VP of Strategic Partnerships
Washington DC Area OR Remote
Our VP of Strategic Partnerships position is charged with driving significant growth within our channel partnership network. We view this person as a key member of the growing Growth team, and someone who will help establish another reliable channel of revenue growth within Bright's broader strategy. We are looking for early hires interested in joining a fast-growing software company. We're establishing a culture that balances innovation/performance, and family life - those things don't have to be at odds! We already have a diverse team, and as an Equal Opportunity Employer, plan to keep it that way. We are passionate about helping our customers re-imagine learning, while growing their business in the process!
Category: Full-Time, Exempt
Hiring Manager: Head of Growth
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How You’ll Spend Your Day:
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Managing and expanding our partnership channel, including developing and managing partner relationships, coordinating key partnership-related activities, selling alongside partner sales teams, leading sales enablement and account mapping sessions, identifying & fostering new strategic partnerships, and more.
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Managing and guiding the sales process, including coordinating meetings, performing demos, coordinating negotiation and contracting, and helping customers to scope each opportunity and understand their ROI potential.
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Prospecting, networking, + outreach to generate partnership leads and meetings, including helping to create scalable processes to support lead generation at scale.
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Planning and coordinating annual event schedule, including identifying target events, coordinating marketing materials, logistics, registration, delegate analysis, and attending some of the events in person.
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Assisting the Head of Growth with other duties as assigned.
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Travel: Up to 25% depending on demand; would be primarily for attending sales-related events.
Core Skills Bright Needs You to Have:
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Product Knowledge: Bright has a unique and highly-differentiated product that will allow our customers to transform their Learning & Development function. You’ll be expected to dedicate yourself to learning everything you can about the platform, including being able to conduct full product demos as needed. You’ll be expected to be able to answer questions about the platform’s functionality, value proposition, and product pipeline.
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Storytelling: Being able to tell a compelling story about our product and how it makes a meaningful impact to our customers is a core skill for this role. You’ll be responsible for painting the picture for how Bright would play an instrumental role for our prospects and customers from multiple perspectives.
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Needs Assessment + Analysis: The L&D function is a niche and nuanced function within every organization, and you’ll be expected to learn the variable structures, operating models, and challenges in this space. You’ll be responsible for taking that knowledge and assessing the specific needs of each prospect to help them think about how immersive learning, via Bright, would bring incredible value to their organization.
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Creative Thinking: You’ll be responsible for coming up with creative solutions to the unique challenges of our prospects and customers. No customer is the same, and you’ll be expected to leverage our thoughts around industry best practices and functionality of our platform to directly relate to, and solve, a prospect’s pain points.
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Negotiation: While the Head of Growth will do a bulk of the negotiating, you’ll be responsible for initial conversations and light negotiation with prospects + channel partners.
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Proactivity + Initiative: This role will require you to be a self-starter, and to take initiative and be proactive in order to achieve your own personal goals, as well as to help our team achieve our organizational goals. You’ll be given autonomy and freedom to manage your day as you see fit, so long as you are successfully achieving (or exceeding) your goals.
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Professionalism: Bright has a vision to become the premier learning brand in the world. As such – you’ll be expected to represent the brand professionally, and with a “premium” experience. This includes keeping a clean and well-kept look, being respectful and level-headed in all situations, being gracious, and being an expert and thought leader in your craft.
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Resilience: Working at a startup can be very rewarding, but can also be challenging as new features have bugs, processes are still developing, and strategies evolve. Being resilient to the fast pace of change will allow you to thrive in your role.
Typical Background:
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7-10 years of experience in a sales or account management role (preferably in a B2B software company)
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Experience managing clients and/or partnerships
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Strong understanding of channel dynamics
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Ability to both take direction and take ownership of assigned responsibilities
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Deep experience building relationships with strategic partners
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In love with the ambiguity that a startup environment brings; while we have a plan, we welcome those can help shape the future as well
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Substantial executive presence and confidence in stakeholder management
What’s In It for You:
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Exposure to business and technology management at a level well beyond what you could get at most SaaS companies or consulting organizations. We’re pretty convinced that a year at Bright is worth about 3-4 at any other company.
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Getting in on the ground floor of a startup that seeks to redefine the future of corporate learning. We’re not there yet, but our aspirations to innovate in learning design and impact assessment are significant, and we’re putting our money and processes where our mouth is to get there.
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Mentorship and close support from our team - we truly want everyone who touches Bright to be wildly successful in the coming years. Our leaders care for our team members.
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Flexible work arrangements, including primarily work-from-home arrangements.
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Interaction with an experienced leadership, investor, and advisor team, and access to their networks.
Development Opportunities:
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Bright Academy: You’ll start with access to the same 12-hour learning experience we make available to our customer Admins. This is table stakes for your future success.
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Onboarding Training: You’ll receive training on the Bright sales process, including how to use our brand voice, how to conduct a successful demo, and how to maintain all relevant information in our CRM.
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Monthly Coaching + Feedback Sessions: Our performance management approach is founded on the concept of ‘real’ monthly discussions during which we’ll provide positive feedback (what you’re nailing), development feedback (what you’re not), and ask for your feedback (how can we better support you).
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$1,000 Annual Development Stipend: In some cases, we may not have the time/resources internally to get you training or development experiences in areas you need/want. We’ve set aside cash for you to seek this through outside parties.
How You’ll Be Evaluated:
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Partnership Management Timeliness: For the leads + partnerships that you manage, you’ll be held accountable for timely execution of all activities. Even if you’re not personally able to complete the tasks, we want you to manage relationships and communications with your Bright colleagues in a way that gets the job done.
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Revenue Generation: Bright has some annual revenue goals, and you’ll be responsible for hitting your assigned growth targets and for performing all activities that support the achievement of those goals.
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Brand Representation: Our leadership team will assess the manner in which you represent the Bright brand, including how you present yourself, how you interact with prospects and customers, and how you navigate the broader market. Bright has a strong and clearly-defined set of core values, and we want these to shine through as you represent our brand.
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Account Transition to CX: Landing a new account is always an exciting event, but there is more to a successful sales cycle than just the sale itself. We want to ensure that the account is properly and effectively transitioned to ensure our CX team is set up to lead a successful implementation, and to manage a successful, long-term relationship. This includes describing the platform functionality accurately, collecting all relevant information, setting the correct expectations, communicating effectively and proactively, and facilitating a warm transfer to the CX team.
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Customer Satisfaction: We want our customers to be happy not just with us as a company, but with the business impact our partnership creates. We conduct customer check-ins to get their honest feedback about the platform + our team. Their feedback will feed into your evaluations.
Compensation + Benefits:
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$180,000 - $220,000 base salary depending on experience
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Annual Bonus eligible + targeted sales commission where applicable
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Eligible for equity grants through our Employee Stock Plan (ESP)
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Health and 401k benefits package
If you're interested in applying, please click 'Apply' below to send an email to the hiring manager with your resume and backstory. Can't wait to meet you!