Vice President of Sales

About Laketown Mills
Laketown Mills is a Minnesota-based specialty grain and ingredient manufacturer focused on producing high-quality ingredients. We provide toll processing, co-manufacturing, and ingredient supply to the food and agriculture industries. Our team values hard work, attention to detail, and pride in creating safe, high-quality food ingredients that power sustainable food systems.

Position Overview

$125,000 Commissions

Laketown Mills is looking for an entrepreneurial, hands-on VP of Sales & Production to lead our sales efforts while playing a key role in production, operations, and overall company profitability.

This is a unique leadership opportunity within a growing, small manufacturing company. We are looking for someone who can do more than manage a sales team. The person in this role will be responsible for winning new business, developing customer relationships, pricing opportunities, understanding production economics, and helping ensure the work we sell is executed efficiently and profitably.

The ideal candidate is a proven sales leader with strong business instincts who is equally comfortable talking with a customer, reviewing a quote, walking the production floor, solving an operational problem, or working with ownership on how to improve the company's bottom line.

Key ResponsibilitiesSales & Business Development

• Lead Laketown Mills' overall sales and business development efforts.
• Develop and execute strategies to grow profitable revenue.
• Build a strong pipeline of new customers and opportunities.
• Develop relationships with decision-makers across food, agriculture, nutrition, pet food, ingredient, and related industries.
• Sell our specialty ingredient manufacturing, toll processing, co-manufacturing, and product development capabilities.
• Identify new markets, customers, products, and applications that fit our capabilities.
• Manage the sales process from initial contact through proposal, negotiation, close, and ongoing customer relationship.
• Develop pricing and proposals that are competitive while protecting company margins.
• Maintain accurate sales forecasts and communicate anticipated customer demand to the production team.
• Build long-term, repeat customer relationships.

Production & Operations

• Work closely with production and operations to ensure customer commitments can be executed successfully.
• Help prioritize production based on customer needs, capacity, timing, and profitability.
• Develop a strong understanding of our equipment, processes, capacity, yields, labor requirements, and production costs.
• Help identify and eliminate production bottlenecks.
• Improve throughput, utilization, efficiency, and overall operational performance.
• Reduce waste, downtime, rework, and unnecessary costs.
• Help ensure production plans and customer commitments are realistic and achievable.
• Jump in and help solve operational problems when they arise.

Profitability & Business Management

Profitable growth is the primary objective of this position.

The VP of Sales & Production will play a significant role in helping Laketown Mills improve its financial performance.

Responsibilities include:

• Understand gross margin by customer, product, and project.
• Ensure quotes and pricing reflect the true cost of production.
• Improve job costing, estimating, and quoting processes.
• Identify opportunities to increase margins on existing business.
• Evaluate customers and projects based on both revenue and profitability.
• Identify opportunities to better utilize equipment and production capacity.
• Help leadership understand where the company makes money—and where it doesn't.
• Use sales and production data to make better business decisions.
• Continuously look for ways to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase profitability.

This Is a "Wear Many Hats" Leadership Role

Laketown Mills is a small company, and that's part of what makes this opportunity different.

You won't be sitting in an office managing from a distance.

Depending on the day, you may be:

• Calling on a prospective customer.
• Visiting a customer or supplier.
• Developing a quote or proposal.
• Negotiating a contract.
• Reviewing production costs.
• Walking the production floor.
• Helping troubleshoot a manufacturing issue.
• Working through a production schedule.
• Identifying a new application for our capabilities.
• Financial reports
• Closing deals.

Job Type: Full-time

Pay: From $125,000.00 per year

Work Location: In person

Salary : $125,000