Position Summary:

The Sr. Director, Commercial Operations is responsible for the development and implementation of the commercial strategy for the Laboratory Chemicals Division (LCD) business in North America. This role will accelerate revenue growth by understanding of the market, complemented through organizational design, talent management, and commercial processes, establishing and maintaining strong relationships with our customers and channel partners as well as working closely with all functions to drive customer satisfaction.

The successful incumbent will have a track record of challenging the status quo and driving change, while continually raising both revenue and performance expectations and driving commercial efficiency. This strategic commercial professional will have domain knowledge and can create strategic plans to enable agility to adapt to the ever-changing marketplace, embracing technology to accelerate results (such as CRM, digital marketing and virtual demos/meetings). The incumbent will have a proven history of running a highly disciplined sales operating mechanism, delivering on results and exceptional functional leadership skills building the teams capabilities to be the best in industry.

Duties & Responsibilities:

This individual’s responsibilities will include, but may not be limited to the following specific responsibilities:

• Commercial strategy development, inclusive of people, processes, go to market channels, and broader commercial resources.
• Proactive talent management, understanding what good performance looks like incremental to budgetary performance; experience designing commercial structures to maximize investment and growth.
• Embrace and drive commercial discipline through the sales cycle.
• Develop and maintain up to date knowledge of products, markets and customer buying practices required to effectively manage a sales team to compete and grow the business.
• Use comprehensive knowledge of customer activities and goals to develop and coach to high impact strategic selling presentations.
• Work closely with regional and divisional stakeholders to align resources, sales and marketing plans to deliver the revenue goals for the region.

• Establish and maintain effective communication with strategically important customer executives and managers.
• Address and resolve customer issues and arbitrate sales personnel issues (e.g., sales crediting involving other channels) as required.
• Serve as a role model and coach to the Sales Management team in all aspects of the sales process and customer relationship management.
• Consistently monitor and manage performance to leading indicators including sales forecasting, pipeline management, and commercial activity with CRM.
• Work collaboratively with other Thermo Fisher Scientific commercial teams to accelerate growth and enhance the overall customer value proposition.
• Manage expenses to an annual operating plan.
• Employ and embrace productivity tools to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the LCD selling organization.

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements:

• BS/BA required in Chemistry, Biochemistry or related discipline (Masters, MBA or PhD desirable but not required)
• Requires minimum of 10 years’ experience in sales and sales management
• Experience in the life sciences market with understanding of current competitive dynamics and proven ability to succeed in those conditions, preferred but not required
• Process driven, experience with predictive KPIs, sales cycle management, samples, quoting, discounts and sales forecasting
• Proven ability to work effectively in a matrixed internal company environment
• Experience in commercial team management, sales strategies and personal selling effectiveness, analytical and problem-solving skills, communications skills, client relationship management skills, industry/market analysis skills, and business planning skills
• Experience with financial planning, sales analytics and financial root-cause analysis is preferred
• Must be well versed on the utilization of technology and CRM platforms in sales
• Estimated ~50% travel