Head of Retention and Growth

Department: Sales 

Status: Full time, permanent                                

Location: Sheffield

Reporting to: Software Sales Director

Works with: Customer Success, Sales Management, Software Sales Specialists

Direct reports: Retention and Growth Executives

Our Vision

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:

This role will be focussed on our Staff Management product, which schools use to recruit, train and retain their staff. It is deeply penetrated into the market and this role is essential in leading the team which will focus on retaining customers who have cancelled, moving customers from legacy products onto Staff Management as part of their renewal and upselling additional services to renewing customers.

Our biggest challenge is building understanding and value within the product with very busy, cancelling customers who see cost as a top priority in their decision making. It will be your job to work with Customer Success to improve cancellation rates and leading your team to renew cancelling customers with varying lengths of notice, as well as win back customers who’s contracts have expired in the last 3 months.

This is a Head of level role within the Sales function. You will design your team to own ambitious monthly retention and growth targets and lead your team to achieve and exceed these, accelerating the growth of our business. Withfull line management responsibilities managing day-to-day management of the teams’ activities and achievements whilst also looking ahead to future months and planning our long term success.

This is a fast-paced, customer facing and coaching/management role where you will have responsibility for your team’s revenue results, contributing by working with our largest customers as well as influencing and enabling the success of the team. You will have responsibility for developing and implementing strategies to achieve revenue retention and growth targets. You will always lead with data and will stay very close to the detail of each deal and trends in your cohort of customers. You will need to be comfortable with leading a high degree of outbound calling and contact, demonstrating and value-based selling and you will be expected to achieve ambitious customer and revenue retention targets and account growth targets, for which you will be highly rewarded.

You will be leading a team towards achieving two key objectives: 1) improving the levels of retention of our customer base - by rapidly engaging with customers that have decided to cancel one or more of the services they receive from Tes, you will seek to understand their reasons for cancellation, identify customer pain points and propose solutions to retain them 2) increasing revenues by upgrading customers to higher-end, higher value products to meet the needs of their school - by understanding and targeting our existing customers, understanding their needs and demonstrating the value of higher value packages. In 2024 you will also be responsible for transitioning any legacy contract Recruitment customers on to the Staff Management solution, achieving revenue targets for these.

Leading a team with mixed experience and skill levels you will be a strong coach, manager and leader. You will be expected to achieve exceptional levels of product knowledge and be able to demonstrate the software solutions that you are working with to a high level.

You will need to have strong sales skills and knowledge of different sales methodologies and sales process, using these to achieve optimal results. You will manage the team day to day via KPIs and other sales metrics which you will need to develop and refine over time.

You will need to be comfortable with using the CRM to manage pipeline and be able to provide accurate weekly sales forecasts to your manager.

You and the team will work within a defined product set across a geographic region or within a defined account base. You will need to have strong experience of selling software solutions, be self-motivated, target driven and comfortable operating in a fast-paced environment. Equally, you should be able to respond to internal and external change dynamics and be comfortable leading others through change.

Key role responsibilities:

• Lead the Retention and Growth Executive team to improve retention levels within their customer base.
• Manage a cadence of cancellation notifications at pace to uncover pain points and provide appropriate solutions.
• Establish and maintain key KPI’s around response times, retention rates and value retention.
• Meet customer and revenue growth targets and key performance indicators set by the business.
• Accurate sales and pipeline forecasting
• Maintain headcount capable of delivering company objectives and revenue results.
• Assessment of skills and capabilities, identification of training needs
• Performance management of non-performers
• Recruiting talent and onboarding new starters
• Use company data to identify account growth opportunities. Coaching and enabling the team to target and develop these accounts.
• Day to day people management responsibilities within the team including motivating, coaching and developing team members and managing any performance issues within the team in a timely manner.
• Promoting a collaborative and professional culture based on knowledge sharing, a level of healthy competition and working together towards shared goals. 
• Role modelling best practice around sales processes and professionalism and driving consistent application of sales processes within the team.
• Embedding adoption of company practices and initiatives. Including maintaining the CRM at all times, ensuring detailed notes are captured for use by the Customer Success team (for retained customers) and Software Executives (for future win-back).
• Coaching and advising the team on appropriate retention tactics for different account types.
• Responsible for ownership and delivery of manual renewal targets as well as accurate forecasting around these.
• Accurate retention and revenue growth forecasting.
• Maintain a high of level market and product knowledge, including competitor offerings and product positioning.
• Work with the Customer Success team to create plans to drive value for retained customers.

Experience Needed:

• Evidence of extensive experience managing B2B cancellations
• Working in a high volume, fast paced environment
• Experience working with revenue targets of £10 million+
• Evidence of developing, implementing and refining productivity metrics and other KPIs to drive our continuous improvement across the team, whilst exceeding our sales targets
• A track record of hiring and developing talent
• Evidence of managing weak performance through formal performance management processes
• Extensive experience of building maintaining and leveraging a network of internal and commercial relationships across a range of senior stakeholders. You can hold credible conversations at the highest level within your accounts and the business
• Evidence of understanding and implementing differing sales methodologies and sales processes and the application of these for positive business benefit. Can role-model best practice through the stages of the sales pipeline

Tes Values:

We work together

We share a common goal to deliver our Tes Vision, working together in a transparent and open way, to solve problems rather than to apportion blame

We include everyone

We believe in the diversity of people, ideas and cultures, providing everyone with the opportunity to contribute and grow, and to make our business better

We take ownership

We all have a vital role to deliver our vision and a responsibility to make the biggest difference possible to our customers and to Tes

We never stand still

In everything we do, we work to improve our products and services, and to deliver on both our individual and our common goals

We do it for them

We’re committed to providing schools and teachers with the tools they need to improve children’s lives through education