Sales Engineer - Explosion Protection

The Sales Engineer serves as the primary support resource for customers, partners, and the outside sales team. This role encompasses providing both technical and commercial support during the quotation and implementation phases of explosion protection projects, as well as ongoing commercial assistance for customer service needs. Additionally, the Sales Engineer is responsible for designing solutions and preparing quotes directly for clients. The Sales Engineer is responsible for identifying and delivering reliable solutions to address all commercial and technical challenges, ensuring complete customer satisfaction.

1. Collaborate with the commercial team to align technical solutions with strategic business objectives, ensuring contributions directly support department goals such as revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and operational efficiency.
2. Leads sales activities, including telephone and video contacts, trade seminars and shows, product demonstrations, and customer seminars. Schedules meetings with end users to understand applications and engineer solutions that meet NFPA and Fike standards.
3. Promotes Fike by following up on past-due quotes and leads from various sources in collaboration with the outside sales teams.
4. Manages activities, contacts, design support, quotes, and project coordination in CRM (Salesforce.com).
5. Engages engineering and EP applications for non-standard projects, ensuring timely execution aligned with customer expectations.
6. Drafts proposals, processes orders, and helps create, price, deliver, and follow up on service contracts.
7. Provides technical support to team members and clients.
8. Calculates hardware needs based on customer or sales team information, builds BOMs and quotes, and coordinates service interventions.
9. Communicates all design, installation, and issue data to the service team before interventions. Also helps manage client expectations and answers technical questions.
10. Resolves discrepancies between quoted and performed activities or materials used, ensuring updated orders or credit notes are processed.
11. Follows up on quotations via email, phone, and video in collaboration with the outside sales teams.
12. Collaborates with customers and internal teams to create drawings and provide project coordination.
13. Maintains knowledge of applicable standards and guidelines (e.g., ATEX, NFPA).
14. Ensures Fike provides the highest level of "customer-first" value, positioning as a preferred supplier/partner through OTD, quality, technical support, product application, and ROI.
15. Works towards becoming a subject matter expert in designing explosion protection systems, continually expanding knowledge and expertise in this field.
16. Manages Salesforce CPQ product coding to ensure products are correctly configured for order entry and work orders, facilitating smooth communication between different manufacturing branches within the company.
17. Maintains pricing for OEM customers in price books and Salesforce CPQ, ensuring accuracy and consistency across all sales processes.

Subject Matter Understanding. Analytical. Computer Applications. Project Management. Critical Thinking. Teamwork. Problem Solving. Initiative. Detail Oriented. Time Management. Initiative. Independent Judgement. Effective verbal and written communication. Time Management. Customer focused.

While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to walk, talk, hear, see, sit, and use hands.

REQUIRED: Bachelor's degree in a technical discipline or an equivalent combination of education and experience in a technical, sales, or marketing field. Ability to read and understand technical (electrical and mechanical) drawings and customer and industry standards. Ability to understand customer applications and problems, gather relevant data, analyze, and draw conclusions. Ability to share knowledge across multiple teams. Proficient PC skills, especially in SFDC and Google G-Suite.

PREFERRED: Two or more years' experience in inside sales, engineering, explosion protection, fire protection, or related industries. Proficient with Microsoft Office. Knowledge of AutoCAD and/or 3D modeling tools. Knowledge of additional European languages.