Chief Sales Officer
COMPLETED: This position has been filled.
The Company
Teaching Strategies, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, provides the most innovative and effective curriculum, assessment, professional development, and family connection resources to programs serving children from birth through third grade.
Teaching Strategies partners with early childhood educators by providing innovative, effective resources that empower and inspire them as they teach and care for our youngest learners during the critical, formative years from birth through third grade. They are committed to advancing the field of early childhood education through high-quality, integrated resources; responsive, ongoing support; and research-proven solutions that enable every early childhood educator to open doors to lifelong learning.
With ground-breaking solutions and a strong belief that a child’s first 8 years form a critical foundation for school success, Teaching Strategies has been an advocate for the early education community for nearly 30 years. Teaching Strategies consistently expands their product offerings to include award-winning products like The Creative Curriculum® for Preschool and widely-adopted assessment solutions like GOLD®.
Teaching Strategies utilizes 38 research-based objectives that are at the heart of everything they do and define the path teachers take with the children in their classrooms. They inform every aspect of teaching, including predictors of school success, and are aligned with state early learning guidelines and the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework.
The objectives cover 10 areas of development and learning, including broad developmental areas, content areas, and English language acquisition. Many objectives also include dimensions that guide teachers’ thinking about various aspects of that objective and help clarify what it addresses. They enable teachers to see children’s development and learning along a progression across the whole of the early childhood years.
The Private Equity Investors
Summit Partners was founded in 1984 with a commitment to find and partner with exceptional entrepreneurs and help them accelerate their growth and achieve dramatic results. Since then, Summit has become the investment partner of choice for many of the best growth companies in the world.
They have invested in more than 500 companies in technology, healthcare, life sciences, and other growth industries. These companies have completed more than 140 public equity offerings, and more than 190 have been acquired through strategic mergers and sales. Summit is currently managing more than $19 billion in capital dedicated to growth equity, fixed income and public equity opportunities, and has a team of more than 100 investment professionals worldwide, led by 27 Managing Directors whose tenures average 12+ years.
Notable companies backed by Summit include: Avast, E-TEK Dynamics, Fermentas International, FleetCor Technologies, Flow Traders, HealthCare Partners, HealthSun Health Plans, Hittite Microwave Corporation, Keystone RV Company, MDVIP, NetWitness Corporation, Ogone, optionsXpress, Telerik, Tiny Prints, Ubiquiti Networks, vente-privee.com, Web Reservations International and Wildfire Interactive.
The Opportunity
Reporting directly to the CEO, the Chief Sales Officer (CSO) will be an integral member of the senior executive team and an active participant in the development of the strategy and overall direction of the business. The CSO will lead the sales team, particularly in the expansion of geographies, partners, channels, and solution packaging.
Specifically, this individual will:
- Actively participate in annual and long term budget planning processes projecting realistic yet aggressive annual revenue targets; leverage market and field knowledge to identify areas for investment and growth
- Manage team’s performance through discipline and rigor with key KPIs, including daily activity, and metrics management
- Strategize and set in place sales operational metrics to drive performance and increase sales results by annual growth of 20%
- Identify and capitalize on new long term relationships that could become revenue leaders
- Improve existing sales practices, processes and tools creating a scalable, efficient, repeatable sales methodology
- Ensure accurate, consistent forecasting resulting in successful monthly and quarterly performance against goals (2-3x current revenue)
- Scale and develop the sales team (currently at 10 inside and 25 outside representatives); develop a rolling three-year organizational plan, including aggressively hiring and continuously developing top-notch new and existing sales team members
A future at Teaching Strategies includes:
✔ The chance to work with a passionate team of leaders who are opening doors to lifelong learning and making a proven difference in the lives of young students nationwide
✔ The chance to lead both strategy and execution in a senior role for an industry leader poised to extend its market success
✔ The opportunity to drive aggressive growth in a company—to take revenues from <$80M to $200M and more
✔ The opportunity to have the flexibility to live anywhere on the East Coast
Ideal Candidate
The ideal candidate for this position is a successful sales executive and coach with a focus on customer success, building relationships, scaling who is passionate about children and student outcomes.
You should have the following background:
- Previous senior sales leadership role within the K12 space
- Previous experience with senior-level P&L responsibility and the ability to work across business units (ie: marketing, finance, product, etc) while driving team goals via KPIs
- Background of success in a fast-paced, entrepreneurial, all players operating at performance optimization environment
- High energy systems leader with the ability to move on a dime from strategy to execution
- Experience with diverse and complex solutions and product line
- 5+ years in senior leadership managing inside and outside sales teams (>10)
- Demonstrated successes growing and scaling above $50M in revenue responsibility
- Proven track record leading sales initiatives at 2x primarily through organic growth
- Willing to travel ~50% per year
Learn More
If you have not already, submit your resume to Jennifer Florence at Knowledge Leaders (jennifer@knowledgeleadersgroup.com).
