Technical Sales & Costing Manager - CNC machining
Aylesbury outskirts, Bucks
This is a unique and strategic dual role combining Technical Sales leadership and Mechanical Costing Engineering. Most importantly, the role serves as the customer’s representative within Gibbs Gears, advocating for customer priorities in all internal functions. The successful candidate will act as the bridge between customer expectations and internal delivery, driving commercial and technical outcomes that meet both sides’ needs.
While this is fundamentally a technical-commercial hybrid role, the individual will be fully supported by engineering teams to ensure technical validation, allowing the focus to remain on customer engagement, issue resolution, and account leadership.
Key Responsibilities
Customer Advocacy & Relationship Management
• Act as the primary internal advocate for the customer, attending weekly progress meetings to drive performance on On-Time Delivery (OTD), quality concerns, and customer satisfaction.
• Lead the response and escalation process for any commercial or technical concerns raised by strategic customers, with operational and engineering support.
• Handle high-level commercial negotiation on pricing, margin, and delivery expectations.
• Oversee the management of customer portals and order mechanisms — day-to-day activity is handled by your team, allowing you to focus on strategic oversight.
• Maintain a regular presence with customers, host shop floor walk-throughs and review meetings.
• Be available occasionally outside of standard working hours, for critical customer calls or urgent escalations, particularly for key accounts.
Team Leadership – Sales & Marketing
• Lead and mentor a small Sales & Marketing team, ensuring workload delegation, clear priorities, and professional development.
• Oversee and support team responsibilities including CRM use, portal management, quotation formatting, and customer communications.
• Ensure the team delivers a consistent, professional interface to the customer across all platforms and touchpoints.
Sales & Business Development
• Implement and refine sales strategies in alignment with the company’s Vision/Traction Organiser (VTO).
• Identify new markets and customer segments while nurturing existing strategic relationships.
• Support revenue forecasting and pipeline management in collaboration with Finance and the wider SLT.
Mechanical Costing – With Engineering Support
• Oversee and contribute to mechanical costing activities, including preparing quotations using ERP and technical documentation.
• With strong support from engineering teams, interpret CAD models, technical specs, and drawings to deliver competitive and accurate pricing.
• Liaise with the shop floor and procurement teams to ensure alignment between estimated and actual production costs.
• Provide feedback to customers using clear, standardised communication formats.
• Note: Recognising that it may be challenging to find one person with deep technical expertise and high-level customer skills, this role is supported by dedicated engineering and technical costing personnel to ensure delivery feasibility and accuracy.
Strategic Contribution & SLT Involvement
• Be a full member of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), contributing to strategy, operational improvement, and cross-functional initiatives.
• Own and report on sales, costing, and customer service KPIs at the senior level.
• Lead cross-functional initiatives across sales, engineering, and production to ensure alignment with customer delivery expectations.
• Manage the full lifecycle of customer projects, from quotation and costing through to delivery and post-sales support.
• Maintain clear project plans, timelines, and risk mitigation strategies for major customer accounts.
• Provide structured leadership to internal teams, ensuring clarity of objectives, roles, and responsibilities.
• Monitor project progress using tools such as dashboards, ERP systems, and SLT reviews.
• Take ownership of customer deadlines and internal coordination to achieve best outcomes.
• Promote a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and problem solving.
Project Management & Leadership.
Strong project management skills delivering to customer deadlines.
Qualifications & Experience
• Degree in Mechanical or Manufacturing Engineering (or equivalent), ideally paired with a time-served apprenticeship.
• Proven track record (minimum 5 years) in technical sales or account management within a high-precision engineering or CNC environment.
• Solid understanding of costing, 5-axis machining, and engineering drawings. Familiarity with cnc machine tools and programming and processes is advantageous.
• Demonstrated success in leading customer relationships and commercial negotiations.
• Experience managing a small team and cross-departmental coordination.
• Strong communication, presentation, and reporting skills.
Compensation Summary – Technical Sales & Customer Partnership Manager
Role Title: Technical Sales & Customer partnership Manager (Customer Accounts)
Role Level: Manager – Senior hands-on leadership with customer advocacy focus
Base Salary
£Depending on experience and qualifications.
Aligned with market rates for Technical Sales Managers, Key Account Managers, or Costing Engineers in the UK manufacturing sector.
Performance Bonus / Incentives/ Additional Benefits
The right candidate will be more interested in the impact and scope of the role — detailed benefits can be discussed during offer or second stage.
Justification and Fit
This compensation package is designed to attract experienced, technically minded account managers or sales engineers with strong communication skills, team leadership capability, and customer-focused values.
It provides a motivating but sustainable pay structure, while also offering career progression opportunities.
Ref: T4217