Sales Vice President – Chemical Safety
Department: Chemical Safety – Sales
Position Overview
The Sales Vice President – Chemical Safety is responsible for developing and executing the commercial sales strategy for the Chemical Safety business unit, delivering sustainable revenue and gross profit growth while expanding market share across priority channels, end-user segments, vertical markets, and new product categories.
This leader will have direct responsibility for the Chemical Safety sales organization and will also influence and drive results through cross-divisional and channel sales teams. The role requires a highly engaged, hands-on commercial leader who can translate strategy into disciplined execution, build and develop high-performing teams, create pull-through demand, strengthen customer and channel relationships, and establish a predictable pipeline of profitable growth opportunities.
The Sales Vice President will partner closely with Marketing, Product Management, National Accounts, Channel Sales, Operations, Finance, and other business functions to ensure commercial priorities are aligned and executed effectively.
Success in this role will be measured by achievement of revenue and gross profit objectives, pipeline quality and conversion, market share growth, new product and vertical penetration, customer development, sales-team effectiveness, and consistent execution of the business unit's commercial strategy.
Key Responsibilities
Sales Strategy & Commercial Execution
- Develop and execute a comprehensive sales strategy aligned with Chemical Safety business-unit objectives and broader company priorities.
- Translate annual business objectives into clear sales priorities, account plans, channel strategies, vertical-market initiatives, and individual performance expectations.
- Identify the highest-potential markets, customers, applications, and channels and allocate sales resources accordingly.
- Develop new approaches to generate end-user demand and create pull-through sales through distribution and channel partners.
- Establish clear operating rhythms to track progress against strategic initiatives and rapidly address performance gaps.
- Balance short-term revenue delivery with development of sustainable, long-term profitable growth.
Revenue & Gross Profit Growth
- Own achievement of assigned revenue, gross profit, growth, and related commercial objectives for the Chemical Safety business unit.
- Establish annual, quarterly, and monthly sales targets by channel, geography, market segment, product category, and salesperson.
- Develop accurate sales forecasts and provide leadership with visibility into risks, opportunities, and corrective actions.
- Drive profitable growth by emphasizing product mix, pricing discipline, strategic account development, new customer acquisition, cross-selling, and new product penetration.
- Identify and execute initiatives that increase share of wallet within existing customers while creating new sources of revenue.
Sales Leadership & Talent Development
- Lead, coach, and develop a high-performing sales organization that may include Business Development Managers, Specialty Account Managers, Inside Sales, Technical Sales, and other commercial roles.
- Establish clear goals, responsibilities, performance standards, and accountability across the sales organization.
- Conduct regular coaching, performance reviews, pipeline reviews, account reviews, and development discussions.
- Assess organizational capabilities and develop succession, recruiting, training, and talent-development plans.
- Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, customer focus, urgency, continuous improvement, and results.
- Recognize high performance while proactively addressing performance gaps.
Pipeline & Sales Process Management
- Establish a disciplined sales-management process covering prospecting, qualification, opportunity development, specification, proposal, negotiation, closing, and post-sale expansion.
- Ensure the CRM system serves as the single source of truth for sales opportunities, customer activity, forecasting, and pipeline management.
- Define standards for opportunity stages, probability, close dates, account information, activities, and next steps.
- Maintain sufficient qualified pipeline coverage to support current-year and future-period growth objectives.
- Improve conversion rates, sales-cycle velocity, opportunity quality, and forecast accuracy.
- Establish leading and lagging sales KPIs and use data to identify performance trends and required actions.
Customer & Strategic Account Leadership
- Build and maintain executive-level relationships with strategic customers, distributors, channel partners, and key end users.
- Serve as a senior commercial sponsor for critical customer relationships and significant growth opportunities.
- Develop strategies to increase customer retention, loyalty, share of wallet, and long-term partnership value.
- Support National Accounts and Channel Sales teams in strategic customer development where Chemical Safety expertise or leadership engagement is required.
- Participate directly in significant negotiations, customer reviews, and strategic account planning.
Channel & IMR Management
- Develop clear strategies for distributor, channel, representative, and independent manufacturers' representative (IMR) relationships.
- Establish performance expectations, territories, growth priorities, target accounts, and accountability for external sales partners.
- Evaluate channel productivity and make recommendations regarding coverage, investment, consolidation, expansion, or changes in representation.
- Ensure channel partners receive the appropriate training, tools, product knowledge, and commercial support required to drive growth.
- Create greater coordination between direct sales, channel partners, National Accounts, and cross-divisional selling teams.
Market Development & Expansion
- Monitor industry trends, competitor activity, customer requirements, regulatory developments, and market dynamics affecting Chemical Safety customers.
- Identify attractive vertical markets, applications, geographic opportunities, and customer segments for expansion.
- Develop market-entry and growth plans in partnership with Marketing and Product Management.
- Create focused commercial strategies for new product launches and ensure adoption goals are translated into sales-team activities and account-level targets.
- Provide market intelligence and voice-of-customer insights to guide product development, pricing, positioning, and investment decisions.
Cross-Functional Leadership
- Partner closely with Marketing to align demand-generation programs, campaigns, trade shows, vertical-market initiatives, digital leads, and sales enablement.
- Partner with Product Management and Engineering to identify unmet customer needs, prioritize new product opportunities, and accelerate adoption.
- Coordinate with National Accounts and other divisional sales organizations to drive cross-selling and enterprise customer opportunities.
- Partner with Finance on forecasting, pricing, gross margin, incentive plans, and sales performance analysis.
- Work with Operations and Customer Service to ensure commercial commitments align with service, capacity, and customer-experience expectations.
- Act as the commercial voice of the customer within the Chemical Safety leadership team.
Budget & Resource Management
- Develop and manage the sales operating budget and ensure investments are aligned with strategic priorities.
- Evaluate the return on sales resources, travel, representatives, incentives, trade activities, and other commercial investments.
- Recommend resource allocation decisions based on market potential, performance, and expected return.
- Maintain disciplined control of selling expenses while ensuring adequate investment to achieve growth objectives.
Key Measures of Success
Performance will be evaluated against a balanced set of commercial and organizational KPIs, including:
- Revenue versus annual operating plan and prior year.
- Gross profit dollars and gross margin performance.
- Growth by channel, geography, product line, customer segment, and strategic vertical.
- New customer acquisition and revenue from new accounts.
- Existing-customer retention and share-of-wallet growth.
- New product revenue and adoption.
- Qualified pipeline value and pipeline coverage.
- Pipeline conversion and opportunity win rate.
- Sales forecast accuracy.
- Strategic account growth.
- CRM adoption and data quality.
- Sales productivity by territory and salesperson.
- Distributor, representative, and IMR productivity.
- Achievement of priority vertical-market and market-share objectives.
- Sales-team engagement, development, retention, and succession readiness.
- Selling expense performance and return on commercial investment.
Leadership Profile
The successful Sales Vice President will be a visible and engaged commercial leader who combines strategic thinking with disciplined execution. This individual will be equally comfortable developing a multi-year market strategy, coaching a salesperson through a critical opportunity, meeting with a strategic customer, evaluating pipeline data, negotiating a significant agreement, and holding the organization accountable for results.
The role requires a leader who creates clarity, builds trust, develops talent, makes fact-based decisions, and consistently converts commercial opportunities into profitable growth.
