Technical Sales Expert Coffee

Summary

Job Responsibilities

• Strengthen and expand the Coffee business segment through opportunity and order growth, together with the Head of Market Segment Coffee.
• Develop regional go-to-market strategies, including fact-based reasoning, and actively drive customer service and plant project sales.
• Act as the central technical sales contact for local sales and service organizations and support them in building trusted customer relationships.
• Seize sales opportunities and close deals together with the global sales organization, while also working directly with selected key customers and involving local teams early.
• Manage, coach, train, and develop local and regional sales and service organizations for successful market and business development of the Coffee segment.
• Identify sales and technology training needs, report them to the Head of Market Segment Coffee, and lecture customers or internal teams on selected topics in coffee processing at events and seminars.
• Understand plant project and customer service opportunities and help structure quotations according to the customer’s needs, market context, and business case.
• Ensure complete and timely information transfer between Quotation, Engineering, Technology and R&D, Product Management, and other involved functions.
• Support pricing and scope discussions by balancing customer needs, must-haves, nice-to-haves, competitiveness, DB1, and long-term customer value.
• Evaluate customer plants and consult customers on improvement opportunities, service potential, and new technical or process solutions.
• Elaborate, review, and align flowsheets together with lead coffee technologists to fulfil customer expectations and Bühler quality standards.
• Take commercial and technical ownership of coffee opportunities from early sales development and offer elaboration until handover to Project Execution.
• Collect market, customer, competitor, and technology intelligence and identify critical knowledge or technology gaps.
• Generate and assess new business ideas together with the Head of Market Segment Coffee and support strategic preparation with customers for future projects.
• Collect inputs for product management purposes to support maintaining coffee process technology standards and know-how.
• Provide proactive support for customer trials, demonstrations, and technology validation activities in Bühler’s global Research and Technology Center network.

Qualifications

• University degree in Food Science, Process Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, or a related technical field; alternatively, at least 7–10 years of relevant experience in the coffee industry.
• Proven experience in international technical B2B sales, plant sales, customer service sales, account management, business development, or project-related sales within coffee, food processing, capital equipment, process technology, or plant engineering.
• Strong customer-consultation experience in the coffee industry, with the ability to translate customer needs into technically and commercially sound solutions.
• Strong technical understanding of industrial coffee processing and the ability to discuss process, plant, service, and technology topics with customers and internal experts.
• Good understanding of coffee processing, industrial service offerings, plant engineering, quotation processes, and the interaction between Sales, Technology, Engineering, and Project Execution.
• Commercial acumen and pricing understanding, with the ability to support quotation development, scope definition, customer-value argumentation, pricing discussions, negotiation, and complex sales cycles.
• Structured, proactive, entrepreneurial, and customer-driven working style.
• Ability to work effectively in an international matrix organization and coordinate across local, regional, and global functions.
• Strong communication, stakeholder management, coaching, training, and organizational skills.
• Fluent English is required; proficiency in local languages used in China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, or Africa is a strong advantage.
• Willingness to travel internationally approximately 40–60%, especially across Asia and Africa.