Strategic Sales Executive

Full time, permanent

Salary: £55,000- £65,000 + OTE £35,000

Tes Global is a global digital education company that has been supporting educators for over 100 years. We power schools and enable great teaching worldwide, by creating intelligent online products and services to make the greatest difference in education.

Basic scope and primary objectives

The Strategic Accounts team maintains and expands relationships with strategically important large customers. This role is designed to develop strategies that benefit the business and consumer in a win-win relationship. Working closely with most internal teams, from product development to marketing you will be directly responsible for managing and growing a set of existing high-worth Accounts PLUS identifying and building a network of new strategic Accounts within other areas e.g. Local Authorities and Education Bodies.

Existing accounts will be large Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) and School Groups who are Tes’s highest value customers (£250k/annum+). They will likely procure centrally via their Trust HQ, but you will need to work across the Trust at both HQ and school level and develop and maintain a complex matrix of relationships across users/implementers, influencers and decision makers. You will manage and grow your existing Accounts and acquire and develop new Accounts by working with them to develop a deep and sophisticated understanding of their needs/challenges, ensuring they are getting maximum value from any existing subscriptions, retaining and upselling these and upselling, and cross-selling in other Tes software solutions. In doing so, you will need to develop and negotiate complex bespoke commercial proposals/deals.

This is a senior level individual contributor sales role within the sales organisation and as such you will be managing some of Tes’s most complex and highest value customers.

• You will also be expected to achieve ambitious revenue and growth targets set by the business.
• You will build and maintain the highest level of product knowledge across the entire Tes software product portfolio and be able to demonstrate these products at an expert level.
• You will be comfortable with change and contribute to Tes’s change agenda by promoting a positive attitude and culture towards change, selling the benefits and involving others both internally and within your Accounts.
• You will encourage and lead innovative thinking and continuous improvement working with different stakeholder groups in the business to influence policy and plans that meet the needs of our highest value Accounts. Equally you will anticipate the effect of change both internally and within your Accounts to maximise commercial impact and/or reduce risk/exposure.
• Whilst you will not directly manage others, you will be a role-model of best practice and will motivate others to action and gain the respect of other team members and the wider sales-team.
• You will have strong business acumen and analytical thinking skills and be able to address complex strategic issues and opportunities within your Accounts.
• Travel will be required to be successful in this role, but it is envisaged that some of your work can be done virtually.

Key Responsibilities

• Identify and build a network of new Strategic Accounts achieving new business targets.
• Retain and grow the revenue base across the entire software portfolio within your set of Strategic Accounts via retention, upsell and cross-sell, achieving ambitious growth targets.
• Build and manage a network of complex and sophisticated commercial relationships (from C-level to Head of Function/School) relationships across your set of Accounts to maximise sales opportunities.
• Create new models and frameworks, to develop execute on strategic plans for all your Accounts
• Build bespoke proposals and negotiate profitable commercial deals.
• Applies extensive market awareness to deliver high impact commercial solutions
• Achieve monthly, quarterly and annual revenue targets and other critical success metrics.
• Build and manage a pipeline of sales opportunities through the sales funnel applying consistent sales process and methodology.
• Accurate revenue and opportunity forecasting.
• Identify and respond to critical market data and turn complex ideas into simple plans for customers and internal stakeholders. Build and maintain a level of expert market and product knowledge, including competitor offerings and product positioning.
• Maintain the CRM at all times.
• Build and maintain product knowledge and use this expertise to maximise sales opportunities
• Act as a mentor and role-model of best practice for other salespeople in the sales organisation outside of the Strategic Accounts team

Education and experience requirements

• Significant experience in a B2B sales role with demonstrable evidence of exceeding revenue targets across a multi-product portfolio (ideally software solutions) across international markets
• Demonstrable experience of operating in and selling successfully at C-level (ideally within the Education Industry (e.g. MATs, Groups, LA’s) across international markets
• Experience of building and maintaining a network of sophisticated commercial relationship across a range of high-level stakeholders who operate within a matrix structure. You can hold credible conversations at C-level within a MAT/Group/LA
• Exceptional communication and presentation skills and the ability to expertly demonstrate a range of software solutions to your customers
• Strong commercial/business acumen –strong market awareness to deliver high impact commercial solutions. An understanding of the relationship between revenue, cost and profitability and a track record of building profitable commercial proposals independently
• Expert negotiator – the ability to be able to expertly negotiate at C-level and have a track record of doing so. The ability to negotiate internally and externally to build commercial value
• Detail oriented – you will plan and use your time effectively, ensure records in the CRM are always maintained and provide accurate revenue forecasts
• Drive for Results – you will set yourself challenging goals to exceed business expectations and ensure revenue plans are delivered.
• Strategic Thinker – you will contribute proactively and knowledgably to strategy planning and definition and create new models and frameworks to respond to the individual nature of your Accounts.
• Analytical Thinker – you will cut through complexity to create simple messages that your Accounts and the business can understand. You will be able to arrive at clear decisions when faced with incomplete or ambiguous information.
• Passion for Customers – you will live a customer first culture and will take ownership for the whole customer experience to demonstrate value to the business. You will also role-model effective consultation with customers to understand their expresses and/or real requirements.
• Experience of responding to and winning Local Authority or international tenders desirable.

Who are Tes?

With more than 13.7m education professionals and enthusiasts in our online community using over 900k classroom resources and working relationships with 25,000 schools in over 100 countries, Tes have the scale to make a difference. Our innovative products and services are delivered through a range of partners across the globe.

We help schools find the teachers they need; we bring new teachers into the profession through initial teacher training; we provide teachers with continuous professional development and help educators with safeguarding training and compliance. We provide innovative tools to help teachers succeed in the classroom as well as bring educators together online, so they can share expertise and provide them with vital news and information about education.

We are leaders in using digital technology to make life easier for schools and teachers. The services offered through Tes.com play a critical role in helping teachers and school leaders deal with the challenges of providing high quality education to millions of children across the globe.

We are proud of our people centric culture where everyone is driven to achieve the same goal, to support and connect teachers and schools worldwide, helping them to improve children's lives through education.

Tes Group are an equal opportunities employer