About the Role

This is our first dedicated commercial hire in Southern California. You'll be based in the region - close to the Inland Empire, Perris, Torrance, and Buena Park - working directly with our Director of Business Development out of Austin.

Your job is to build the top of our funnel in the densest warehouse market in the country, with customers for the trailer unloading robot, palletizer, and AGV. You'll open and warm relationships with operators across the region, qualify them against the operational criteria that tell us whether our systems are a fit, and carry the strongest of those relationships forward yourself. You'll also run the marketing activity that supports it - the trade shows, the follow-up, the case studies that make the next conversation easier.

It's a hands-on role with an unusual amount of exposure for the candidate. You'll learn the commercial side of a robotics business directly from the people running it, and just as much from the customers themselves - on their floors, in their operations/warehouses, regularly.

What you'll do
Business development

• Build and warm relationships with warehouse and distribution operators across Southern California, drawing on the network you already have in the region.
• Qualify prospects against our operational fit criteria - trailer volume, case counts per trailer, case dimensions, drop trailer usage - so that opportunities reaching the sales conversation are already understood and vetted.
• Be in the field. Visit sites, walk docks, sit with operations teams, and bring back what you learn about how these buildings actually run, while qualifying their need to automate offloading their floor loaded trailers.

Sales support

• Prepare proposals, quotes, and customer-facing performance reporting that makes the case for expansion.
• Keep the CRM accurate and current. Pipeline you can't see isn't pipeline.
• Handle follow-ups and next steps so nothing goes cold between meetings.

Marketing

• Run trade show and industry event logistics for the region, and work the booth.
• Attend networking events in the region to cultivate leads and further nurture them.
• Support content that shortens the sales cycle: case studies, customer references, one-pagers, and social posts.
• Manage outbound campaign execution and follow-up on inbound leads.

What we're looking for

• Based in Southern California, with a working knowledge of the region's warehouse and distribution landscape. This is not a relocation role.
• At least five years of customer-facing experience in or adjacent to the warehouse industry. The strongest backgrounds we've seen:
  
  • Lumper or unloading services - you already know who moves what volume, and you've already been inside these buildings
  • Pallet supply or pallet management
  • Drayage and port-to-facility transportation
  • Racking, forklift, or material handling equipment sales
  • Sales or deployment roles at a system integrator or robotics company
• A sales mindset. A formal sales title is not required, but you should be someone who naturally builds relationships/rapport, asks the qualifying question, and follows up without being told to.
• Genuinely comfortable in an industrial environment - warehouse floors, cross docks, receiving docks, PPE, early shifts.
• Strong written communication. A proposal or a performance report is a piece of writing, and it either builds confidence or erodes it.
• Highly organized and self-directed. You will be working largely on your own in the region, and much of this job is remembering the thing nobody else remembered.
• Valid driver's license and willingness to drive to customer sites across the region several days a week, plus occasional travel to Austin.

Nice to have

• An existing network among Southern California warehouse operators or 3PLs.
• Experience with CRM tools (HubSpot, Salesforce).

Physical requirements

Able to walk and stand on a warehouse floor for extended periods and work safely around active material handling equipment in accordance with site safety requirements.

Why this job is worth taking

You will be an early member of a customer-facing team at a company whose robots are already in production at name-brand logistics operations, and the first person representing Contoro on the ground in our densest customer region. You'll see the full arc of robotics industry - how a deal is won, how a system gets deployed, why it breaks, and what makes a customer expand. That is an unusually complete education, and it's not available at a larger company where each of those pieces belongs to different departments.

The person who does this job well and grows into owning larger accounts is on a short path to a senior commercial role.

How to apply

Send your resume and a short note to [redacted]. In the note, tell us which warehouses in Southern California you already know, and how you came to know them. That's most of this job.