Executive Director, State & Strategic Accounts

Discovery Education is looking for an Executive Director, State & Strategic Accounts to lead our State and Strategic Account Team.

As our Executive Director, State & Strategic Accounts (SSA), you will lead the State and Strategic team into its next phase of growth. You will oversee the development, leadership and execution of the team’s goals and programs. You will also play a key role in both team and overall departmental initiatives and goal setting. Additionally, you will use your expertise to ensure that the goals and strategic objectives of the SSA team are met or exceeded and are tied to measurable goals.

You will report directly to the Chief Revenue Officer and will be a key member of the Senior Leadership team. To be successful in this role, you must be able to engage credibly and persuasively at all levels within customer organizations.

What You Will Do:

• Develop, define and implement State and Strategic Account sales strategies that will support a variety of our products and services built on partner requirements.
• Lead, manage, cultivate, motivate and support your team driving them to meet and exceed sales objectives and revenue goals.

• Oversee partner implementations, increase partner usage, build strong relationships and a robust pipeline of Partners.
• Be directly accountable for State and Strategic sales account relationships.
• Collaborate with your Sales Leadership peers to achieve organizational goals and drive state and national comprehensive initiatives.
• Lead initiatives for successful use of Salesforce.com and fidelity in lead tracking and pipeline building methodologies.

• Work with our Global Marketing Team to maximize lead generation and website support.
• Serve as the “voice of the partner” in collaboration with our product and development teams and offer feedback, requirements, and other information.
• Build and strengthen existing sales processes using your expertise and best practices, develop metrics tied to goals. Strengthen current sales processes with best practices.
• Develop metrics tied to goals, programs and lead and support your team to ensure State and Strategic Accounts perform to forecasted plan.
• Establish, implement, and manage sales forecasts, key metrics and objectives to plan.
• Partner, collaborate and communicate with teams and business units across Discovery Education.
• Stay abreast of the ever-changing landscape of sales, the Ed Tech market, our customers, and our competitors and share that knowledge with the team and help them create effective messaging.
• Responsible for forecasting and pipeline management and growth.

Requirements

• At least 10+ years of conceptual and complex consultative sales experience selling to and serving and State and Strategic accounts in a multi-stakeholder environment.
• Bachelor’s degree or higher.
• Prior experience in either education or ed tech.
• Demonstrated success in targeting, developing and successfully closing large accounts.
• Proven history of successfully executing strategic sales plans and a history of meeting and exceeding goals.
• Previous experience managing a geographically dispersed and remote team.
• Excellent communication skills both written and oral, persuasive and easily able to present to large groups.
• Skilled in creating, analyzing, and translating business strategies into growth and a demonstrated data-driven and analytical mindset to assess and grow the team against processes, goals and revenue.
• Willing to travel as needed to meet with prospective customers and maintain relationships.
• An innate motivator who can create, organize, and build great sales teams, entrepreneurial in nature and self-motivated.
• Easily able to establish rapport with all levels, build strong partnerships and a passion for Discovery Education’s mission, growth, and strategic goals.
• Approachable, open, honest, and constructive.
• Strong communication and leadership skills in both direct and influencer roles.
  
• Legal right to work in the United States.

Benefits

• Flexible PTO.
• Paid holidays include Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve.
• Generous parental leave.
• Annual education and professional development dollars.
• Major medical, vision, and dental (multiple choices).
• Summer hours and company recharge days.
• Company-paid life insurance and short- and long-term disability.
• Pet insurance.
• Company paid volunteer hours.

Discovery Education is an equal oppor