Business Development Manager

Job Description:

ITW (Illinois Tool Works Inc (NYSE: ITW) is a global Fortune 200 diversified manufacturing company that delivers specialized expertise, innovative thinking, and value-added products to meet critical customer needs in a variety of industries. ITW, with approximately 16.0 billion dollars in global revenues, operates 7 major segments with businesses in 49 countries that employ approximately 43,000 women and men. These talented individuals, many of whom have specialized engineering or scientific expertise, contribute to our global leadership in innovation. We are proud of our broad portfolio of more than 21,800 active patents.

The Global Safety Division within the ITW Automotive Segment delivers highly differentiated, precision-engineered plastic solutions to our “80” global OEMs & Tiers across North America and Europe through customer back innovation, targeted at addressing the emerging pain points associated with passenger seating, safety & comfort, and ensuring best-in-class quality & delivery through our commitment to 80/20 operational excellence.

Position Summary:

The Business Development Manager Active Safety is a key role within the Safety Division responsible for creating and converting prioritized growth opportunities for ITW Global Safety in North America. With a strong hunter mentality, this person proactively opens new customer relationships and identifies untapped opportunities within new and existing OEMs and Tier suppliers, engaging decision-makers ahead of formal RFQs to uncover unmet needs and influence future solutions. The role combines customer back innovation, strategic prospecting and disciplined sales execution to deliver profitable new business and increase portfolio penetration, collaborating across sales, innovation, engineering and manufacturing from opportunity discovery through production launch. This position has no direct reports.

Primary Responsibilities:

- Work closely with the Global Sales Director and Global Innovation Director to define and execute a prioritized Active Safety growth strategy for North America, using portfolio penetration ($/car by OEM), customer needs, market trends and competitive insights to support the Annual Plan and Long Range Plan.
- Drive sales strategy execution through cross-functional influence and collaboration and a disciplined sales process, aligning resources and removing barriers to meet or exceed agreed growth targets.
- Proactively prospect and gain access to new customers and engineering, purchasing and senior decision-makers. Identify untapped applications, platforms and customer needs ahead of RFQs within new and existing accounts.
- Own a qualified pipeline of prioritized growth opportunities with differentiated customer value, clear next steps and timelines. Apply disciplined qualification and bid/no-bid decisions.
- Manage and solve conflicts with clients•Understand customer strategies, competitors and market trends to identify non-obvious growth opportunities and challenge existing approaches and solutions
- Own agreed targets for new business awards (sold orders), revenue, portfolio penetration and target margins. Review progress transparently and implement corrective actions promptly.
- Prepare and deliver compelling internal and customer presentations that communicate differentiated value and support opportunity conversion.
- Review accounts, pipeline health, win rate and forecast accuracy regularly. Ensure products, pricing, scope and investment align with customer value and Division profitability expectations.
- Demonstrate personal effectiveness and influence that build alignment and support high performance across cross-functional opportunity teams.
- Maintain momentum through timely follow-up, clear milestones and constructive escalation of delays. Monitor quotation and approval turnaround times while maintaining quality and required approvals.
- Travel throughout the assigned territory to engage prospective and existing customers, develop opportunities and negotiate prices and delivery terms.
- Manage and review customer contracts with the ITW Legal Department.
- Partner with the Global Innovation Team to uncover customer pain points during Discovery and validate differentiated concepts during Create, translating insights into prioritized customer back innovation opportunities.
- Build relationships across customer engineering, purchasing and leadership to understand buying criteria and influence solutions early in the development cycle.
- Identify new business opportunities at OEMs and Tier suppliers and pursue relevant cross-division collaboration to create long-term customer value across ITW.
- Work directly with customer engineering and purchasing personnel to sell products including project development, part searches, interaction with ITW engineering, test data requests/submissions, final price negotiation, and review and sign off purchase orders
- Support customers through problem resolution, product understanding and follow up tasks
- Other tasks and duties as assigned

Position Skills and Experience Requirements:

- Bachelor’s degree from four-year college or university, an Engineering or other technical field is desired, and experience in related positions.
- 3+ years of sales experience including experience in advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS)
- Demonstrated track record of personally originating and winning profitable new business, including opening customer relationships and developing opportunities ahead of formal RFQs. Ability to lead cross-functional execution through influence and collaboration.
- Strong knowledge of the automotive industry and the installation and implementation of Active Safety system sensors within the vehicle.
- Understanding plastic injection molding and heating transmission is a plus.
- Strong financial and commercial skills, including budgeting, opportunity evaluation, pricing and margin analysis, and use of sales and business development tools.
- Good Technical & Mechanical Aptitude with an ability to conduct customer conversations at various levels around products and applications being pursued.
- A high-energy team player with demonstrated ability to build effective cross-functional relationships, gain alignment and motivate colleagues through influence.
- Excellent communication skills and ability to build consensus and gain internal alignment across different stakeholder groups – cross functional team and Division leadership.
- Adept at analyzing facts and issues, identify options and decide/ recommend a course of action.
- Proactive, curious and resilient approach, with the ability to challenge existing solutions, learn from setbacks and adapt when priorities change or information is incomplete.
- Strong customer relationship skills, with the ability to gain access to decision-makers, uncover unmet needs and convert opportunities into customer awards.
- Established networks with Active Safety sensor integrators, system suppliers and ADAS experts and decision makers inside and outside of automotive OEMs.
- Excellent computer skills, particularly MS Office (Excel, PowerPoint)
- Ability to travel up to 40% (mainly domestic, partially international, driver’s license is a must)

ITW is an equal opportunity employer. We value our colleagues’ unique perspectives, experiences and ideas and create workplaces where everyone can develop their careers and perform to their full potential.

As an equal employment opportunity employer, ITW is committed to equal employment opportunity and fair treatment for employees, beginning with the hiring process and continuing through all aspects of the employment relationship.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, age, disability, protected Veteran status or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local laws.