With over 80 years as an industrial technology leader, Kennametal Inc. delivers productivity to customers through materials science, tooling and wear-resistant solutions. Customers across aerospace, earthworks, energy, general engineering and transportation turn to Kennametal to help them manufacture with precision and efficiency. Every day approximately 8,700 employees are helping customers in more than 60 countries stay competitive. Kennametal generated $2 billion in revenues in fiscal 2022. Learn more at www.kennametal.com. Follow @Kennametal: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Key Accounts Manager - Armor Products

Location - Prefer candidate within the US or EMEA

Job Summary

Kennametal is expanding its Defense portfolio and launching an innovative armor material solution for vehicles and personal protection. We are actively pursuing a highly motivated top global sales professional to join our team who will have primary responsibility to identify opportunities in the global armor market, partner with armor requirement creators, develop long-term relationships with armor integrators and execute on our Defense portfolio sales initiatives. This position is responsible for identifying, developing, and closing new sales opportunities including contracts, discount structure and/or marketing programs. Serves as a primary interface for all products, strategy, programs, support, marketing, and training for key customers.

Key Job Responsibilities

• Builds solid customer relationships with strategic large accounts typically involving complex global customers and multi-national enterprises.
• Creates demand for the organization’s products and services by raising the Kennametal profile with customers.
• Leads regular status and strategy meetings with the customer’s senior management team to align products/services with customer needs.
• Addresses customer action items and concerns within timely manner.
• Develop strategy, sales plans, budgets to achieve sales goals with Key Accounts.
• Identifies new sales opportunities for growth within assigned accounts.
• Gathers key customer input for new product development and communicates to product management team.
• Supports new product development programs through identification of field trial sites and actively solicits key account customer feedback to support product launch and value proposition development.
• Partners with regional segment team members who gather business intelligence and business trends to set strategy and create demand for organizations products & services.
• Supports enterprise selling and global account initiatives and manage contacts and price harmonization.
• Utilizes customer relationship management (CRM) tools to document and manage customer activity.
• Completes required sales training modules (CRM, large account management, etc.)

Requirements

The successful candidate will have a high level of knowledge and experience working with Defense contractors and Integrators, specifically, key armor OEMs, Integrators and armor market influencers and requirements creators. The candidate shall have a significant understanding of the US DoD and global MoD acquisition strategies, be a subject matter expertise in soft body armor, hard body armor and vehicle protection systems, as well as, have a working knowledge of global armor protection test standards, such as STANAG 4569 and NIJ 0101.06.

• 8-10 Years in related industries or materials
• 2-4 years of sales experience preferred
• Bachelor of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Engineering, or related field preferred.
• MBA preferred
• Previous military or law enforcement experience
• Able to achieve secret level US DoD clearance
• Knowledge of business unit industries is required: defense and/or specialty markets (armor plating, body armor, vehicle protection systems)
• Ability to create demand through insight, influencing, planning & organizing
• Self-starter and self-sufficient requiring little supervision for decision making, account planning and advancing sales discussions
• Excellent interpersonal skills including active listening and building trusting relationships.
• Excellent business sense and decision-making skills leveraging data and strategic thinking.
• Completion of structured selling courses / training program preferred

Kennametal Inc. is an Equal Employment Opportunity employer. As such, it is the policy of Kennametal Inc. to afford equal employment opportunity without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, handicap, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship status, veteran status, or other protected status, group, or characteristic under federal, state, and/or local law or regulation. It is Kennametal Inc.'s policy to comply with all applicable laws and regulations.