Senior Director, Sales

About Springboard

Children spend 75% of their waking hours outside the classroom, yet our nation does shockingly little to capture educational value from this time in marginalized communities. Picture a child’s time as an orange. Their classroom experience is a wedge from which the education field is fixated on squeezing more juice. Springboard helps schools juice the rest of the orange, dramatically improving outcomes by harnessing the untapped potential in family engagement.

Low-income parents—often perceived as liabilities rather than as assets—have been left out of the teaching process. With limited access to learning time, their children make slow academic progress during the school year, and they experience chronic regressions over the summer. Research finds that up to two-thirds of the achievement gap in high school is attributable to summer learning loss in elementary school. It took a long time for the field to embrace the idea that all children can learn. It is Springboard’s ambition—and our charge—to prove that all parents can teach.

Springboard Collaborative closes the literacy gap by closing the gap between home and school. We coach educators and family members to help kids learn to read by fourth grade. Springboard envisions a world in which all children have the requisite literacy skills to access life opportunities. Springboard’s programs help teachers and parents achieve learning goals with children through 5-10-week interventions that combine personalized instruction for pre-K through third-graders, workshops training parents to teach reading at home, and professional development for teachers.

Since our founding in 2011, Springboard has scaled from 40 students to ~20,000 this year. Our programs consistently deliver best-in-class results, showcased in these interactive infographics. Weekly parent training workshops average 90%+ attendance. Family workshops and other aspects of our work have been featured in outlets such as Forbes, NPR, and the New York Times. We are out ahead of the field proving a simple but powerful truth: parents’ love for their children is the single greatest and most underutilized natural resource in education.

About the opportunity

Springboard Collaborative is seeking an ambitious sales leader to make a big impact on the growth trajectory of a rapidly scaling social enterprise that aspires to help 100,000 children reach their reading growth goals by 2023. Our next sales leader will seize the opportunity to immediately build and grow a team to shape and steward our approach to sales in the coming years.

The Sr. Director, Sales will report to Springboard’s Vice President of Partnerships and will work closely with Regional Executive Directors. Upon hire, the Sr. Director, Sales will be empowered to immediately hire two additional team members to support with lead cultivation and sales, in addition to hiring back-end sales operations staff that will be required to be successful. We will look to the Sr. Director, Sales to design a growth plan for their team beyond these initial hires.

By supercharging Springboard’s sales capacity, the Sr. Director, Sales will play an essential role in bringing our ambitious vision to life: catalyzing a culture shift in the education sector to make family engagement a matter of course.

What we’re looking for:

• Data-driven sales leader: You have a deft hand with data and can easily leverage your Salesforce dashboards to spot trends and keep the team focused on results.

• Customer orientation: You are committed to deeply meeting the needs of customers (current and prospective). Your curiosity leads to a deep understanding of our customers’ problems and how we can solve them.

• Relationship builder: You are a skillful, proactive, and persistent relationship-builder. You inspire your team and gain their trust through your work ethic, integrity, humor, and authenticity. You are the kind of coach that inspires strong performance.
• Dogged and creative pursuit of goals: You sink your teeth into annual goals and continually problem solve in order to reach them. You are optimistic and one bad day won’t phase you. You stay grinding, knowing that sales is a marathon and not a sprint.

Key responsibilities

Establish, advance, and manage the achievement of annual sales goals

• Set and manage annual performance goals that align to our annual plan
• Hire, train, coach, support, and retain a team of sales representatives to ensure they have everything they need to do their best work and have fun doing it
• Manage the work of Program Associate to ensure CRM dashboards and reports remain relevant and deliver meaningful insights that can inform our work
• Regularly book ‘windshield time’ with sales team to keep a tight pulse on the customer and where the team needs to improve

Develop and leverage systems, processes, and tools that enable efficient sales work

• Build upon existing sales processes and playbooks with an eye towards scale
• Manage sales operations staff that is leveraged to remove friction from sales cycle
• Introduce sales enablement tools and software to streamline workflows, increase efficiencies, and drive new revenue growth
• Facilitate inter-departmental collaboration to ensure sales team has what it needs to quickly move from deal to deal

Own the design and implementation of a sales training program

• Collaborate with VP of Partnerships and the leadership team to create scalable sales training operation
• Ensure all new team members are well-trained, properly onboarded, and prepared to sell within 30 days of hire
• Lead regular skills clinics to ensure external messaging, sales tactics, and negotiation strategies are consistent and address our areas for improvement

Articulate strategies and deploy resources to ensure sales pipeline is consistently full

• Leverage the skills and talents of the departmental team, outside of your functional team, to ensure we’ve identified optimal working relationships and achieved role clarityCo-construct business development strategies that position us to take advantage of emerging opportunities
• Explore ways to optimize website, webinars, strategic discounting, and freemiums as a way to attract new prospects
• Partner with marketing/communications team to nurture social media campaigns that surface new leads and opportunities

While this description is meant to provide a comprehensive overview of the job’s core areas of responsibility, we are seeking candidates who demonstrate flexibility and can adapt to evolving needs in an entrepreneurial environment.

Desired skills, qualifications, and characteristics:

• 5+ years experience in education sales
• 3+ years in a management role
• Teaching or school leadership experience, business development, or social impact background; extra points for intersectionality!

Compensation

This is a full-time, remote position. Springboard Collaborative will offer benefits and salary within the range of $120,000 to $135,000, in addition to performance bonuses.

Location

This is a remote position that (under normal circumstances) involves approximately 25% of national travel. Springboard Collaborative’s headquarter office is in Philadelphia, PA. Local candidates can choose to work from our Philadelphia location. Due to COVID-19, all positions are offices are close to the end of 2020.