Regional Sales Manager – Northern California & Nevada
Akona Process Solutions
Territory: Northern California & Nevada
Position: Regional Sales Manager (RSM)
Job Type: Full-Time
Travel: Regular travel throughout assigned territory
Are You Ready to Own a Territory?
- Are you passionate about building relationships, creating opportunities, and growing a business?
- Do you have the sales instincts to uncover opportunities others might miss?
- Can you build strong relationships with customers while also challenging and developing independent manufacturer representatives to perform at a higher level?
- Do you have the business acumen to look at a territory and see not just what it is producing today—but what it could produce?
- Can you take ownership of a number, build the strategy to achieve it, and relentlessly follow opportunities through to the finish line?
If so, you may be exactly who we're looking for.
Akona Process Solutions is seeking a Regional Sales Manager for Northern California and Nevada who will take ownership of sales performance and order generation throughout the territory.
This individual will directly manage a select portfolio of strategic and house accounts while leading, supporting, developing, and driving performance through Akona's network of independent manufacturer representative organizations.
This is not a role for someone who simply wants to maintain a territory.
We are looking for someone who wants to build one.
What You'll Own
As the Regional Sales Manager, you are the business owner for Northern California and Nevada.
You will be responsible for developing and executing the strategy necessary to grow the territory, generate orders, build pipeline, strengthen customer relationships, develop new accounts, and increase the effectiveness of Akona's manufacturer representative network.
You will:
- Own territory sales performance, order intake, pipeline development, and growth.
- Develop and execute an annual territory sales strategy.
- Meet or exceed established territory sales and order targets.
- Directly manage select strategic and house accounts.
- Identify and develop new customers, applications, markets, and projects.
- Expand Akona's presence within existing customers.
- Build and maintain a healthy pipeline of qualified opportunities.
- Work alongside manufacturer representatives on strategic customer calls and major opportunities.
- Drive opportunities from discovery through proposal, negotiation, order, and handoff.
- Maintain disciplined follow-up on quotations, opportunities, and customer commitments.
- Provide accurate forecasting and meaningful market intelligence to Akona's sales leadership.
Most importantly, you will be expected to take ownership.
- When an opportunity exists, you pursue it.
- When a representative needs help, you coach them.
- When performance isn't where it needs to be, you address it.
- When a customer has a challenge, you bring together the right Akona resources to help solve it.
You'll Make Our Manufacturer Representatives Better
A major part of this position is building a highly productive manufacturer representative network.
We aren't looking for someone who simply answers rep questions or waits for opportunities to arrive.
We want an RSM who knows how to activate a sales channel.
You will:
- Build strong relationships with manufacturer representative principals and sales professionals.
- Establish clear expectations for customer coverage, prospecting, pipeline development, forecasting, and follow-through.
- Conduct consistent territory and pipeline reviews.
- Coach representatives on Akona's solutions, applications, value proposition, and target markets.
- Help representatives identify and penetrate high-potential accounts.
- Accompany representatives on strategic customer calls.
- Help move stalled opportunities forward.
- Encourage representatives to sell the broader Akona portfolio rather than relying solely on familiar products or legacy relationships.
- Identify performance gaps and develop action plans to improve results.
- Recognize what's working and help replicate successful sales behaviors across the territory.
Your success won't simply be measured by what you personally sell.
It will also be measured by what you enable others to sell.
Who We're Looking For
You are naturally a people person.
You genuinely enjoy interacting with different kinds of people—from engineers and plant managers to executives, purchasing professionals, manufacturer representatives, and internal technical teams.
- You build trust.
- You listen.
- You ask good questions.
And people experience you as sincere, credible, professional, and genuinely interested in helping them succeed.
You thrive on responsibility.
- You don't need someone constantly telling you what to do next.
- You can look at a territory, analyze where the opportunities exist, organize your work, establish priorities, and develop a strategy to reach your goals.
- You understand that when you own the territory, you own the result.
- You have business acumen.
- You understand that sales is about more than relationships.
- You understand customers, markets, margins, competition, pipeline, buying processes, value creation, and ultimately—the order.
- You can connect a customer's operational challenge to a solution and articulate the business value of solving it.
You are proactive and self-reliant.
- You can follow direction, but you can also think independently.
- You don't wait for someone else to identify every next step.
- When action is necessary, you determine the next right step, gather the appropriate resources, and move the opportunity forward.
- You are emotionally mature.
- Sales requires resilience.
- Customers don't always say yes.
- Projects get delayed.
- Competitors show up.
- Representatives don't always perform as expected.
- Priorities change.
- You don't become defensive, easily overwhelmed, or immobilized when faced with adversity, pressure, deadlines, or conflict.
- You remain professional, adaptable, solutions-focused, and productive.
You are conscientious.
- You take pride in your work and want things done right.
- You don't sacrifice quality for speed.
- Your proposals, forecasts, CRM activity, customer commitments, and follow-up reflect professionalism and attention to detail.
- You are assertive without being aggressive.
- You are comfortable asking for the meeting.
- You ask the difficult question.
- You follow up.
- You challenge assumptions.
- You clarify the next step.
- And when appropriate, you ask for the business.
You understand that professional persistence is an essential part of great sales.
- You follow through.
- You don't confuse activity with accomplishment.
- When you commit to something, people can trust that you will carry it through to completion.
- Customers, representatives, and your Akona colleagues know they can count on you.
- You are curious.
- You don't need to walk in knowing every technical detail of every Akona solution.
- But you absolutely need to want to learn.
- You are interested in how customers operate, how materials move through a process, where production problems occur, and how the right equipment or system can create a better outcome.
You Sell Solutions, Not Equipment
- Akona's customers have real operational challenges.
- Your job is to understand them.
- You'll develop the working technical knowledge necessary to have credible discovery conversations around customer processes, materials, applications, production challenges, and desired outcomes.
You'll partner with Akona's technical and engineering resources to develop solutions and communicate value around areas such as:
- Productivity and throughput
- Product integrity and quality
- Reliability
- Safety
- Cleanliness and sanitation
- Automation
- Operational efficiency
- Reduced manual handling
- Process improvement
The goal is not simply to sell a piece of equipment.
The goal is to help the customer solve the right problem.
You Must Also Bring the Fundamentals
The successful candidate will have:
- Proven experience in industrial, manufacturing, engineered-equipment, process-equipment, automation, or technical B2B sales.
- Demonstrated success managing and growing a geographic sales territory.
- Experience developing new business and managing complex sales opportunities.
- Strong relationship-building skills with technical, operational, and business decision-makers.
- Strong prospecting, pipeline management, forecasting, negotiation, and closing skills.
- Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and interpersonal communication skills.
- Strong organizational, prioritization, and time-management skills.
- CRM discipline and an appreciation for accurate sales data and forecasting.
- The ability to thrive in a fast-moving, changing business environment.
- The ability to work independently while remaining highly collaborative with the broader organization.
- Willingness and ability to travel regularly throughout Northern California and Nevada.
We'd Be Particularly Interested If You Have:
- Experience selling through independent manufacturer representatives, distributors, dealers, or channel partners.
- Experience developing and improving manufacturer representative performance.
- Experience selling capital equipment.
- Experience with process equipment, bulk material handling, conveying, screening, sifting, mixing, blending, automation, or engineered systems.
- Experience selling into food & beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical, plastics, pet food, ingredients, or other process-manufacturing environments.
- A bachelor's degree in Business, Engineering, Technical Sales, or a related field—or equivalent relevant industry experience.
How We'll Know You're Winning
Success isn't simply being busy.
We will look at meaningful sales outcomes and the behaviors that produce them, including:
- Territory order intake vs. target
- Revenue and territory growth
- Gross margin performance
- Qualified pipeline and pipeline coverage
- New customer acquisition
- Growth within existing accounts
- House-account performance
- Manufacturer representative performance
- Rep-generated opportunities and orders
- Quote-to-order conversion
- Forecast accuracy
- Strategic account penetration
- Cross-selling across the Akona portfolio
- CRM accuracy and sales discipline
Our Culture Matters
At Akona Process Solutions, how we work matters just as much as what we accomplish.
Our core values guide how we work with customers, partners, and one another:
PEOPLE MATTER
We value people, relationships, clear communication, collaboration, and respect.
For an RSM, that means investing in customers, manufacturer representatives, and your Akona teammates—and understanding that strong relationships are the foundation of sustainable sales.
CUSTOMER FOCUSED
We start with the customer.
We seek to understand what they're trying to accomplish, what is getting in their way, and how we can help create a better outcome.
For an RSM, that means listening before selling and becoming a trusted business partner rather than simply another equipment vendor.
QUALITY FIRST
We care about excellence.
We take pride in our work, our products, our solutions, our communication, and the commitments we make.
For an RSM, quality shows up in everything from customer conversations and proposals to forecasting, follow-up, and execution.
MOVE FIRST
We value agility, initiative, and action.
We don't sit around waiting for someone else to create momentum.
For an RSM, that means prospecting, opening doors, pursuing opportunities, making decisions, solving problems, and continually moving the territory forward.
OWN IT
We believe in accountability.
We take responsibility for our commitments, our decisions, our actions, and our results.
For an RSM, this one is especially important:
You own your territory.
Why Akona?
Akona Process Solutions brings together the capabilities of Cablevey, Kason, Marion, and Spiroflow, creating a broad portfolio of material-processing technologies and expertise.
That gives our Regional Sales Managers something powerful to bring into the marketplace: the ability to look beyond a single product and help customers think more broadly about their process and operational needs.
You'll have the opportunity to work alongside experienced technical professionals, leverage multiple product technologies, build strong industry relationships, and develop a territory with significant potential.
We work hard. We learn. We collaborate. We take ownership. And we want people who are energized by the opportunity to contribute to something that's growing.
Still Reading?
Good.
If you're thinking:
“I could own this territory.”
“I know how to get manufacturer reps moving.”
“I love building customer relationships.”
“I can create opportunities instead of waiting for leads.”
“Give me a number, a market, good solutions, and a strong team—and let me go to work.”
We should probably talk.
If that doesn't sound like you, there are no hard feelings. This role won't be right for everyone.
But if it does?
Take the next step and apply.
Pay: $80,000.00 - $100,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Flexible spending account
- Health insurance
- Health savings account
- Life insurance
- Paid time off
- Retirement plan
- Vision insurance
Experience:
- B2B sales: 2 years (Preferred)
Location:
Work Location: In person
