Founding Sales Leader

Overview

You're the first sales hire at Harmony AI, selling AI-powered workflow automation to manufacturing companies. You build your entire pipeline from scratch (cold calls, LinkedIn, site visits), run demos showing how their software replaces manual paperwork and data entry, and close deals. You work directly with George (co-founder) daily to iterate on messaging, pricing, and sales process as they figure out product-market fit.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Seed stage (14 employees, no funding data available)

Size: 14 employees total

Growth: Actively hiring founding GTM roles - signal they're testing sales-led motion

Market Position: Category creator - AI factory operating system is not a well-defined category yet. Competing against "do nothing" and legacy MES/ERP systems.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 95%+ Cold outbound - you're building lists of manufacturers, calling plant managers, sending LinkedIn messages, asking for referrals
• Maybe 5% founder network/word of mouth
• No marketing engine, no inbound leads, no SDR support

SDR/AE Structure: You are the SDR and the AE. No one is setting meetings for you.

SE Support: Probably none initially - you'll demo the product yourself. George (technical co-founder) may join later-stage technical deep dives.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors:

• Legacy ERP/MES systems (SAP, Oracle, Plex, Epicor)
• Point solutions for production scheduling or quality management
• "We'll just keep using Excel and paper" (biggest competitor)

How They Differentiate: AI-native automation layer that sits on top of existing systems - doesn't require full ERP rip-and-replace. Focuses on eliminating manual data entry and paperwork.

Common Objections:

• "Our ERP already does this" (it doesn't, but they think it does)
• "AI isn't ready for manufacturing" (regulatory, quality, trust issues)
• "We tried automation before and it failed"
• "This is too expensive for the ROI"
• "Our plant manager won't adopt new software"

Win Themes:

• Fast implementation vs full ERP replacement
• Works with their existing systems
• Quantifiable time savings on manual admin work

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (50%) | Active Deals (30%) | Travel/On-sites (15%) | Internal (5%)

Key Activities

• Cold outreach to manufacturers: You're building target lists (food & beverage, packaging, pharma/cosmetics facilities), finding plant managers and ops directors on LinkedIn, cold calling front desks, sending connection requests. Most ignore you. You're trying to book facility tours and initial discovery calls.

• On-site facility visits: You travel to manufacturing plants to see their operation, walk the floor, understand their workflow pain points. These are long days - 2-3 hour drives, facility tours, meetings with multiple stakeholders. You're taking notes on what they do manually that Harmony could automate.

• Product demos and technical discovery: You screen-share the Harmony platform, showing how it ingests data from their ERP/spreadsheets/paper forms and automates workflows. You're explaining AI capabilities to skeptical ops managers who've been burned by software before. Lots of "how does it handle X edge case" questions.

• Multi-stakeholder deal orchestration: You're coordinating between plant managers (users), IT (integration concerns), finance (budget approvers), and executives (ROI justification). Deals stall when one stakeholder goes dark. You spend a lot of time chasing people for the next meeting.

• Building the playbook with George: Weekly (maybe daily) sessions discussing what messaging resonated, which industries are biting, how to price, what POC scope makes sense. You're literally creating the sales process as you go.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're pioneering unproven territory: No one has bought "AI factory operating system" before because the category doesn't exist. You're educating every prospect from scratch. Many conversations end with "interesting, but we're not ready for this."

• Manufacturing sales cycles are brutal: Plant managers don't move fast. Budget approvals go through layers. Deals you think are closing in Q1 slip to Q3. You'll have 10-15 "hot" opportunities that just sit in limbo for months.

• Founder-led chaos: At 14 people, product is still evolving rapidly. Features you demo in January might change by March. Pricing isn't finalized. Implementation process is still being figured out. You need to be comfortable with ambiguity and things breaking.

• Rejection and travel grind: You're cold calling skeptical plant managers who've been pitched software a hundred times. Most don't call back. When you do get meetings, you're driving 2-3 hours to factory sites in industrial areas. It's a grind.

What Success Looks Like

• You close 2-3 pilot deals in first 6 months, even if they're small ($20-30K) - proving the model works
• You build a pipeline of 20-30 active opportunities across different manufacturing verticals
• You create repeatable talk tracks, demo flows, and objection handling that George can teach to the next sales hire
• You figure out which industries/company sizes convert best so they can focus GTM strategy

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Plant Managers / Operations Directors (users who feel the pain)
• VP Operations / COO (budget and strategic priority)
• IT Director (integration and technical vetting)

What They Care About:

• Reducing manual data entry time: Their staff spends hours each day transcribing paper forms into spreadsheets and ERP systems
• Real-time visibility: They currently can't see what's happening on the floor without walking around or waiting for end-of-shift reports
• Not disrupting production: Any new system can't break their existing workflows or create downtime
• Proof it works: They want to see it running in a similar facility, talk to references, run a small pilot before committing

Requirements

• Full-cycle B2B sales experience - you've built your own pipeline and closed deals before (not just worked inbound leads)
• Comfort with long, complex sales cycles and multi-stakeholder deals
• Willingness to travel 30-50% to manufacturing facilities (often unglamorous locations)
• Ability to learn technical product and explain AI/automation concepts to non-technical buyers
• High tolerance for ambiguity and rapid iteration - this is not a structured, proven sales process
• Bonus: Manufacturing industry experience, door-to-door sales background (signals resilience to rejection), or experience selling software to skeptical/traditional industries