SMB Sales Leader

Overview

You manage a team of SMB account executives selling Newsela's instructional content platform to small and mid-size K-12 school districts. You report directly to Katherine Pecoulas (Director of Scaled Sales) and are responsible for coaching reps, maintaining pipeline discipline, and hitting team quota. You're selling a library of 18,000+ differentiated texts/videos plus assessment tools to district curriculum directors, principals, and sometimes teachers.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Growth stage (480 employees, founded 2013)

Size: 480 employees

Growth: Actively hiring for Scaled Sales under new leadership (Katherine joined 2 months ago)

Market Position: Established player in K-12 literacy/content space with 18K+ content library and newer AI-powered tools

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 60% Inbound - teachers using free content who escalate to paid district licenses, inbound form fills from marketing
• 30% Outbound - reps prospecting into districts via LinkedIn, email, calling during planning periods
• 10% Renewals/expansions - existing individual teacher accounts expanding to district-wide

SDR/AE Structure: Likely full-cycle AEs (scaled motion, reps self-source and close)

SE Support: Minimal - product is fairly straightforward (content platform + assessment tools), reps demo themselves

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: ReadingPlus, Achieve3000, CommonLit, Actively Learn (content platforms); also compete with curriculum publishers

How They Differentiate: Differentiation by reading level (same article at 5+ Lexile levels), breadth of content library, newer AI assessment features

Common Objections: "We already have curriculum," budget constraints, "teachers can find free articles themselves," implementation/training concerns

Win Themes: Time savings for teachers, student engagement with current events, differentiation for diverse classrooms, alignment to standards

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Coaching/1:1s (35%) | Pipeline Reviews (25%) | Hiring/Training (20%) | Forecasting/Internal (20%)

Key Activities

• Weekly 1:1s with each rep: You review their pipeline, listen to call recordings, coach on deals that are stuck. You're looking at conversion rates (demo-to-close is probably 20-30% in SMB), deal velocity, and activity metrics (calls, demos).
• Pipeline inspection: You run team pipeline reviews 2-3x/week. In edtech, deals slip constantly because of budget freezes, summer break deadlines, or "we'll revisit next school year." You're pushing reps to multi-thread and get budget confirmation early.
• Forecasting: You commit a monthly or quarterly number to Katherine. Miss it and you'll hear about it. You're constantly recalculating as deals push (common in K-12 because of procurement cycles and school board approvals).
• Hiring and onboarding: You're ramping new reps. Edtech has specific quirks - understanding school calendars, speaking to educators respectfully, knowing when NOT to call (during state testing, end of year chaos). New reps need 60-90 days to get productive.
• Deal escalation: You jump on calls when reps need help with a larger district deal, a skeptical superintendent, or technical questions about implementation. You're the safety net.
• Internal coordination: You work with Marketing on lead quality, with CS on handoffs, with Product on feature requests from the field. Lots of Slack and meetings.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• School budget cycles are brutal: Most districts finalize budgets in spring for the following school year. Miss that window and deals die until next year. Summer is slow. Your reps will have feast-or-famine quarters.
• Managing a high-activity team: SMB reps need to work volume. You're monitoring call activity, demo counts, pipeline coverage. Some reps will sandbag or cherry-pick accounts. You'll have performance conversations.
• Edtech turnover: Reps burn out on the school sales cycle or leave for SaaS companies with bigger commission checks. You're always hiring and ramping someone.
• You're caught in the middle: Katherine wants growth. Reps want better leads and more support. Marketing says leads are fine. CS says sales is overpromising. You manage the tension.

What Success Looks Like

• Your team consistently hits 90%+ of quarterly quota with predictable pipeline coverage (3-4x)
• Reps are improving their close rates and shortening sales cycles through better discovery and multi-threading
• You build a repeatable hiring and onboarding process that gets reps productive in 60 days
• Low attrition - your reps stay because you coach well and create a good team culture

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Curriculum Directors / Coordinators at district level (most common)
• Principals or Assistant Principals (smaller districts)
• Department Heads or Literacy Coaches (influencers)

What They Care About:

• Differentiation for diverse reading levels in the same classroom
• Content that's engaging (current events, diverse voices) vs boring textbooks
• Time savings for teachers (pre-made assessments, Lexile leveling done for them)
• Data on student reading growth and standards alignment
• Ease of implementation and teacher adoption (they need buy-in from teachers)

Requirements

• 3+ years managing a B2B sales team (SMB or mid-market preferred)
• Experience with high-velocity sales motions (your reps need to work 30-50 active deals each)
• Comfortable with CRM hygiene and pipeline management (Salesforce likely)
• Edtech experience is a plus but not required - you need to learn school budget cycles, procurement processes, and how to talk to educators
• Willingness to work school hours (reps call between 7am-4pm when educators are available; summer is dead)
• Player-coach mentality - you might carry a small book of larger deals while managing the team