Global Sales Operations & Marketing Manager

Location: New Jersey, USA | Hybrid working

Start Date: Immediate

Reporting To: President / Senior Commercial Leader

Mackinnon Bruce International is partnering with an established industrial engineering business to appoint a Global Sales Operations & Marketing Manager to strengthen its global commercial operations, improve sales execution and drive measurable revenue growth.

This is an exciting opportunity for a technically minded, commercially focused professional to take ownership of sales operations, CRM effectiveness, marketing alignment and distributor development across the US and international markets.

The successful candidate will play a pivotal role in connecting sales, marketing, engineering, customer service and distribution partners, ensuring that leads are effectively managed, opportunities are actively progressed and successful applications are replicated across customers, industries and geographies.

This is a hands-on management position, requiring someone who is comfortable working directly within the CRM, reviewing opportunities, challenging inconsistent follow-up and translating technical product knowledge into actionable commercial initiatives.

The ideal candidate will have a background in mechanical engineering or a related technical discipline, combined with substantial experience in industrial sales operations, technical marketing, business development or commercial management.

The Opportunity

You will lead the coordination and continuous improvement of global sales and marketing operations, supported by a small international team comprising three junior colleagues based in Germany and India, alongside part-time support from a US-based team member.

Rather than focusing solely on strategy, this role requires a proactive leader who can establish structure, improve accountability and ensure that commercial activity translates into measurable results.

You will work closely with senior leadership and global commercial teams to improve pipeline visibility, strengthen distributor engagement, increase conversion rates and maximise the return on marketing investment.

Key Responsibilities

1. Global Sales Operations & Opportunity Management

Coordinate sales and marketing activity across US territories, international markets, distributors, OEMs and end users.
Ensure qualified leads are assigned promptly to the appropriate salesperson, distributor or regional representative.
Monitor lead response times, quotation activity and follow-up discipline across the organisation.
Identify stalled, neglected or unassigned opportunities and drive clear next steps.
Maintain visibility of key opportunities, ensuring ownership, priorities and deadlines are clearly established.
Improve communication and information sharing between sales, marketing, engineering, customer service and management.
Establish consistent sales processes and prevent information silos between regions, distributors and internal teams.
Promote a culture of accountability, responsiveness and continuous commercial improvement.

2. CRM Ownership & Pipeline Management

Act as the primary hands-on owner and internal expert for HubSpot Sales Hub.
Maintain accurate CRM records covering contacts, companies, leads, opportunities and sales activities.
Establish clear lead statuses, opportunity stages, ownership requirements and follow-up expectations.
Ensure every active opportunity has a designated owner, defined next step, estimated value and anticipated closing date.
Develop practical dashboards and reports covering performance by salesperson, region, country, distributor, industry and lead source.
Train and support colleagues in effective CRM usage, ensuring data quality and consistent adoption.
Use HubSpot as a daily commercial management tool to drive action, accountability and conversion, rather than simply as a reporting platform.
Identify process gaps and implement improvements to strengthen pipeline visibility and forecasting accuracy.

3. Technical Applications & Replication of Commercial Success

Collaborate with engineering and sales teams to understand successful and unsuccessful customer applications.
Identify why a product or solution succeeded in a particular customer environment, machine, industry or geographical market.
Document customer challenges, technical solutions, commercial benefits and measurable outcomes.
Identify opportunities to replicate successful applications across:
Other facilities and divisions within existing customer organisations.
Competitors and comparable businesses within the same industry.
Similar industrial applications and customer segments.
International markets and distributor territories.
Develop targeted prospect lists and ensure identified opportunities are allocated and actively progressed.
Share successful applications, case studies and proven sales approaches across the global commercial network.
Help sales teams and distributors recognise comparable customer challenges and position relevant solutions.

This position will not carry direct responsibility for personally selling products. Instead, the focus is on enabling the wider commercial organisation to identify, develop and convert more opportunities.

4. Distributor Development & Technical Knowledge Transfer

Organise practical webinars, technical seminars, application reviews and distributor training sessions.
Equip distributors with relevant application knowledge, successful case studies, target industries and customer value propositions.
Coordinate with technical and commercial colleagues to address distributor questions and support opportunity development.
Track the commercial impact of distributor training, including leads generated, quotations issued and orders secured.
Identify distributors requiring additional support, engagement or performance improvement.
Facilitate the transfer of proven sales approaches and application knowledge between territories.
Strengthen consistency in how products, applications and customer benefits are communicated across international markets.

5. Marketing Direction & Commercial Effectiveness

The business already has marketing resources responsible for creating and publishing content. Your role will be to provide the commercial direction, prioritisation and performance measurement needed to ensure these activities generate tangible business results.

Identify priority applications, customer segments, industries and geographical markets for marketing investment.
Direct marketing activity towards practical commercial objectives and clearly defined target audiences.
Guide the development of case studies, ROI examples, technical articles, white papers, email campaigns, presentations and distributor sales materials.
Ensure marketing content supports specific sales opportunities and customer acquisition objectives.
Establish effective processes for assigning, tracking and following up marketing-generated leads.
Measure the contribution of marketing activities to qualified leads, RFQs, quotations, opportunities and orders.
Evaluate return on marketing investment and recommend where campaigns should be expanded, refined or discontinued.
Align marketing priorities with sales pipeline opportunities, successful applications and wider business objectives.

6. Reporting, Forecasting & Continuous Improvement

Prepare clear, actionable weekly and monthly commercial reports for senior management, drawing on HubSpot data and input from the wider sales organisation.
Monitor key performance indicators, including:
Qualified leads and lead response times.
Open opportunities and pipeline value.
RFQs, quotations and quotation follow-up.
Lead-to-opportunity and quotation-to-order conversion rates.
Marketing-generated opportunities and revenue.
Distributor engagement and commercial activity.
Sales performance by region, country and industry.
Forecast accuracy and pipeline progression.
Identify underperformance, process gaps and missed commercial opportunities.
Recommend practical corrective actions, with clear ownership and deadlines.
Improve forecasting discipline, reporting consistency and accountability across the global organisation.
Provide senior leadership with the visibility required to make informed commercial decisions.

Candidate Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related engineering discipline.
Approximately 10–15 years of relevant experience across industrial sales operations, technical marketing, application engineering, business development, product management or industrial commercial functions.
A strong understanding of engineered products, industrial machinery and technical customer applications.
Proven ability to translate technical knowledge into commercial opportunities and repeatable sales approaches.
Practical CRM experience, with HubSpot strongly preferred.
Experience coordinating sales teams, distributors, OEMs or international commercial partners.
Strong analytical skills, including pipeline reporting, KPI measurement and performance analysis.
Excellent organisation, prioritisation and follow-up skills.
Strong written and verbal English communication skills.
Ability to work effectively across US, European and other international time zones.
A willingness to remain directly involved in day-to-day execution while leading and developing a team.

Desirable Experience

Experience with seals, mixers, conveyors, pumps, rotating equipment or other engineered industrial products.
A mechanical engineer who has transitioned into a commercial, sales, marketing or business development role.
Experience supporting US and international markets, particularly Europe and other distributor-led territories.
Experience delivering distributor training, technical seminars or application-focused sales enablement.
Experience documenting customer ROI, technical benefits and commercial case studies.
Experience directing marketing resources and evaluating campaign performance.
Familiarity with industrial OEMs, manufacturing environments and technically complex sales processes.

Personal Attributes

The successful candidate will be a proactive, commercially minded professional who combines technical understanding with strong execution and leadership skills.

You will demonstrate:

A hands-on approach: Comfortable working directly in the CRM, reviewing opportunities and resolving day-to-day operational issues.
Strong follow-through: Persistent in ensuring leads, quotations and opportunities receive the attention they require.
Constructive accountability: Confident challenging senior sales colleagues when agreed actions or follow-ups have not been completed.
Technical curiosity: Able to understand customer applications, investigate problems and identify repeatable solutions.
Commercial awareness: Focused on improving conversion, generating revenue and maximising the value of existing resources.
Organisation and discipline: Capable of managing multiple priorities across regions, functions and time zones.
Collaborative leadership: Able to influence colleagues across different departments, cultures and levels of seniority.
A continuous improvement mindset: Motivated to establish better processes, improve visibility and deliver measurable outcomes.
Leadership ambition: Interested in developing into a broader commercial leadership role as the business grows.

What Success Looks Like

Performance in this position will be measured against tangible improvements in global commercial effectiveness, including:

Improved HubSpot adoption, data accuracy and consistency.
Faster lead assignment and response times.
Fewer stalled, neglected or unassigned opportunities.
Stronger quotation follow-up and improved conversion rates.
Better pipeline visibility, forecasting and management reporting.
Increased revenue generated from marketing-qualified leads.
More opportunities created by replicating successful customer applications.
Improved distributor engagement and measurable opportunities generated through training.
Clearer alignment between marketing activity and commercial priorities.
Demonstrable return on marketing investment.
Stronger coordination between sales, marketing, engineering and distribution partners.

The Role in Context

This is an opportunity for a technically minded commercial professional to make a direct impact on the effectiveness and growth of an established international industrial business.

The role is not intended to be a strategy-only position, an administrative support function for individual salespeople, a replacement for application engineering or a marketing communications role focused solely on brand awareness.

Instead, the successful candidate will build the processes, accountability, technical knowledge-sharing and commercial alignment required to turn more leads into opportunities and more opportunities into orders.

For an experienced industrial professional who enjoys combining technical understanding, sales operations, marketing effectiveness and international collaboration, this represents an opportunity to take ownership of a highly visible function and contribute directly to business performance.

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Global Sales Operations & Marketing Manager