Sales Lead (VP Sales)
Avela
Sales & Business Development
Remote
Posted on Saturday, July 16, 2022
Avela is the platform for equitable school application, admission, and enrollment. We're looking for an entrepreneurial sales leader and account executive to grow our business!
Role
We're hiring a senior account executive and sales leader to grow our business in the PK-12 space and build, manage, and lead a team of AEs and potentially SDRs.
Experience selling to school districts, schools, education nonprofits, governments, or universities is required for this role.
We're looking for "full stack" sales professions who can handle the entire sales funnel, from lead generation to closing. As a small team, you'll often have to handle things yourself, such as putting together a demo or slide presentation, and even cold calling.
Your key metrics will be simple - new deals closed and revenue generated. Since we care equally, if not more, about new accounts, the incentive compensation structure will ensure small deals are rewarded well. We care heavily about customer satisfaction and alignment, so IC will be back loaded to reward renewals.
Note on Similar Roles and Seniority
You might have noticed, we have six related roles open - a lead and a specialist in each of the following: business development, sales, and marketing. The roles are very similar, and we are actively hiring for all three. We ask that you only apply to one - whichever is the best fit for your experience.
The sales role (this one) requires K12 sales experience and will focus on driving and closing new sales. The marketing role requires K12/edtech marketing experience and focuses on lead generation. The business development role is a bit of a hybrid and requires someone able to wear both hats - executing marketing campaigns by morning and closing 7-figure deals by night.
The lead roles all require significant relevant experience and are for leaders with at least 8 years of full time professional experience. The individual contributor roles require 2 years of relevant full time experience, though our target is more like 4-7 years of experience.
Note on Titles: At Avela, we eschew corporate hierarchy and the traditional titles that go with them. We do not have any Chief XYZ Officers, VPs, Directors, Group Managers, etc. The formal title of the role will be Marketing Lead, but it can be anywhere from VP to CMO level.
Responsibilities
- Demand Generation - As we get started, you’ll help drive leads. We're building our marketing team, but as a startup, you won't be able to rely on anyone to hand you qualified leads (MQLs or SQLs). You'll need to hunt. You'll help us with inbound and outbound marketing, and will pick up the phone and call potential prospects directly, as well as sending personalized cold emails. We don’t want to spam or spray-and-pray, so you’ll need to understand our prospects to precisely target those who we can help the most.
- Solution Engineering and Business Development - You’re ultimately responsible for identifying the best solution to the prospect’s problems and setting them up with the right software and services from our team.
- Sales Presentations - You’ll design and deliver our sales presentations to prospects,in partnership with the founders, enrollment consultants, and other subject matter experts on the team.
- Contracting, Negotiation, and Closing - Ultimately, your goal is to grow our business by closing deals and driving sales revenue. You’ll have aggressive quotas / targets
- Client Services, Customer Success and More - As a growing startup, we need help across the board, especially with customer support. Everyone pitches in to “take out the trash,” and nothing is “outside your job description.” You’ll no doubt help with customer success and support, as well as potentially project management and service delivery.
- Advise Product Teams - Our product and engineering teams will need your expertise as they design and build our product suite.
Role Qualifications
- Experience selling to schools, districts, CMOs, or other education organizations
- Demonstrated history of closing $2 million in new business each year.
- Strong understanding of sales KPIs/metrics, sales operations, and full funnel management.
- Sales team leadership experience with 5+ sales reps
- Excellent communicator, including written and oral
- Capable of producing compelling sales slide presentations
- Capable of negotiating contracts and getting into the weeds to push a deal across the finish line
Team Qualifications
- Customer-centric mindset
- Entrepreneurial spirit and drive
- Extraordinary comfort with ambiguity
- Enjoyment wearing many hats
- Passion for education, equity, or social impact
- Startup experience is preferred/helpful, but not required
- Among the best at what you do
- Growth mindset and desire to constantly improve your skills
- Living in the US with at least four years of full time professional experience in the USA.
Compensation
- OTE: $140,000 - $260,000+
- Base: $60,000 - $100,000
- Bonus/Commission: $60,000 - $120,000
- Equity: 20,000 - 150,000 shares
- We give all candidates three package options, with different levels of cash compensation (salary) and stock options (equity). We try to pay competitive salaries and exceptionally strong equity packages, as we want everyone to share in the upside when Avela makes it big!
- Of course, we are an early stage, education startup, and so cash salaries won’t quite be comparable to larger or better funded organizations. But what we lack in cash, we make up for in upside, impact, and fun! We also hope our financial discipline gives you confidence in our long-term potential and incredibly low likelihood of layoffs, like many of our less disciplined counterparts.
Company
Avela is a Nobel Prize-winning edtech startup building the first universal application for PK-12 education, daycare, and enrichment programs, promoting equity and access to education.
For students and families, this simplifies the process of finding and applying to educational programming. For schools and districts, this streamlines operations and helps increase enrollment (and hence, revenue).
We sell our application and enrollment platform directly to school districts, charter networks, other educational providers, cities, and states. We work with school districts and charter networks across the country, including in Oakland, Seattle, Hartford, Tulsa, New Orleans, Newark, and Jersey City. We also work with a range of nonprofits and NGOs, including Teach for America and the Inter-American Development Bank, as well as the US Military.
Our platform has four parts to cover each stage of the application journey, from exploring options to applying and final selection and admission:
Avela Explore - Mobile-optimized school finder and opportunity navigator
Avela Apply - Streamlined application management system and tracking
Avela Match - Research-based admission and student assignment lottery system.
We also offer a range of consulting services to help districts implement enrollment reforms and advance equity in educational programs.
Learn more at avela.org.
Team
Avela was founded by a renowned team of visionaries, including Nobel Laureate Joshua Angrist, Clark Medalist Parag Pathak, and social entrepreneur Greg Bybee. We have a passionate team of entrepreneurs, engineers, economists, and data scientists - get to know us at https://avela.org/team.
Benefits
We love our team and care about their wellness. We strive to offer the best benefits of our peers, including:
-- Significant equity
-- Flexible work policies
-- Unlimited vacation
-- Home office stipend or WeWork membership
-- 401(k) program
-- Flexible Savings Account (FSA)
-- Dependent Care Saving Plan (DCFSA)
-- Commuter Benefits
-- Life Insurance by Guardian (covered 100%)
-- Platinum Medical Plan by UnitedHealthcare (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)
-- Platinum Dental Plan by Guardian Health (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)
-- Platinum Vision Plan by Guardian Health (Employees 100%, Dependents 40%)
Learn more at avela.org/careers.
Location
We are a flexible, fully remote company; however all full time employees must live in the United States and meet the work authorization and remote collaboration policies below. #LI-Remote
Work Authorization
Although we are strongly supportive of immigrants and individuals of all backgrounds, unfortunately, as a small startup, we are not in a position to sponsor visas and are only able to consider candidates who are authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship. We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to working together in the future.
Remote Working and Collaboration Norms
As a remote-first company, we think deeply about aligning on shared values and collaboration norms. We trust our team and empower everyone to find the right balance for their productivity, but also seek to facilitate synchronous collaboration and minimize asynchronous latency.
We ask everyone to have access to a quiet environment, free from distractions during working hours with high speed broadband internet. (One of our benefits is that we'll cover a WeWork membership!) Our default is video-on for meetings to foster relationships and allow non-verbal communication cues to come through, however we
For full time roles, we expect colleagues to work a normal business day in a timezone of their choice, so long as there's overlap from 12pm - 6pm ET. This ensures sufficient time for synchronous collaboration, but also facilitates flexibility in your schedule. (We are open to other working arrangements, but this must be approved in advance before joining.) We also expect full time employees to join for biannual week-long team offsites (we cover the costs, of course).
We Encourage You To Apply
Avela is a safe, inclusive workplace for people of all backgrounds and walks of life. We strongly encourage you to apply if you are from a marginalized or underrepresented group, even if you don't meet all of the job requirements. If you believe this is a role that you’ll be excited to work in every day, want to be a part of a culture like ours, and will be relentless about pushing boundaries to succeed, please apply.