The Key Account Manager is responsible for driving disciplined day-to-day commercial execution with existing North American Appliance accounts, with a focus on building strategic customer relationships, business development, and aftermarket demand generation. This role owns the operational cadence for total management of our NAA accounts, including customer coordination, quote management, forecast accuracy, CRM and pipeline management, NPD and derivative project execution, service-level segmentation, and cross-functional issue resolution. By applying 80/20 prioritization, value-selling principles, and data-driven commercial insights, the Key Account Manager helps transform the organization from reactive customer support to proactive account management, protecting existing business while identifying and capturing growth opportunities.
The Residential Filtration commercial strategy requires stronger key account management, a clearer separation between strategic growth activities and transactional customer support, autonomy for day-to-day account execution. As the organization evolves toward a more balanced commercial model with greater collaboration across business development, marketing, customer service, and product development, the Key Account Manager serves as a critical stabilizing role-ensuring consistent customer execution, protecting the core business, demand generation, and commercializing new technologies
Key Responsibilities- Own commercial management of existing North American Appliance accounts, including customer relationships, account planning, forecasting, issue resolution, quote execution, and revenue and margin performance.
- Apply 80/20 customer segmentation to align service levels, pricing strategies, growth priorities, and escalation paths by customer tier.
- Lead cross-functional NPD, CI, derivative, and customer-specific projects from intake through launch, ensuring milestones, risks, customer commitments, and execution timelines are managed effectively.
- Translate customer needs into actionable requirements and coordinate execution across Product Development, Operations, Quality, Supply Chain, Finance, Customer Service, and Sales teams.
- Support OEM value-creation and demand-generation initiatives by managing customer inputs, launch assumptions, aftermarket opportunities, and commercial execution plans.
- Maintain accurate pipeline, forecast, quotation, and account data, providing actionable insights and decision support while ensuring forecast accuracy, pipeline hygiene, and documented account plans.
- Partner with Customer Service and Inside Sales to improve responsiveness, proactively resolve customer issues, reduce recurring pain points, and minimize unnecessary escalations.
- Identify account growth opportunities, including adjacent applications, formulation opportunities, aftermarket potential, and opportunities requiring Business Development or senior leadership engagement.
- Ensure timely, accurate quotations aligned with pricing, margin, and strategic objectives, driving quote-to-win conversion and overall account growth.
Required Qualifications- Bachelor's degree in business, engineering, marketing, or related field; manufacturing or engineered-product exposure preferred.
- 5-8+ years of experience in account management, commercial operations, project management, sales operations, customer program management, or OEM-facing manufacturing environment.
- Experience coordinating cross-functional teams across sales, operations, customer service, product development, quality, finance, or supply chain.
- Strong analytical capability with experience in forecasting, CRM, dashboards, pricing/quote support, or KPI reporting.
Compensation Base$110,000 - $125,000 annually; plus target annual bonus.
Travel RequirementApproximately 50% travel required
