Industrial Sales Lead / Business Development Support for Manufacturing Software Startup

Troubleshot LLC is building an industrial troubleshooting and knowledge-capture platform for manufacturing teams. Our mission is to help plants reduce downtime, capture undocumented process knowledge, improve shift-to-shift communication, and make troubleshooting faster, safer, and more consistent across facilities. We are looking for a Sales Lead / Business Development Contractor to help us identify, contact, and develop relationships with manufacturing companies. This role will focus on helping us build a qualified pipeline of potential pilot customers in industries such as food and beverage, automotive, packaging, and industrial manufacturing. This is a contract role through Upwork. Compensation will be handled through Upwork based on the agreed hourly rate, fixed-price milestones, or approved project structure. What You’ll Help With You will work directly with the founder to support early sales and customer development efforts. Responsibilities may include: Researching target manufacturing companies and facilities. Identifying key decision makers such as maintenance managers, reliability leaders, engineering managers, plant managers, and operations leaders. Building organized prospect lists. Writing and sending outreach messages through approved channels. Supporting LinkedIn, email, and phone outreach. Booking qualified discovery meetings. Helping prepare follow-up messages, call notes, and next-step summaries. Supporting pilot program outreach and proposal preparation. Tracking leads, conversations, and deal status in a simple CRM or spreadsheet. Helping improve our sales messaging based on customer feedback. Ideal Candidate We are looking for someone who is professional, organized, persistent, and comfortable communicating with industrial or manufacturing contacts. Relevant experience may include: B2B sales Industrial sales Manufacturing sales SaaS sales Lead generation Appointment setting Business development Selling to maintenance, engineering, operations, or plant leadership CRM or pipeline management You do not need to be a controls engineer or manufacturing expert, but you should be willing to learn the problems Troubleshot is solving: downtime, troubleshooting delays, undocumented process knowledge, maintenance handoffs, and communication gaps between shifts. What Success Looks Like A successful engagement would include: A clean, organized list of qualified manufacturing prospects. Consistent outreach activity. Qualified discovery meetings booked with relevant decision makers. Clear follow-up notes and next steps after each conversation. Improved outreach messaging based on real market feedback. A repeatable early sales process that Troubleshot can continue building from. Engagement Type This is a contract position through Upwork. We are open to hourly or milestone-based work depending on experience and fit. Please include any relevant experience you have with B2B sales, manufacturing, industrial companies, lead generation, appointment setting, or early-stage sales development.