Vice President, Sales

The Role

We are looking for a VP, Sales leader reporting into the Chief Growth Officer. In this role, you own all aspects of our go-to-market sales team functions and revenue responsibility. This is a large sales organization responsible for driving significant revenue growth expectations across our territory-driven and route to market efforts. You will own the strategic operating plan for our sales organization. You will own the development of strategic plans to drive significant market share growth across key regions and key accounts. You will drive these efforts across new sales, cross-sell, expansion and renewal initiatives. This person will play a prominent role in how we work with key strategic and channel partners to execute against these initiatives. The person in this role must balance the importance of driving new business while ensuring the continued success of our existing customers and developing our relationships with them further. You also play a pivotal role in providing insights to the Chief Growth Officer and the broader senior leadership team on how to grow the business and optimize opportunities. The role requires a strong leader capable of aligning sales goals with overall company goals by leveraging data-driven insights to drive critical business outcomes for our organization and our customers. It will also be critical for this person to see the broader strategic and operational landscape and work across Sales, Marketing, Operations, Finance and Product to ensure our products and services are delivering a best-in-class experience for our customers. All of this is driven by a “player coach” mentality where this person can operate at the most strategic levels of any conversation while also grinding in the day-to-day responsibilities to help our business and our customers thrive.  

What You’ll Do / Experienced Functional Leader

Provide Strategic Leadership: 

• Partner with key customer decision makers across our different customer routes to market to develop new business and deeper, renewable long-term relationships
• Be a key business and customer advocate through near and long-term market insights to drive both near and long-term business growth; be a strong leader  internally and externally (thought leadership) for this team and the brand
• Bring a level of market knowledge (K12 + Higher Education) to the business to elevate customer conversations and our own business direction and growth efforts 
• Provide team strategic and operational leadership to drive business objectives

Oversee A Large, Highly Diverse Sales Organization Across Multiple Routes To Market

• Manage the day-to-day of a large, diverse sales organization across new business, cross-sell, expansion, and renewal opportunities
• Provide strategic and operational rigor through our territory-organized teams for each territory leader to exceed their business objectives
• Possess a strong understanding of salary with variable compensation models and partner with Finance and Revenue Forecasting and Operations to manage budgets appropriately
• Provide day-to-day support to help the new business and customer success teams manage their daily responsibilities to achieve financial objectives

Develop & Exceed Our Sales Revenue Targets

• Partner closely with Finance and Revenue Forecasting and Operations to develop our quarterly and annual revenue objectives across our territory and routes to markets
• Be responsible for “hitting the number” by knowing the details within the forecast and pipeline to manage trade-offs across the teams
• Work daily with teams to ensure pipeline is healthy and close rates are aligned to the forecast expectations of the business while making adjustments as necessary.

Build Key Region & Key Account Strategic Operating Plans

• • Provide strategic oversight and sign-off on territory-driven operating plans and support daily efforts to exceed territory business expectations
  • Each territory will have key state and account operating plans; provide strategic oversight and alignment on those efforts and provide support as needed
  • Make necessary trade-offs between the territories to hit broader business objectives

Build New Business While Further Developing Existing Customers 

• • Provide a strong balance between driving new business - market share growth - while also supporting our existing customers with deep, relationship-driven management
  • Understand how to manage each team and how they can collaborate and support each other to drive business objectives within their lines of responsibility
  • Manage trade-offs between new business and existing customer growth to exceed ongoing financial objectives across the broader business

Drive Deeper Relationships with Key Strategic and Channel Partners

• Deepen our relationship and success with key channel partners including CDW while understanding the balance between our direct sales motions and partner initiatives
• Enhance our business objectives by developing new channel partner relationships 
• Work closely with key strategic partners including Google, Microsoft, and others to further develop initiatives with them that enhance our presence in the market

Collaborative Senior Leader Across the Organization

• Be accountable for “hitting the number” while simultaneously being a proactive, collaborative and influential partner to other key leaders to drive the business
• Partner with Product and Engineering to drive prioritization in the roadmaps to support customer needs; partner with Marketing to create a healthy pipeline; and partner with Finance to have a consistent pulse on the health and performance of the business
• Partner with peers in the Growth Organization to drive efforts across the customer journey, from acquisition to engagement to renewal, to achieve business targets

Develop A Performance-Driven Culture

• Build a talented, engaged, and performance-minded team both through new hires while also supporting career development for strong existing talent
• Drive accountability for “hitting the number” while also driving accountability to build strong engagement, trust and loyalty with our customer base.
• Establish metrics, KPIs, and dashboards to monitor sales pipeline to close performance and provide regular reporting to executive leadership while working day to day in the field to help teams exceed business objectives
• Bring an experienced, winning mentality to our teams and partners; build trust and confidence each in the team and across the thousands of customers we work with

Who You Are / Culture & Customer Champion

• You are a proven and experienced Sales leader, managing large teams, preferably in K-12 and Higher Education, with experience selling into Education / Government organizations.
• You have experience developing a sales-driven strategic operating plan that captures territory-driven, key state and key account initiatives to drive business growth.
• You have experience managing routes to market into small, midsize, and large accounts and understand the necessary trade-offs and support efforts to help the team in each.
• You have strong analytical skills with the ability to interpret data, analyze trends, and implement strategic solutions across the needs of the business; both big and small.
• You have experience balancing the needs of driving significant new business growth while continuing to develop existing customer success to drive long-term relationship value.
• You are an expert in sales process optimization, sales forecasting, and sales performance management in partnership with peers to ensure motions are highly accurate and effective.
• You have experience building and managing sales, bonus, and variable compensation models.
• You have a proven track record of building operational rigor with clear pipeline visibility and structure that eliminates surprises and drives accountability to achieve business objectives.
• You have experience building strong teams, developing from within, while maintaining an outcome, performance-driven mindset and a customer-first approach across all interactions.
• You’re a great communicator with audiences at all levels of the organization.
• You’ve been highly successful in leading and developing high-output teams.
• You actively build meaningful relationships with customers and throughout the organization.
• You collaborate and work cross-functionally to solve complex problems.
• Prior P&L or cost center responsibility is a must.
• Edtech experience is advantageous.

What We Expect / Accountability

• Build high-performing teams through development from within and new hires as necessary.
• Achieve/beat quarterly and annual revenue objectives managing day-to-day sales efforts.
• Build and execute annual sales strategic operating plans (territory, state, key accounts).
• Make decisions based on data and data-driven insights with experienced instincts.
• Be a culture-enhancing, vocal, collaborative, and influential leader across the org.
• Relentlessly focus on the customer and their needs (today and tomorrow).
• Be in the market as a partner and thought leader to customers/industry.