationwide. We have very sophisticated steel processing capabilities, including CNC coping, plate cutting and beveling, plate rolling, plate forming, and welding. We also have proprietary wear product grades and strategic market locations.
The Inside Sales Manager is accountable for the performance, growth, development, and execution of the Advanced Manufacturing & Wear Products business. This includes turnkey manufacturing solutions, proprietary wear products, fabrication, machining, welding, and other technically sophisticated value-added offerings.
This role owns revenue growth, margin performance, quoting discipline, and team development for inside sales functions in this product category. The Inside Sales Manager ensures that customer commitments, capacity planning, pricing decisions, and quoted turnkey solutions are commercially competitive and operationally executable.
This role serves as a technical-commercial leader responsible for application development, solution selling, and the profitable execution of complex manufacturing opportunities. The position also serves as the primary integration point between Sales, Supply Chain, Operations, and Product Management for advanced value-added processing and wear products.
- Develop and execute commercial plans to grow advanced manufacturing and wear products revenue, gross margin, customer retention, and market share.
- Establish and enforce pricing discipline consistent with company margin objectives.
- Balancecompetitive market pricing with operational capability and risk.
- Monitor pipeline health, quote conversion, and sales performance trends.
- Drive growth of proprietary wear products and differentiated manufacturing solutions.
- Support development and launch of new product and service offerings.
- Partner with Business Development Management to establish commercial strategies for strategic product categories.
- Lead, coach, and develop Technical Sales Specialists, Senior Inside Sales, and Technical Sales Support.
- Set clear expectations, priorities, and performance standards for each role.
- Develop Senior Inside Sales personnel as commercial leaders and mentors for the broader sales organization.
- Build technical, commercial, and application expertise across the team.
- Serve as escalation point for customer, pricing, or execution issues.
- Ensure timely response to RFQs and customer inquiries.
- Drive quote turnaround performance consistent with company service standards.
- Remove bottlenecks that delay customer response or order conversion.
- Lead development of commercially viable turnkey manufacturing and wear solutions.
- Ensure appropriate technical review, manufacturability assessment, and risk evaluation for complex opportunities.
- Guide development of solutions involving fabrication, machining, welding, assembly, and proprietary wear products.
- Ensure quotes accurately reflect scope, technical requirements, assumptions, lead times, and execution risk.
- Support application engineering discussions with customers and internal stakeholders.
- Collaborate with Operations, Control Tower, and Project Management to align sales opportunities with available manufacturing capacity and capability.
- Support prioritization of high-value opportunities based on profitability, strategic fit, and resource availability.
- Evaluate capacity constraints and recommend commercial actions to maximize throughput and profitability.
- Assist in long-range planning related to staffing, equipment utilization, and market demand.
- Recommend make-versus buy, outsourcing, and resource allocation decisions to support profitable growth.
- Lead commercial strategy for key technical accounts, engineered solutions customers, and strategic wear product opportunities.
- Identify growth opportunities aligned with company strategy.
- Partner with sales leadership on account strategy and market development.
- Participate in customer-facing technical reviews, application discussions, and solution-development opportunities as needed.
- Partner closely with Operations, Project Management, Supply Chain, and Quality.
- Ensure alignment between quoted work and actual shop capabilities.
- Resolve conflicts between commercial objectives and operational constraints.
- Support continuous improvement efforts tied to quoting accuracy and order execution performance.
Market & Supply Chain Alignment
- Provide market intelligence regarding customer demand and pricing trends.
- Collaborate with Supply Chain on inventory strategy and stocking recommendations, including recommendations for Strategic Locations.
- Identify opportunities to improve inventory turns and reduce aged inventory through commercial action.
- Maintain accurate forecasts and sales activity reporting.
- Track key performance indicators related to margin, quote conversion, capacity utilization, proprietary product growth, new application development, customer retention, order entry accuracy, and on-time delivery.
- Identify inefficiencies and improvement opportunities in sales workflows.
- Proven experience leading inside sales, estimating, or technical sales teams in a manufacturing, fabrication, or processing environment.
- Strong understanding of fabrication, machining, welding, engineered products, wear solutions, technical drawings, and complex manufacturing processes.
- Experience leading technical sales, estimating, application engineering or solution-selling teams.
- Ability to interpret technical drawings, customer specifications, and manufacturing requirements.
- Experience balancing commercial objectives with manufacturing constraints.
- Demonstrated ability to coach and develop sales talent.
- Strong analytical, organizational, and decision-making skills.
- Experience working with ERP/MRP systems.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Background in steel processing, fabrication, or heavy manufacturing.
- Experience managing technical quoting or estimating functions.
- Exposure to structural steel, plate, and wear product markets.
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