Vice President of Sales
Location:
Charleston, SC preferred; Southeast U.S. candidates considered Travel: Approximately 30–50% throughout the Southeast Compensation: $160,000–$175,000 base salary + performance-based incentive Target OTE: $250,000–$300,000+ Equity: Equity/options available for the right candidate Reports To: CEOAbout Safe OilSafe Oil Solutions is a transforming the way restaurants and commercial kitchens manage cooking oil. Our automated systems eliminate the need for employees to manually handle hot cooking oil while helping operators reduce costs, improve kitchen safety, simplify operations, and gain better visibility into their businesses. What started with automated fresh and used cooking oil management is becoming a broader back-of-house technology platform, including filtration tracking, temperature monitoring, and additional restaurant automation solutions. Safe Oil has established strong product-market fit with independent restaurants, multi-unit operators, hotels, grocery stores, entertainment venues, and other commercial foodservice customers. We are now entering our next stage of growth: expanding into new markets throughout the Southeast, building a larger field sales organization, and pursuing regional and national accounts. We are looking for a Vice President of Sales who can help us build the sales organization required for that next chapter.
The Opportunity:- This is not a role for someone who wants to inherit a mature sales organization and manage it from a dashboard.
- We are seeking a builder.
- The Vice President of Sales will lead Safe Oil's sales organization while building the people, processes, accountability, and strategy required to scale the company across multiple markets.
- You will work directly with the Founder & CEO and leadership team to expand our footprint, recruit and develop high-performing salespeople, improve sales execution, open new markets, and help close larger multi-unit and strategic opportunities.
- Our sales model already works.
- When our team gets in front of the right decision-maker and there is a strong operational fit, we win at a high rate. The opportunity now is to create a repeatable engine that generates more of those conversations across a much larger geographic footprint.
- The right person will be equally comfortable developing strategy in the leadership meeting and spending a day in the field with a sales executive helping win business.
- What You'll OwnBuild and Lead the Sales Organization
- Lead, coach, and develop Safe Oil's field sales organization.
- Recruit high-performing Sales Executives and BDRs as we enter new markets.
- Establish clear expectations around activity, pipeline creation, meetings, proposals, contracts, and closed business.
- Build a strong performance culture centered around accountability, coaching, development, and winning.
- Develop future sales managers and regional leaders as the organization expands.
Drive New Market Expansion:- Build and execute the sales strategy for expansion throughout the Southeast.
- Lead market launches from initial prospecting through sufficient contracted backlog to support local operations.
- Develop repeatable market-opening playbooks that allow Safe Oil to enter additional markets faster and more efficiently.
- Work closely with operations and executive leadership to coordinate sales growth with depot, installation, and service capacity.
- Measure market performance against clear pipeline, backlog, customer, and revenue milestones.
- Build a Repeatable Sales Engine
- Develop the processes, systems, messaging, training, and sales methodology needed to scale.
- Establish rigorous CRM and pipeline management standards.
- Improve forecasting accuracy and provide leadership with a clear view of future sales performance.
- Develop territory plans, quotas, compensation structures, and performance scorecards.
- Identify where prospects are getting stuck in the funnel and systematically improve conversion.
- Reduce ramp time for new salespeople through structured onboarding, training, ride-alongs, and coaching.
Accelerate Strategic and Multi-Unit Sales:
Personally assist with high-value regional, franchise, multi-unit, and strategic opportunities.
Build relationships with restaurant ownership groups, franchise organizations, foodservice operators, and corporate decision-makers.
Help position Safe Oil's broader technology platform around safety, labor savings, operating consistency, cost reduction, visibility, and automation.
Develop relationships with channel partners that can create scalable customer acquisition opportunities.
Help turn successful individual locations into regional and enterprise-level relationships.
Own the Number:
Establish and deliver against annual and quarterly sales targets.
Maintain appropriate pipeline coverage across every market.
Hold leaders and individual contributors accountable to measurable performance standards.
Evaluate productivity by salesperson, territory, market, and channel.
Partner with the CEO and finance team on growth planning, headcount, sales investment, and market expansion economics.
Ensure sales growth ultimately translates into installed customers and recurring revenue — not simply signed contracts sitting in a pipeline.
What We're Looking For:- We are looking for a proven sales leader who has built something before.
- You may currently be a VP of Sales, Regional VP, Head of Sales, or high-performing Sales Director ready for a larger opportunity.
- The strongest candidates will have:8+ years of successful B2B sales experience.4+ years leading and developing quota-carrying sales teams.
- A demonstrated track record of recruiting successful salespeople.
- Experience managing a geographically distributed field sales organization.
- Experience building territories, quotas, compensation plans, forecasts, and sales processes.
- A history of consistently delivering against aggressive growth targets.
- Strong pipeline-management and CRM discipline.
- Experience selling directly to business owners and operational decision-makers.
- The ability to coach both prospecting and closing — not simply inspect numbers after the fact.
- Strong executive presence and the ability to participate directly in larger strategic opportunities.
- A willingness to travel regularly and spend meaningful time in the field.
- Experience in foodservice, restaurant technology, food distribution, route-based services, facilities services, environmental services, commercial kitchen equipment, industrial services, or another distributed B2B field-sales environment is highly valuable.
- Experience helping an emerging company expand from a few successful markets into a multi-region organization is especially attractive.
- Who Will Succeed HereYou are probably a strong fit if you:
- Build rather than maintain. You enjoy creating the playbook, not simply inheriting one.
- Are a player-coach. You can lead a sales organization, but you are still comfortable jumping into a difficult deal, making a customer visit, or coaching a rep in the field.
- Love accountability. You believe sales performance should be measurable and visible, and you are comfortable holding people, including yourself, accountable to the number.
- Know how to recruit. You understand that geographic expansion only works if we can repeatedly identify, hire, ramp, and retain strong salespeople.
- Understand field sales. You recognize that selling to restaurant owners and operators is different from managing an inside-sales team from behind a screen.
- Think like an owner. You care about profitable growth, customer quality, installation capacity, sales efficiency, and return on investment — not just bookings.
- Move quickly. Safe Oil is a growth-stage company. Priorities evolve, opportunities appear quickly, and leaders are expected to act.
Compensation:
Safe Oil intends to build a compensation package that strongly rewards performance. Expected compensation includes:
Base Salary:
$160,000–$175,000 Target Annual Incentive: approximately $90,000–$125,000 Target OTE: $250,000–$300,000+Uncapped upside for exceptional performance Equity/options available for the right candidate Variable compensation will be tied primarily to measurable sales performance, company growth, new-market execution, and strategic sales objectives. As an executive leadership position, this role requires flexibility around travel, customer meetings, team needs, and growth opportunities. Why Safe OilThis is an opportunity to join a company at an unusual point in its development. The product has been proven. Customers see measurable value. The sales motion works. The company has begun building density in its existing markets, and a significant portion of the Southeast remains open for expansion. The next challenge is scale. The person who takes this role will have the opportunity to help build the sales organization, geographic footprint, strategic relationships, and commercial infrastructure of a company with ambitions far beyond its current size. For the right sales leader, this is an opportunity to do more than hit a number. It is an opportunity to help build the company.
