Business Development Executive (Central Region)

National Student Clearinghouse is a nonprofit organization that provides educational data and services. The Business Development Executive is responsible for promoting Clearinghouse offerings to educational organizations, managing relationships, and developing strategies to grow services and retain business.

Responsibilities:

• Demonstrate the Clearinghouse's core competencies: Customer Focus, Optimizes Work Processes, Collaborates, Communicates Effectively, and Be Open and Authentic
• Use a structured approach to opportunity planning to understand customer motivation, buying criteria, selection processes and solution preferences
• Use a disciplined approach to prepare, set meeting objectives, dialog, position, handle objections, close and follow-up to calls
• Demonstrate proficiency in relating, questioning, listening, positioning, and checking to determine client needs and concerns
• Conduct regular client satisfaction visits with as many accounts as possible throughout the year on site, virtually and at conferences and events
• Serve as a strategic partner to build, grow, and maintain profitable and long-lasting relationships with key accounts
• Accurately record activities within Salesforce
• Participate in major national and regional industry association and themed conferences
• Build territory, account, and opportunity plans to focus activities based on Education Solution’s mission and product priorities
• Use information from Clearinghouse sources to help clients understand how to better use the company’s products and solutions
• Employ opportunity management practices to prospect, qualify, propose, negotiate, contract, and provide ongoing support to clients
• Recognize how new processes can help make the department more successful and willingly provides input to measure success
• Partner with others across the organization (e.g. product teams, implementation, legal, finance) to ensure shared objectives are met in serving a client
• Ensure open dialog to determine how each party’s interest can be considered in the development of a solution
• Bring an outward mindset towards including others in solutioning while maintaining one’s own personal interests – demonstrates balance of self-awareness and self determination to create better results
• Demonstrate problem solving skills including brainstorming options, evaluation of alternatives, enlarging the potential benefits, building reciprocity, and employing objective standards
• Bring energy, curiosity, and conviction to conversations; Effective in a wide range of settings, from one on one meetings to presentations
• Build rapport by relating to others, acknowledging, and empathizing; listen to understand the business issues, and for emotional content
• Craft questions that convey expertise, elicit information, and drive deeper to ensure needs and ideas are explored fully
• Use persuasive techniques to overcome objections and demonstrate how perceptions are shared
• Regularly elicit feedback and confirm agreements or need for further clarity
• Demonstrate openness to new perspectives and ideas
• Seeks to understand others’ interests and needs through thoughtful questioning and listening
• Build trust with internal and external stakeholders by demonstrating consistency between words and actions
• Faces difficult issues and tackles them with optimism and confidence; confident delivering all messages to internal and external stakeholders
• Understands which issues to tackle and demonstrates a willingness to develop tactics to address concerns

Requirements:

• Bachelors degree in business, marketing, or any related field. A combination of education and experience including military service will also be considered
• 5 years of professional experience in the education industry, business development and/or sales
• Experience working in or selling into state educational agencies and/or school districts or educational organizations focused on measuring student success and/or guiding student pathways into college
• A history of consistently meeting or exceeding annual sales/business development targets
• Proven track-record of developing positive relationships with internal and external stakeholders
• Demonstrated ability to work on multiple initiatives simultaneously in a time critical environment
• Lead complex business development opportunities that are win-win for the client and the organization
• Strong negotiating skills
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite and Salesforce and willingness to learn new applications
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively with all levels of staff
• Demonstrates the Clearinghouse's core competencies: customer focus, optimizes work processes, communicates effectively, collaborates, and is open and authentic
• Due to the specific region this role supports, candidates must reside in one of the Clearinghouse's approved States for hiring purposes located East of the Mississippi River
• Must be currently authorized to work in the United States on a full-time basis. We do not intend to sponsor external applicants for work visas, and may consider sponsorship only if no qualified candidates can be found who are authorized to work without sponsorship
• Must be at least 18 years old
• Master's degree in business, marketing, or related field
• Familiarity with commercializing big data and/or data-related services
• Familiarity with the problems, issues, and methods of states and secondary education institutions
• Experience in education administration or previous knowledge of the features and benefits of Clearinghouse services
• Experience with Salesforce and/or Pardot