Business Development Manager
Location: Remote, United States. Charlotte, NC strongly preferred.
Travel: Regular travel to client meetings, conferences, and industry events as needed.
Reports to: Principals
Employment: Full time About Solhver Solhver helps trades businesses and the people buying them understand how the operation actually runs. We provide operational diligence, systems support, and recruiting for trades and service companies, primarily in the $5 million to $20 million range, including HVAC, plumbing, electrical, door service, and other field service businesses. Our clients include business owners, independent buyers, and private equity firms evaluating or operating companies in the trades. Our core engagement is the Business Study. We go on site, follow the workflows, and document the systems, handoffs, responsibilities, risks, and dependencies that are usually unwritten. The result is a clear operating record that shows an owner or buyer how the business works today and what needs attention. Beyond the Study, we provide systems work including NetSuite and MSI Service Pro development, implementation support, reporting, workflows, and integrations, along with trades-specific recruiting. We built Solhver after running a trades business ourselves. Before advising other companies, we helped scale one from three locations to ten across seven states, grew the team from 24 to 165, and integrated an acquisition in 63 days with ERP and HR live on day one. The founders bring more than 20 years of hands-on trades operations experience. We are now hiring our first full-time salesperson. This is a new role, not a backfill. You will work directly with the Principals and help build the sales process rather than inherit one. We need someone who can create pipeline, develop relationships, and help turn what works into a repeatable business development process.
The role:
Your job is to identify the right business owners, buyers, private equity sponsors, and referral relationships, earn the first real conversation, and move qualified opportunities toward a signed engagement. Initially, you will own prospecting, outreach, qualification, and early conversations. The Principals will join later-stage conversations and lead the close. As you learn the work, our buyers, and the questions that matter, you will take on more of the sales cycle yourself. This is an outbound role. You will be expected to create your own opportunities rather than wait for leads to be assigned. There will be referrals and inbound opportunities, but the role is built around creating pipeline, not processing it.
What you will do:- Build and maintain a target list of trades business owners, independent buyers, private equity firms, and other qualified prospects.
- Research accounts before outreach so the conversation starts with a reason, not a template.
- Prospect consistently through email, phone, LinkedIn, referrals, conferences, and direct introductions.
- Secure and lead initial sales conversations.
- Qualify opportunities based on fit, timing, need, decision process, and likelihood of moving forward.
- Work with the Principals to develop proposals, define scope, and move qualified opportunities toward signed engagements.
- Maintain accurate notes, next steps, deal stages, and expected close dates in the CRM.Follow up consistently through sales cycles that may take several weeks or several months.
- Help refine our messaging, qualification process, sales materials, CRM structure, and positioning based on what you hear in the market.
- Represent Solhver at selected conferences, association meetings, client visits, and industry events.
- Join site visits when useful. Seeing how a client's operation actually runs is one of the fastest ways to understand what we sell.
- Develop a working knowledge of the trades businesses we serve, the systems and recruiting work we do alongside the Study, and the operating issues our work is designed to address.
- What you need
- At least five years of B2B sales experience.
- At least two years of experience personally building outbound pipeline rather than relying primarily on inbound or assigned leads.
- Experience selling professional services, consulting, technology, financial services, or another complex B2B offering.
- Experience managing a considered sales process involving multiple conversations, multiple stakeholders, and a meaningful level of trust.
- A record of carrying and meeting a sales target.
- The ability to speak credibly with company owners, executives, investors, and experienced operators.
- The ability to explain complex operational or systems work in plain terms.
- Working knowledge of the basic economics of a service business, including revenue, margin, labor, and growth.
- Strong written communication.
- Comfort working in an early-stage firm where the sales process is still being built.
- Willingness to travel when an in-person conversation will materially improve the relationship or opportunity.
- A purely transactional or high-volume sales background may be a more difficult transition. We are open to being convinced, but this role requires patience, preparation, curiosity, and the ability to build trust over time.
- What would be helpful
- Experience in any of the following would be valuable, but is not required:
- Trades, field service, construction, distribution, or other operationally complex businesses.
- Private equity, independent sponsor, search fund, or lower-middle-market transactions.
- Operational consulting or financial and operational diligence.
- ERP, field service management, or systems implementation.
- Selling to founder-led or family-owned companies.
- Selling an offering without a simple, standardized scope.
- Building the first formal sales process inside an early-stage company.
- ToolsYou should be comfortable using the tools required to build and manage a modern B2B sales pipeline, including CRM systems, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Microsoft Office, video meeting tools, and basic reporting and spreadsheet tools.
- More important than any specific platform is the discipline to keep your records organized, document conversations and next steps, and use the tools consistently.
- How success will be measured
- The first 30 days will be focused primarily on learning Solhver's work and market, building the target account base, establishing a consistent outreach cadence, and beginning to create qualified conversations.
- As the role develops, success will be measured by:
- Qualified meetings created.
- Qualified pipeline generated.
- Conversion of opportunities through the sales process.
- Signed engagement value.
- Pipeline and forecast accuracy.
- Development of repeatable sources of new business.
- Growth of relationships with owners, buyers, sponsors, and referral partners.
- We care about activity because consistent activity creates opportunity. But activity by itself is not the outcome. The goal is a credible, qualified pipeline that turns into good work for the firm.
Compensation:
Compensation includes commission on closed work and a draw during the initial pipeline-building period. In the first conversation, we will walk through typical engagement values, sales cycles, the commission structure, and how the draw works. You should be able to understand the economics of the role before deciding whether to continue in the process.
