Manager, Inside Sales Support
Reports To: VP of National Accounts and Revenue Growth
Direct Reports: Inside Sales Support Team
Position Summary
The Manager of Inside Sales Support leads the team responsible for supporting PFI InStore's key accounts and new business development activities. This position is responsible for ensuring the Inside Sales Support team provides consistent, proactive, and high-quality support to the Sales organization while serving as a key connection point between Sales and Operations.
The Manager will establish processes, priorities, and accountability for the team; ensure key customer and new business opportunities are effectively supported; and proactively identify and resolve issues that could impact customer commitments or execution.
A critical responsibility of this role is creating strong alignment between the Commercial and Operations teams. The Manager will ensure customer requirements and Sales commitments are clearly communicated to Operations while providing Sales with timely visibility into operational status, risks, and constraints.
Key Responsibilities
Team Leadership & Development
- Lead, coach, and develop the Client Relations / Inside Sales Support team.
- Establish clear roles, responsibilities, priorities, and service expectations for the team.
- Balance workloads and account assignments to ensure appropriate support for key accounts and new business development.
- Establish consistent processes and expectations across the team while promoting accountability, responsiveness, and proactive problem-solving.
- Develop team capabilities through training, cross-training, performance management, and ongoing development.
Key Account & New Business Support
- Ensure Key Account Managers have strong internal support so they can remain focused on customer relationships, account growth, and revenue generation.
- Establish the appropriate level of support for key accounts based on size, complexity, growth potential, and customer requirements.
- Ensure new business opportunities receive appropriate internal coordination and follow-through from initial opportunity through successful launch.
- Monitor significant customer projects and opportunities, proactively identifying issues requiring escalation or additional resources.
- Support resolution of complex customer or execution issues that require coordination across multiple functions.
Sales & Operations Alignment
- Serve as a primary conduit between Sales and Operations to improve communication, visibility, and execution.
- Establish effective handoff processes between Sales and Operations for new programs, significant orders, customer changes, and new business wins.
- Ensure customer requirements, scope, timing, specifications, and commercial commitments are clearly documented and communicated before execution.
- Partner with Operations to identify capacity, material, timing, or execution risks and communicate those risks back to Sales early.
- Facilitate resolution when customer expectations and operational capabilities are not aligned.
- Create visibility into priorities so Operations understands what matters most to the customer and Sales understands operational constraints.
Process Improvement & Accountability
- Own and continuously improve the processes used by the Inside Sales Support team.
- Standardize order management, customer communication, project tracking, reporting, and escalation practices.
- Identify opportunities to eliminate unnecessary manual work and improve the use of ERP, CRM, reporting, AI, and other technology.
- Establish clear ownership and follow-up processes for customer and operational issues.
- Partner with Sales and Operations leadership to identify recurring execution issues and address underlying process gaps rather than repeatedly managing symptoms.
- Develop KPIs to measure team effectiveness, responsiveness, order accuracy, customer service levels, and execution.
Qualifications
- 5+ years of experience in sales operations, inside sales, customer service, account management, project management, or a related role; manufacturing experience strongly preferred.
- Prior experience leading and developing a customer-facing or sales-support team.
- Strong understanding of the order-to-delivery process within a manufacturing environment.
- Demonstrated ability to work effectively across Sales, Operations, Supply Chain, Engineering, Finance, and other functions.
- Strong leadership, communication, organization, and problem-solving skills.
- Ability to manage competing priorities while maintaining strong follow-up and attention to detail.
- Experience with ERP and CRM systems; Infor SyteLine/CSI experience is a plus.
- Strong technology orientation with an interest in using automation and AI to improve productivity and customer service.
Measures of Success
Success in this role will be demonstrated through:
- A high-performing, accountable, and cross-trained Inside Sales Support team.
- Stronger communication and alignment between Sales and Operations.
- Improved execution and responsiveness for key accounts.
- Effective support and transition of new business opportunities into Operations.
- Fewer customer and operational issues resulting from incomplete information or poor handoffs.
- Improved visibility into customer priorities, order status, risks, and open issues.
- Consistent processes and clear accountability across the Inside Sales Support function.
- Increased Sales capacity to focus on customers, relationships, new opportunities, and revenue growth.