Material Handling Regional Specialist Job Description – Southern Region

The material handling (MH) regional product specialist will oversee the overall sales material handling sales target and own the relationships with key material handling suppliers within their respective regions. The goal is to grow top line sales while also growing our profit margins. The MH specialist should actively pursue increasing sales within each region by working with all sales engineers within the region, so they feel comfortable discussing and reviewing material handling applications as they come up within their accounts. The Material Handling Specialist should be the Strategic Resource and First contact for the Sales Engineers in their region to ensure all information regarding customer requests is accurate and address the needs of the customer prior to sending it to our MH partners. MH will work daily with sales engineers in their region to drive sales of MH Products. The Material handling Regional Specialist will report directly to the RSM for that region.

Success for the Material Handling Specialist is gauges on the Success of these three items: Sales, Growth, Margin.

The Material Handling Regional Specialist complete a variety of leadership responsibilities, including:

• Create a yearly business plan to grow their region’s material handling sales in all key areas of focus. These include but are not limited to: conveyors, cranes, jibs, hoists, carts, lift assists, intelligent lift assists, and of course all our design and build products. The D&B products are Hovair, Lathrup, CTEK, and GD Hoist.
• Participate in the regional huddle calls with the sales engineers to promote material handling products and various promotions.
• From time to time, you may be asked to participate in the Ops and Props sales call to discuss success stories from your region.
• Using market data, statistics, and trends to establish annual sales goals for your specific region in material handling products.
• Review sales numbers weekly to ensure your material handling sales are growing.
• Build relationships with our top suppliers for material handling within your region.
• Put together business plans required by key suppliers on how you are going to grow their product sales within your region.
• Participate in sales meetings with other material handling regional specialists that would be put on by the VP of Material Handling.
• Help with marketing plans, suggested trade shows and other road shows to help promote Rhino Tool House within your region.
• Recognizing and rewarding top sales producers for material handling within your region.
• Work with the National Accounts manager to help select key accounts and hold RSM’s accountable for creating a plan to gain material handling market share within these selected accounts.
• Discuss key material handling accounts with other reginal material handling specialists that you may have in your territory and use our existing relationships in these other accounts to gain access to the selected account within your region.
• Cross-functional collaboration: Each regional material handling specialist will collaborate with various departments within the organization, such as finance, operations, and supply chain, to ensure smooth coordination and alignment of activities related to sales.
• Collaborate with regional managers to get “middle of the road” and “low” producing salespeople to high performing status in your product focus category.
• Preparing timely sales forecasts and reports on material handling products.
• Tracking and analyzing sales data to find strengths, opportunities, weaknesses, and trends.
• Networking with existing customers and potential customers to promote the Rhino Tool House brand and ethics.
• Creating presentations for business updates with suppliers, corporate executives, and the regions they are responsible for.
• Ensuring CRM data is up to date for your region and each sales engineer for the material handling products you represent.
• Track material handling leads for your region and ensure that these are followed up on vigorously with a sense of urgency.
• Review KPIs for the material handling products within your region.
  1. Sales vs previous year
  2. Margin vs previous year
  3. Sales growth by each sales engineer
  4. New material handling customers
  5. Inspection and Installation sales vs previous year
  6. Etc
• Participate in monthly one-on-one call with your manager to discuss sales personnel, large projects, sales funnel, lost orders, opportunities, and challenges.
• Prepare an annual plan to reach the desired sales goal.
• Help support integration of newly acquired companies into the Rhino Tool House sales team.

Five specific areas of expertise for the regional material handling product specialist are:

Core Values, Mission, and Vision Statement

Living the Rhino Tool House core values and our mission and vision statements is key to creating a positive environment for our employees, customers, and stakeholders. Each specialist should be well versed in these areas.

Drive Sales

The regional material handling product specialist should set sales targets for their region using past sales statistics and market information. They oversee material handling sales within their teams and give guidance on sales strategies and processes. They should also motivate individuals to reach goals, using reports that document sales projections, actual revenue, and other metrics. Participating in weekly forecasting calls and updating senior management is key to ensuring the company is aware of projections and trends.

Awareness of market trends

Regional material handling product specialists should continuously track and record sales trends and other related data to improve supply and demand strategies and maximize profits. Supply and demand often drive both sales strategies and revenue. This also relates to reporting on key wins and losses. Detailing specifics about both wins and losses is key to Rhino Tool House continuing to improve for our customers.

Advertising and marketing

Regional material handling product specialists will work closely with our marketing team to improve sales, company awareness and trade shows. They may provide historical sales data and forecast estimates so they can create effective advertising and marketing strategies. They might also review the success of a competitor's advertising and marketing campaign so that they can review and adjust their own.

Customer service

A regional material handling product specialist should have good customer service skills to help influence clients, potential customers, and the sales teams. Providing excellent customer service will lead to higher profits, and they should be able to train and share this information with their teams on best practices.

Additionally required attributes:

Communication: Strong written and oral communication skills are helpful for connecting with clients and sales team members across the country or region, especially regarding timely information.

Creativity: They should collaborate with the regional manager to help create innovative sales ideas to increase revenue and profits. Focusing on new ways to reach customers, demo products, highlight successes, etc.

Sales knowledge: Effective material handling product specialists should have an extensive understanding of sales funnels, processes, and functions. Having mastery of the MODERN sales process is key to driving a unified sales approach across our regions and sales team.

Team management: Your ability to help lead, motivate, and supervise a team will help the region grow sales by consistently challenging the sales engineers to grow their existing and future customer base in material handling sales. Also, helping the regionals establish a business case to add additional salespeople is key to organic growth.

Persuasiveness: Material handling product specialists must have the ability to be persuasive which will help us increase sales with key customers and get more leads and favorable treatment from our suppliers.

 Other items:

Candidates for this position should be willing to travel up to 40% of the time within their region of responsibility.

Reports directly to the regional manager of the region you are working in.