Position Summary:
A highly motivated and customer-focused Sr. Account Management Specialist is responsible for driving sustainable business growth within Korea's refinery and petrochemical industries through strategic account management, GI Spec-in activities, solution-based selling, TCO(Total Cost of Ownership) Value Selling and aggresive business development.
This role requires frequent, high impact engagement with customers across the Ulsan industrial complex to identify operational challenges, influence engineering specifications, develop long-term customer relationships, and create new business opportunities beyond traditional maintenance sales.
The successful candidate will leverage strong industry expertise, technical consulting capability, and value-based selling skills to expand Swagelok's market presence while positioning the company as a trusted technical partner.
Key Responsibilities:
- 1) Strategic Account Management
- - Develop and execute long-term, data-driven account strategies for assigned refinery and petrochemical customers using structured sales frameworks (e.g., Miller Heiman Blue/Gold Sheets).
- - Build and systematically map executive-level and working-level relationships across customer organizations, extending touchpoints deeply into Production, Quality, and Safety roles.
- - Conduct disciplined daily customer visits within the Ulsan industrial complex to strengthen customer engagement and proactively identify emerging opportunities.
- - Understand customer investment plans, maintenance strategies, turnaround (TA) schedules, and capital projects to map future pipeline opportunities.
- 2) GI Spec-in & Business Development
- - Drive GI Spec-in activities for greenfield, brownfield, retrofit, reliability improvement, and standardization projects to lock out competitors.
- - Utilize technical evaluation programs (e.g., Fluid System/Sampling Surveys) as a strategic door-opener to penetrate low-install-base accounts and generate new business leads.
- - Expand customer touchpoints beyond traditional procurement/maintenance organizations into Engineering, Operations, Production, Reliability, Quality, and HSE departments.
- Develop and execute aggressive competitor conversion (win-back) strategies by identifying operational issues, reliability risks, leakage, safety concerns, and maintenance inefficiencies.
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- 3) Cross-functional Collaboration
- Orchestrate internal technical resources by collaborating closely with Field Engineers (FE), Engineering Services (ES), Product Specialists, and Marketing to drive commercial momentum before opportunities become reactive.
- Share high-value market intelligence, competitive insights, customer challenges, and future project information with internal stakeholders.
- Maintain rigorous CRM (e.g., HubSpot) discipline, ensuring 100% accuracy in tracking entry mechanisms, identified pain points per visit, sales pipelines, forecasts, and account development plans.
- Adhere strictly to internal Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for technical inquiries and complex solution delivery to ensure rapid response to market needs
Professional Experience:
- 5 + years of experience working for a refinery or petrochemical company in the Ulsan industrial complex, OR a minimum of 10 years of technical sales/account management experience supporting refinery and petrochemical customers.
- Strong understanding of refinery and petrochemical processes, plant operations, maintenance practices, and reliability improvement activities.
- Proven track record of penetrating non-maintenance departments (Operations, Production, HSE) and securing buy-in from plant operational teams as a prerequisite for specification changes.
- Demonstrated experience in successful competitor conversion (win-back) deals by leveraging Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and risk-reduction value propositions.
- Experience selling industrial fluid systems, instrumentation, valves, fittings, tubing, sampling systems, or other process equipment is highly preferred.
- Experience working in a multinational company with a structured matrix organization is preferred.
- Ability to conduct frequent daily customer visits throughout the Ulsan industrial complex.
Required Competencies:
- Strategic Account Management
- Customer Relationship Management & CRM Discipline (HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.)
- Business Development, Lead Generation & Structured KDM (Key Decision Maker) Mapping
- Solution & Value-based Selling (TCO Modeling & Risk Reduction Proposition)
- GI Spec-in & Technical Consulting (Fluid System / Sampling Systems)
- Refinery & Petrochemical Process Knowledge
- Stakeholder Management & Cross-functional Collaboration (Sales-FE Alignment)
- Strategic Thinking, Problem Solving & Strict SLA Management
- Communication (Fluent Korean & Business English)
- Accountability, Initiative & Execution Rigor