Inside Sales

Inside Sales

Location: Remote (United States)
Experience: 2–5 years
Role Type: Full-time
Reports to: Preston Rutherford and Tom Montgomery
Compensation: $65,000 base + commission. On-target $120,000. Uncapped after OTE.

About Marathon

Marathon helps ambitious consumer brands grow more intelligently.

We work with digital-first, multi-channel brands to connect strategy, execution, and data across the customer journey. Our team sits close to the business: helping brands understand where growth is coming from, where it is constrained, and what to do next.

Marathon Engine is our founder-led growth practice. We take on a small number of consumer brands, typically those that have already built something real, and run paid media, creative strategy, CRO, and measurement as one system. We are not a media-buying shop. We are not a traditional agency. The first conversations have to make that obvious.

We are building a modern marketing organization that combines exceptional operators with technology, data, and AI. We move quickly, stay close to the numbers, and care deeply about creating profitable, durable growth for our clients.

The Role

We are looking for an Inside Sales person to process inbound from founder organic content.

This is a junior inside-sales seat with high upside. It is not a $200k strategic AM. It is not post-sales customer success. It is not a hunter role built on volume outbound.

Inbound is coming from Preston’s organic content: LinkedIn, X, case-study posts, plus Share of Search, free audits, and founder referrals. The job is to process that inbound. Right now those first meetings sit on the founders. That is a low-leverage use of their time. You will book the calendar, take the first call, ask the basic questions, give the basic pitch, and qualify. Founders stay in the process for client-fit and to remain the point people. They should not be running the whole sales motion.

You do not need as much context as a founder. You do need enough ecommerce literacy to take a serious first conversation without embarrassing the pitch, and the follow-up discipline to keep good conversations from dying.

You are not the company. You are the person who makes sure the front door is covered.

What You’ll Own

First conversations

You take inbound through the first meeting. You book the calendar. You ask the basic questions. You give the basic pitch.

Discovery comes first: revenue, growth trajectory, channels, inventory, team, creative volume, and how they think about a forecast. Then you walk them through how Marathon works. Anyone who genuinely agrees is a partner. Anyone who fights it self-selects out.

Two meetings, maximum, before commercial. Founders join when the deal is real, or when the room requires it.

Qualification

You hold a high bar, then you get a founder in the room to make the fit call.

Sweet spot:

• Established consumer brands, often $50M+, that have built something and leveled off
• Retail-first brands becoming modern digital brands
• Multi-channel businesses (DTC, retail, marketplace) where a total-business read actually matters
• Operators with humility and a willingness to operate to contribution, not vanity revenue

Red flags you kill early:

• Growth-at-all-costs, PE shot-chasing, vanity-revenue orientation
• “We’ve tried everything / I worked in agencies / I know everything” energy
• Triple Whale as strategy: a media-buyer automation mindset, not an operating-system mindset
• Extreme creative-volume expectations without a real point of view

Qualification gates you actually ask:

1. Walk us through your forecast. Will you operate to a contribution-level forecast?
2. What is your creative volume expectation, and who produces it?
3. What is actually happening in the business: revenue, trajectory, inventory?
4. Does this framework match how you see the world?

Pipeline and process

You keep HubSpot true. Inbound gets a fast, honest response. You do not let good conversations die in a founder’s inbox, and you do not manufacture a funnel of people we will never take.

The rhythm is one good customer a month. Quality and fit matter more than activity.

The first job, and the long-term job, is first calls and follow-up on inbound. This is not a hunter seat.

How You’ll Work

You work directly with Preston on live deals. Tom comes in when a conversation needs the measurement or product depth. You should not need a founder on every first call.

You are polished. You are organized. You follow up. You do not need to be the most senior person in the room. You need to be good enough to handle questions and get the right people to the next conversation.

You will not run ads, onboard accounts, or replace founders as the point people. When a deal is real, you hand it to them with the qualification already done.

Compensation

$65,000 base. Commission to $120,000 on-target. Uncapped after that.

This is a modest base plus real variable. Roughly half of on-target pay is commission. We are not buying a $200k closer. We are paying junior inside sales to cover the front door and share in the deals they help qualify in.

What We’re Looking For

You have 2–5 years in agency sales, inside sales, or a similar first-call / qualifier seat selling to ecommerce or consumer brands. This is a high-upside junior role, not a late-career closer.

The strongest candidates will have many of the following:

• Experience taking first calls and booking follow-ups without being babysat
• Enough ecommerce literacy to ask a real discovery question and understand the answer
• Comfort giving a basic pitch and handling basic questions
• Follow-up discipline: organized, persistent, not sloppy
• Judgment to pass something up rather than invent an answer
• Strong written and verbal communication
• Discipline in a CRM
• A calendar that is not already full
• Bias toward action
• Willingness to be paid on outcomes: modest base, real commission

You do not need to have built a media practice. You do need to have sold something like this before, or to have the sales muscle and the humility to learn the category quickly.

You Might Be a Great Fit If

You are an executor on the sales side, not a strategist looking for a $200k client-relations seat.

You would rather process a clean inbound than write a 12-slide deck.

You can take a founder-level inbound, ask the right questions, and get the deal to the people who should close it.

You communicate clearly. You follow up. You write things down.

You are comfortable being high-upside and commission-heavy.

You want the front door covered so the founders can stay in the process without running the whole thing.

What Success Looks Like

A great Inside Sales hire at Marathon:

• Takes first calls without a founder in the room
• Books the calendar and keeps inbound from going cold
• Asks the basic questions and gives the basic pitch
• Qualifies hard and gets founders in when the deal is real
• Keeps HubSpot accurate
• Lands the right conversations, not a pile of tire-kickers
• Does not try to become the point person after signature

Ultimately, success is simple:
The next person who reaches out from a post gets a first conversation quickly, the wrong ones do not consume the company, and Preston is no longer the bottleneck on the first call.