[Hiring] Account Development Manager @Xylem

Role Description

The Account Development Manager is responsible for driving growth within the small and mid-sized water utility market by identifying new business opportunities, building strategic relationships, and expanding market share. This role focuses on generating demand, advancing sales opportunities, supporting distributor partners, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to deliver innovative solutions that help utilities modernize their operations.

Key Responsibilities

• Regional Market Development
  • Lead regional market development efforts for small and mid-sized water utilities, focusing on strategic growth segments.
  • Develop and maintain a prioritized target account strategy based on utility size, existing infrastructure, competitive landscape, funding opportunities, modernization readiness, and replacement cycles.
  • Execute consistent prospecting activities, including customer visits, discovery meetings, industry events, webinars, outbound campaigns, and distributor engagement.
  • Generate new customer opportunities while maintaining a strong focus on business development and market expansion.
• Strategic Growth Initiatives
  • Drive regional execution of strategic growth initiatives and business development programs.
  • Communicate the value of solutions by demonstrating benefits such as operational efficiency, billing accuracy, labor productivity, customer service improvements, and water conservation.
  • Leverage demonstrations, pilot programs, phased implementation strategies, and commercial offerings to reduce adoption barriers and accelerate customer engagement.
  • Identify process, pricing, technical, or operational challenges and collaborate with leadership to develop effective solutions.
• Opportunity Development and Sales Advancement
  • Manage opportunities from initial customer engagement through qualification, solution alignment, proposal development, and transition to the appropriate sales owner.
  • Maintain accurate Salesforce records, documenting customer needs, decision-makers, competitive landscape, funding status, project timelines, and next steps.
  • Ensure opportunities progress efficiently to support revenue goals and business objectives.
  • Coordinate internal resources to remove obstacles and accelerate project execution.
• Distributor Partnership Development
  • Collaborate with distributors and value-added resellers to expand market coverage and increase sales opportunities.
  • Support distributor sales teams in identifying prospects, conducting discovery discussions, positioning solutions, and advancing opportunities.
  • Lead joint account planning, pipeline reviews, sales training initiatives, and regional marketing activities.
  • Evaluate distributor coverage and recommend alternative strategies where resources or market support may be limited.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Partner with Regional Sales Directors, Technical Solutions teams, Marketing, Product Management, Professional Services, Sales Operations, and distributor partners to ensure successful opportunity development.
  • Establish clear ownership and transition processes to support customer success throughout the sales cycle.
  • Collaborate with Marketing to develop targeted campaigns, customer-focused messaging, case studies, and sales enablement tools.
  • Provide market intelligence and customer insights to support product development, pricing strategy, resource planning, and business growth initiatives.
• Customer Engagement and Industry Representation
  • Deliver effective presentations to utility leaders, operators, consultants, procurement teams, distributors, and industry stakeholders.
  • Represent Sensus and Xylem at conferences, trade shows, customer workshops, webinars, and industry events.
  • Simplify complex technical concepts and communicate clear business value to prospective customers.
  • Serve as a voice of the customer by providing feedback that supports continuous improvement and market growth.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Business, Engineering, Environmental Science, Public Administration, Marketing, or a related field preferred.
• 2-5 years of progressive B2B sales, account development, business development, channel sales, market development, or solution-selling experience.
• Experience with water utilities, municipal markets, metering, AMR, AMI, smart infrastructure, software, communications, or related technical solutions preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to prospect, create new relationships, develop qualified opportunities, and influence complex public-sector buying processes.
• Experience working through distributors, value-added resellers, or other indirect channels without direct authority.
• Strong presentation, facilitation, and written-communication skills, with the ability to make technical and commercial concepts understandable.
• Comfort using Salesforce or a similar CRM to manage target accounts, customer activity, pipeline, and opportunity progression.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office applications and Salesforce CRM.
• Ability to travel up to 60%.

Preferred

• Experience working with municipal utilities, water infrastructure, metering technologies, or smart water solutions.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Qualified pipeline growth and incremental revenue generated within assigned territory segments.
• Number of new customer engagements, discovery meetings, and target accounts activated.
• Progression of opportunities through the sales funnel, from qualification to closed business and successful handoff.
• Distributor engagement, account coverage, training participation, and partner-generated opportunities.
• Salesforce data accuracy, forecast visibility, and sales process discipline.
• Effectiveness of customer presentations, regional campaigns, industry events, and strategic growth initiatives.

Benefits

• Paid Volunteer Program, Xylem Watermark.
• Prioritization of employee well-being through inclusion and belonging as well as Employee Resource Groups (ERG).

Company Description

Xylem is a Fortune 500 global water solutions company dedicated to advancing sustainable impact and empowering the people who make water work every day. As a leading water technology company with 23,000 employees operating in over 150 countries, Xylem is at the forefront of addressing the world's most critical water challenges.