Head of Sales NEW

Zen Educate

Role: Sales Manager

Location: London,on-site

Salary: £70,000 – 90,000k OTE (uncapped commission)

If your salary expectations do not meet our banding, please do still apply – salary banding is based on transferable skills, tenure, industry experience, and interview performance

Introduction

I’m Oren, Co-founder of Zen Educate. We’re looking for a Head of School Sales to own how we win and onboard individual schools across the UK, reporting to our VP of Sales. If you love turning chaos into clarity and are deeply passionate about solving real world problems that everyone around the dinner table would love ‘someone to solve’, then keep reading.

What we’re building (and why it matters)

Education is the cornerstone of a thriving society. Schools do their utmost to provide children with positive experiences, but having the right staff is essential to fulfilling that promise – that’s where we come in. Whether it’s a year 1 teacher to greet her “good morning” or a Teaching Assistant to support him in the break times, Zen helps schools find the right educators faster without breaking the bank.

Schools in the UK and US spend over £12bn a year on agency staff, and over £3.6bn of that goes straight into the pockets of recruitment agencies. Zen is an all-in-one digital platform that gives schools full control over how they find, vet, and manage temporary educators. School leaders can search, book, and manage staff in real time, while gaining full visibility and control over their spend and compliance.

To go with our technology, we practice a culture of “we care more”, so that ultimately, by improving staffing in schools, we’re delivering thousands of smiles to children’s faces every day. What we need now is to reach the next level in school awareness and adoption. That’s where you come in.

What we’re looking for

We’ve built strong foundations already:

• We are one of the leading suppliers in our industry and one of the fastest growing companies in the UK
• A high-performing distributed team with the local knowledge to support our customers all over the UK.
• A differentiated product that makes a genuine impact on the lives of educators, pupils, and the education system

We’re now looking to level up even further.

• You’ll be excited about this love turning data into world class experiences for customers.
• You’re obsessed about building systems that provide clarity for everyone in the organisation.
• You’re as obsessed about leading teams as you are about closing a sale.
• You’re as comfortable aligning strategy and process as you are running a meeting.
• You set a high bar for your team and are skilled at coaching them to be the best version of themselves.

Some traits that usually correlate with success in this role

You’re a systems thinker by default and love driving clarity from ambiguity.

• If you’ve got a consulting background, you’re ready to dedicate those skills now to solving one problem as an enduring part of a wider team.
• You get goosebumps from the opportunity of making a real impact on the education system.
• You raise the bar relentlessly and obsess over making that conversion and onboarding motion best in class.
• You’re process-led and hyper-structured. You plan meticulously and build playbooks to deliver commercial results, rather than relying on herculean individual efforts or hope.
• You can align teams, not just ideas.
• You love finding simple answers to complex problems.
• You love looking around corners and out-maneuvering the competition.
• You’re up for travelling frequently across the UK to understand our customers and teams in different regions.

What your first 6-12 months might look like

• You’ll report to the VP of Sales and own the conversion and onboarding of individual schools.
• Obsess over the outcomes of new schools interacting with Zen.
• Continuously review, improve and redefine the schools’ experience in their first 30 days with Zen.
• Influence the school onboarding process in every office, taking into account local preferences while achieving alignment on the non-negotiables you’ve established.
• Collaborate closely with the sales development team to ensure new school acquisition efforts are aligned.
• Test and iterate several new acquisition channels.
• Increase the rate at which new schools become loyal Zen customers.

We’re a 400+ (and growing!) team operating across the UK, US, and Canada. We’re well funded, default alive, growing fast, and have tremendous unit economics. Simply put, we’re doing really well by doing good. As such, we’re a passionate group of missionaries rather than mercenaries. We’re looking to find someone who shares our passion for the mission of making education better.

What you might like or dislike

Every place makes tradeoffs based on what they value and where they are in their journey. Here’s a list of things you might find useful in figuring out if this is the right role for you. If we end up chatting, feel free to dig deeper into any of them.

• Building the system rather than individual heroics: having great players on the pitch is critical. However, a great system trumps the best salesperson without one. We’ve got a product with genuine product market-fit that makes our customers lives better. We’re looking for someone who can level up the system in getting the word out.
• First principles reasoning rather than replicating other companies’ best practices: we believe every situation has nuance. Experience is an input in decision making, but not the only one. The leaders that do best are endlessly curious and deconstruct problems to first principles. They’re not just making decisions because they’ve seen them work elsewhere, they experiment a lot and double down on the successful ones.
• Slope and passion over Y Intercept. High-trajectory individuals with a passion for what they do very quickly lap those with a higher initial starting point in their domain but slower trajectory. That means Executives at Zen often end up spending more time up-front investing in the upskilling of colleagues from non-traditional backgrounds but it quickly pays dividends many times over. This also means, that if you’re a proven sales leader who’s curious and hungry to keep learning, but haven’t worked in education before, then you should still apply.

What’s in it for you

• Meaningful work – every deal you close helps schools save money and teachers get paid more.
• Competitive salary + commission + equity.
• 25 days holiday + all UK public holidays.
• Hybrid working (outside of term time) – we have a central London office with gym, showers, café, and cycle parking.
• 1:1 coaching and professional development support.
• Life & Health Insurance, Cycle to Work Scheme, Electric Car Scheme.

Diversity & inclusion

We welcome applicants with diverse backgrounds, and different experiences and perspectives – just like the staff who teach through Zen and the children at the schools we work with. We believe in hiring the best people from the widest pool and creating an inclusive atmosphere with a culture where people’s voices are heard and all our team can look forward to coming to work.

We value and respect all differences in all people (seen and unseen). We believe in an environment with equal access to career development opportunities and actively encourage applications from BAME candidates.

If you require any reasonable adjustments during your interview process with us, please do let us know.

Please note before applying

This role is based full-time at our London office and requires onsite attendance five days per week during term time. We encourage applications from candidates who live in or near the local area of this office, or plan on relocating.

Due to the high volume of applications, we regret that we are unable to provide individual feedback on initial submissions.