Sales Development Representative

Avela is a Nobel Prize winning platform for families to navigate their child’s educational journey. Parents can find, apply, register, and pay for school and programs for their children, all from a common application system with saved profiles. Avela also powers backend admissions and operational workflows, making it easy for schools, districts, and educational providers to equitably serve students. We’re like “OpenTable for Education” or “Mindbody for Schools.”

Role

Avela is seeking a Sales Development Representative to help drive sales and go-to-market alongside the founding team. This is a key position at an early-stage company, reporting directly to Avela's Sales Lead.    In this role, you will be a critical driver of our sales pipeline, focusing on identifying, engaging, and qualifying potential partners. As Avela’s founding SDR, you'll be the front line of our sales process, leveraging your communication skills and sales expertise to uncover and nurture promising opportunities that align with our company's mission and solutions.

Location

We’re a semi-remote company with hubs in San Francisco and Boston. The San Francisco hub includes the CEO, Sales Lead, and Marketing Lead, so we strongly prefer candidates living in the SF Bay Area to facilitate in-person collaboration and social connection.

Responsibilities

• Lead Generation and Prospecting: Develop and execute strategic prospecting plans using a variety of tools and techniques, including CRM databases, LinkedIn, industry networks, and targeted research to identify high-potential leads.  Conduct proactive outbound prospecting activities, including cold calling, emailing, and social media outreach, to generate new leads and build a robust pipeline.
• Event Engagement: Represent Avela at industry conferences, trade shows, and networking events, identifying and engaging potential clients, and expanding our market presence through strategic in-person and virtual event participation.
• Opportunity Qualification: Conduct thorough needs assessments with potential clients, understanding their specific challenges, goals, and pain points to determine alignment with our solutions and sales opportunities.
• Relationship Nurturing: Maintain consistent and strategic follow-up with prospects, creating touchpoints that keep our company top of mind and progressively move potential clients through the sales funnel.
• CRM and Sales Operations: Meticulously track and document all prospect interactions, maintaining accurate and up-to-date records in our CRM system to support team-wide visibility and sales intelligence.

Qualifications

• 1-3 years of experience in a similar role, preferably in the education technology (EdTech) industry or SaaS sales.
• Ability to prospect efficiently and at-scale via cold calling, email, and social media
• Proficiency and willingness to use/update CRM and sales management tools, HubSpot preferred
• Excellent communication, negotiation, and presentation skills, with the ability to articulate complex ideas clearly and persuasively.
• Entrepreneurial spirit and drive; Extraordinary comfort with ambiguity
• Legal ability to work in the US without Visa sponsorship

Nice To Haves

• Experience as a K-12 Teacher/Educator or School/District Administrator is preferred.  Passion is required.

Compensation 

The reasonably estimated OTE for this role is $120,000 annually. The starting wage will depend on a number of factors including the candidate’s location, skills, experience, market demands, and internal pay parity.  

Company

Avela is a Nobel Prize-winning edtech startup building the first platform for families to navigate their child's educational journey and a universal application for PK-12 education, daycare, and enrichment programs, promoting equity and access to education. We’re like “OpenTable for Education” or “Mindbody for Schools.”   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 admissio