Enterprise B2B SaaS Sales Hunter

Overview

You're a full-cycle enterprise AE selling Industrility's aftermarket AI platform to manufacturers of complex industrial equipment—think construction machinery, HVAC systems, packaging equipment, CNC machines. You'll spend most of your time prospecting into cold accounts, navigating multi-stakeholder buying committees (VP Service, VP Operations, CIO, sometimes CEO), and managing 6-9 month sales cycles. This is a 19-person startup, so you're building the playbook as you go.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Early-stage / likely Seed or bootstrapped (19 employees, founder-led sales)

Size: 19 employees

Growth: Actively hiring first quota-carrying AE—sales motion is being formalized now

Market Position: Category creator in industrial aftermarket AI—you're educating the market, not competing on features yet

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 80% Outbound - You're building your own lists, doing cold outreach via LinkedIn, email, and calls to VP Service, VP Operations, and CIO contacts at Tier 2/3 industrial OEMs
• 15% Partnership/Referral - Some leads from systems integrators or industry consultants who know the founders
• 5% Inbound - Minimal website traffic; occasional conference leads or LinkedIn engagement

SDR/AE Structure: No SDR support—you're prospecting, qualifying, demoing, and closing everything yourself

SE Support: Founders will jump on technical calls early on, but you'll need to carry most demos yourself after learning the product

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Legacy service management systems (ServiceMax, IFS), homegrown spreadsheets/ERPs, generic IoT platforms (PTC ThingWorx), incumbent inertia

How They Differentiate: All-in-one platform built specifically for industrial aftermarket (parts commerce, remote monitoring, predictive maintenance, installed base intelligence)—most competitors are point solutions or require heavy customization

Common Objections: "We already have a service management system," "Our ERP handles this," "We're too small for something this sophisticated," "What's the ROI timeline?"

Win Themes: Unified data (they're tired of duct-taping 5+ systems), fast time-to-value vs custom builds, industry-specific functionality that generic tools don't offer

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (50%) | Active Deals (30%) | Internal/Admin (20%)

Key Activities

• Cold Outreach: Building lists of Tier 2/3 industrial OEMs (50-500 employees, $50M-$500M revenue), researching their service operations, crafting personalized emails and LinkedIn messages to VP Service/Operations. Expect 20-30 touches per day, low response rates (2-3%).
• Discovery Calls: Running 45-60 min discovery calls to understand their aftermarket challenges—parts inventory mess, lack of installed base visibility, manual service workflows, no remote monitoring. You're diagnosing problems, not pitching yet.
• Demos & Technical Validation: Walking prospects through the platform (installed base intelligence, parts commerce, predictive maintenance modules). Later stages involve founders or you doing technical deep-dives, sometimes custom proof-of-concepts.
• Deal Management: Chasing stakeholders for next steps, building business cases, navigating procurement, getting legal through contract redlines. Deals slip constantly—budget freezes, changing priorities, "let's revisit Q3."

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Industrial manufacturers move slowly—you'll spend weeks waiting for internal approvals, IT security reviews, and budget sign-offs. Deals that look "close" in May will push to September.
• You're educating a market that doesn't know they need this yet. Most prospects are using spreadsheets and manual processes—they don't see the problem as urgent until you show them what's possible.
• No brand recognition. You're cold calling into companies who've never heard of Industrility. Getting past gatekeepers and earning credibility takes time.
• At 19 people, there's no sales ops, no marketing automation, no stack of inbound leads. You're building your own CRM hygiene, doing your own research, and creating your own collateral.

What Success Looks Like

• Closing 3-5 deals per year at $100K-$300K ACV
• Building a repeatable outbound playbook that works for this market (messaging, personas, sequences)
• Shortening sales cycles from 9 months to 6 months as you refine the process
• Creating case studies and references that make the next deal easier

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP of Service / Aftermarket (budget owner, cares about service revenue growth)
• VP of Operations (cares about efficiency, parts inventory, uptime)
• CIO or IT Director (needs to bless the tech stack, worries about integrations)

What They Care About:

• Growing aftermarket/service revenue (parts sales, service contracts, subscription models)
• Reducing service costs (fewer truck rolls, better first-time fix rates)
• Improving customer experience (faster response times, proactive maintenance)
• Getting visibility into their installed base (who owns what machines, where, warranty status)
• ROI timeline and ease of implementation (they've been burned by complex software projects before)

Requirements

• 3+ years selling enterprise B2B SaaS (6+ figure deals, 6+ month cycles)
• Experience selling into industrial, manufacturing, or complex technical markets (construction, HVAC, machinery, field service, IoT)
• Hunter mentality—you're comfortable with 80%+ outbound, building your own pipeline from scratch
• Ability to navigate multi-stakeholder deals (ops, IT, finance, C-suite)
• Comfortable with ambiguity and building processes in an early-stage startup
• Central time zone preferred (for live prospecting during business hours)