Hydraulic Inside Sales and Support Engineer

Why work with us?

• We’re a small company that acts professionally. The big benefit to working at our small business is that you’re not layers deep under many managers—you report directly to the President and have an open-door policy. Your role in the company lets you learn and perform many tasks and not just a narrow area which helps you have a broad range of knowledge as your career progresses. You see the decision-making process and are expected to take part in some of it.
• Being a small team, we all work together cohesively and if someone is out of the office, we’re here to fill in the gap. We’re adaptive, cordial, inclusive, and supportive of others.
• One of our fun things is frequent company lunches to celebrate birthdays, work anniversaries, holidays, or other milestones.
• Working hours are Monday to Friday from 8:00am to 5:00pm EST with one-hour lunch.
• We really want our team members to have a great work-life balance and discourage working overtime.
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and disability insurance provided. The company pays 100% of your premiums.
• We encourage and financially support our team members should they wish to take additional training and courses.
• We provide several different types of paid leave including vacation (2 weeks minimum), sick (6 days), holiday (10 days), parental (3 weeks paid), flex time, and more.
• We believe that having a clean, calm, and bright work environment; coupled with high-quality equipment and modern technology is also important for the wellbeing of our team members. Each team member has their own cubicle for privacy and sanitation with a sit-stand desk, ergonomic chair, 49” widescreen monitor, and large sun-filled windows.
• We give back a portion of our earning to both local and global arts programs, charities, and organizations.
• We’re looking for someone that fits with our team culture, has the matching fundamentals, and we’ll provide the rest through training.

What is a typical day:

After getting settled in, you’ll get right into reviewing the new emails in Outlook. First, you’ll look in the company shared email box for any customer inquiries that came in after hours. We like to respond to customers right away so that they know someone is working on it and they have a contact person. The majority of our vendor partners are in Europe and have a 6-hour head start on us. Those emails will either be quotes that will need to created on our side to send to customers, or engineering or other technical follow-up to have with customers. For the quotes received, you’ll work up the pricing, then carefully add all the part information and customer information into our ERP system (SAP Business One). Once all of that is in the ERP system, you’ll send a professionally-written e-mail reply using proper grammar with the quote, drawing, spec sheet, and/or catalog attached to the email. This is a lot of what you do throughout the day.

Sometimes we have customer repairs to process which follow similar processes to the quotes, but you’ll need to write a short summary report with pictures with our findings along with a quote. But before we even get that far, you’ll coordinate with the customer about receiving the parts, providing an RMA number, and getting drawings from the vendor’s engineers to provide to our repair team members.

You’ll be keeping the customer information updated both in our ERP system and our CRM (HubSpot). You’ll also follow up on some of your open projects.

During that time, the phone may ring and throw you off track for a bit. But take the time on the phone to get to know the customer and build a relationship. Ask them about them. Ask them about their company. With some experience, you may even get to up-sell or cross-sell something!

What makes the job interesting is all the different people and applications you deal with. Every call and email are different and after 30 years, you’re still learning. One project may be a steel mill, then it’s a testing lab, followed a military project, then a private yacht. We have approximately 12 different products groups, so then add the product mix to the people and applications and there is a lot to learn.

This role is reactionary: you’re reacting to customer requests that come in by email or phone. You’re in constant communication with your fellow team members and colleagues in Outside Sales, Inside Sales, Customer Service, Warehouse, Marketing, and the President to provide assistance with technical support, quoting, sales, and purchasing. You’ll go to the warehouse to get clarification on an item or coordinate with the warehouse. A customer might want to know what the shipping cost is, so you’ll reference drawings or spec sheets to estimate the size and weight, then figure out which box size or correct, then put the summary of that information into the UPS system or freight system to get a price.

We’re writing 5% travel into the job description because there may be isolated instances of project-related travel or travel to company trade shows. This could be from zero to 1 or 2 weeks per year.

Sometimes, the phone rings at 8:01 AM which is why we have set hours for this role from 8:00 – 12:00 with a lunch break from 12:00-1:00. Sometimes the phone also rings at 1:01 pm. It’s really important to the company leadership that the phone is answered in 2 rings. Don’t you hate it when you call places and no one answers and it goes right to voicemail? We take pride in providing actually great customer service to match the premium products that we have.

Primary responsibilities:

• Maintain expert knowledge of the IC products and their function and use
• Creates, updates, tracks, and maintains current and prospective customer information in the ERP / CRM system (SAP Business One and HubSpot) including, but not limited to: sales activities, quote activities, purchasing activities, customer status, etc.
• Provide technical assistance to Customers, Outside Sales, and Customer Service
• Process sales documents on behalf of Outside Sales
• Work with vendors for technical assistance, pricing, and ordering
• Review leads / inquiries and follow up
• Follow up on open quotes
• Displays or demonstrates products and services in a professional manner; using samples or materials, and emphasizes salable features
• Stays up to date on sales skills, professional knowledge, and self-training to maximize professional growth and advancement

Job Requirements and Personal Attributes:

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, mechanical preferred
• Exceptional communication, writing, listening, time management, and presentation skills. Professional, complete, and with correct grammar. Must be able to communicate with all types of customers (sales, engineering, purchasing, managers, maintenance, etc.).
• Ability to work with details
• Must be perceptive to understand customer needs and situation by asking the appropriate questions
• Excellent computer skills: typing, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, ERP, and CRM software
• Must be a self-starter, be self-motivated, and have self-discipline
• Must display enthusiasm, perseverance, reliability, and high ethical standards
• Ability to read technical documents and engineering prints and retain the information
• Ability to travel overnight and internationally: up to 5% travel required
• Must possess a valid driver’s license
• Spanish language proficiency desired, but not required
• Must be a US citizen or have permanent resident status
• Be willing to acquire Fluid Power Specialist Certification (CFPE, CFPHS, CFPS, CFPSD)