Director, ECE Sales

Director of Sales, Early Childhood Education (ECE)

Department: Early Childhood Education

Reports To: GM, Early Childhood Education (ECE)

Position Summary:

Highlights for Children, a global brand publishing content that fosters joyful learning, has expanded its offerings into early childhood education settings. Our curricular solutions meet the needs of early childhood educators by centering the play-based learning, cognitive development, and social emotional skills that are hallmarks of the Highlights approach.

We are seeking a Director of Sales to unlock growth and drive revenue by expanding our reach to early childhood organizations. This new role reports to the General Manager for Highlights Early Learning (HEL) and is an integral member of the HEL leadership team.

This role is perfect for someone who gets energy from building something new, thinking outside the box, identifying and acting upon quick wins while building a pathway to long-term success, developing and nurturing client relationships, building high-performing teams, and being a player coach. In this role you will be accountable for generating direct revenue through strategic accounts while also leading a team of internal and external resources to achieve their revenue goals.

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

Establish Sales Team and Scalable Processes

• Accelerate our impact by capturing quick wins and building a long-term path to sustainable revenue through early childhood centers.
• Embrace a "land and expand" mentality to establish geographic centers of activity to build upon and reach scale.
• Create sales processes to support a solutions-based sales strategy that captures near-term opportunities while building long term relationships and ongoing partnership potential.
• Implement a data-driven approach to pipeline management and reporting.
• Develop, implement, and continually iterate on a comprehensive strategy for territory planning and goal setting that aligns with growth objectives and product roadmap to drive achievement of targets.

Direct Selling

• Represent Highlights at client meetings, conferences, and events. Learn our products and know when to call upon subject-matterexperts to support client needs.
• Build relationships with strategic partners, district and state decision-makers and industry associations to drive long-term partnerships and ensure Highlights reaches scale and stays responsive to market needs, funding trends, and solution alignment.
• Take direct accountability for relationships with strategic accounts, state and county relationships, association leaders, and other high impact relationships.

Leadership

• Lead a team of internal and external sales professionals and refine the organizational structure, role definitions, and territories as the line of business evolves.
• Work collaboratively with marketing, product development, and operations management to build a common vision and integrated strategic practices.
• Foster a climate of respect, collaboration, and a strong competitive spirit to drive team success.
• Define an Incentive Award Plan that incentivizes and motivates the right behaviors and aligns to the business stage and priorities.
• Ensure all members of the sales team are trained and fluent in selling our products.
• Optimize the effectiveness of our CRM software.
• Partner across the enterprise to maximize revenue opportunities across all markets and product categories.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

The individual in this role will initially manage one dedicated sales professional and external sales resources, which will increase as the business grows.

Education and Experience:

• Go-to-market experience in education, preferably instructional materials and/or services
• Proven experience developing talent and building high-performing teams; preference for 7+ years of progressively larger teams, increasing sales goals, and/or product line scope
• Demonstrated change agent; experience scaling and accelerating pace of growth and startup mindset
• Ability to analyze, summarize, and synthesize varied inputs into clear, engaging, profitable solutions
• Must think and act strategically, with an eye to long-term impact, while demonstrating the hands-on skills necessary to contribute to a small and focused team with ambitious short-term goals
• Display practical business sense, strong communication, fiscal skills and accountability, expertise in budgeting, project approval, and forecasting
• Confident, objective, organized, inquisitive, motivated, collaborative communicator who thrives in evolving market conditions
• Proven ability to lead through influence, make connections and build positive rapport, and negotiate across functional teams

This position is remote with significant travel to client meetings, conferences, and team meetings. Occasional trips to Columbus home office required.

If you do not meet every requirement listed, we encourage you to apply anyway. Studies have shown that women and people of color are less likely to apply to jobs unless they meet every qualification. We are dedicated to building a diverse, inclusive and authentic workplace, so if you are drawn to this role and your past experiences do not align perfectly to the job description, we encourage you to apply.

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