The Director, Commercial Development is responsible for driving revenue growth through strategic business development, customer acquisition, and commercial expansion initiatives. This role executes Sojo’s go-to-market strategy by identifying, developing, and securing new business opportunities while building long-term relationships with key customers and industry partners. The ideal candidate brings a strong sales and technical sales background, ideally from selling robotic automation, repacking/packaging, or beverage and food manufacturing equipment, along with a consultative sales approach and a proven track record of developing and closing complex opportunities in beverage and food markets. This background will allow the candidate to quickly learn Sojo’s repacking capabilities and confidently position them with customers’ operations, engineering, and supply chain teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Execute business development strategies aligned with Sojo’s growth objectives and expand market presence across targeted industries and customer segments.

• Identify, qualify, and pursue new business opportunities that align with Sojo’s capabilities, strategic priorities, and profitability objectives.

• Build and maintain a robust pipeline of qualified opportunities through proactive prospecting, networking, industry engagement, and strategic account targeting.

• Lead customer engagement efforts throughout the sales process, including technical discovery, solution development, proposal creation, pricing discussions, contract negotiations, and closing.

• Translate customer packaging, line, and throughput requirements into Sojo repacking solutions, leading technical conversations with plant, engineering, and operations stakeholders in partnership with Sojo Engineering.

• Establish and maintain strong relationships with key decision-makers across prospective and existing customer organizations.

• Collaborate closely with Operations, Finance, Engineering, Product, and Account Management teams to develop customer solutions that are operationally feasible, financially sound, and strategically aligned.

• Develop business cases, commercial proposals, and pricing recommendations that balance customer value, competitive positioning, and company profitability goals.

• Serve as a subject matter expert on Sojo’s service offerings, including repacking, mobile manufacturing solutions (Sojo Flight), traceability technology (Sojo Shield), and related commercial capabilities.

• Maintain accurate pipeline, opportunity, and customer activity records within the company CRM system, ensuring visibility and forecasting accuracy.

• Monitor market trends, competitive activity, customer needs, and emerging opportunities to provide actionable commercial insights to leadership.

• Represent Sojo at customer meetings, industry conferences, trade shows, and other business development events.

• Support strategic partnership development initiatives with customers, suppliers, and industry stakeholders.

• Contribute to annual commercial planning, forecasting, and territory/account strategy development.

• Assist in onboarding new customers and support successful transitions from business development to account management and operational execution.

• Report to and partner closely with senior commercial leadership to align priorities, escalate opportunities, and ensure pipeline visibility.

• Able to travel up to 60%.

• All other duties as assigned.

Qualifications:

• 5+ years of B2B sales or business development experience, with a significant portion in technical or capital equipment sales.

• Demonstrated success selling robotic or automation systems, repacking or packaging equipment, or beverage/food manufacturing equipment and related services.

• Working knowledge of packaging and manufacturing line operations (e.g., depalletizing, case packing, multipacking, palletizing) and the ability to quickly learn and explain new equipment capabilities.

• Proven ability to engage both technical audiences (plant managers, engineers, operations leaders) and executive decision-makers, and to manage complex, multi-stakeholder sales cycles.

• Consistent track record of building pipeline and meeting or exceeding sales targets.

• Established network within beverage, food, or CPG manufacturers and co-packers strongly preferred.

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

• Strong proficiency with CRM systems and strong written, verbal, and presentation skills.

Location and Hours:

This role is primarily a remote position, although travel to customer locations, Sojo facilities, industry events, and other business meetings will be required. You will generally be expected to work Monday through Friday during standard business hours. However, given the nature of Sojo’s growing business, it is common for exempt employees to work outside of standard business hours as necessary to accomplish their job responsibilities.