About Almabase
Almabase is the leading alumni management software in the US.
We are on a mission to make education affordable to everyone by helping universities & schools build better relationships with their alumni, leading to increased donations.
We believe in
- Democratizing quality education: Quality education is a great equalizer. When many students receive scholarships to access education because of alumni generosity they pay-it-forward when they have the capacity to do so. We derive our inspiration from actions like this
- Building a large profitable business: We envision building a capital-efficient, large, profitable business to achieve our mission of democratizing quality education. This means less dependence on investors & more ownership with the team. We are among a small set of profitable SaaS companies building Value SaaS.
- Employee Wellness <> Customer Success: We give as much importance to each team member’s personal & professional success as much as we care about our customer's success. We believe it’s all about balance. Our recent WFH policies reflect this belief.
Our impact so far
-> 4 million alumni connected
-> 600,000 students impacted
-> $10 million donations facilitated
-> 75 million engagement opportunities created
-> #1 Alumni management software in the US (
G2Crowd)
The Opportunity:
Almabase is looking to hire an Account Executive to close new sales. In this role, your goal is to help universities & high schools understand how to improve their alumni program using Almabase. You will be handed marketing qualified leads that are generated through various inbound & outbound channels, and you will be responsible for handling that relationship until they sign a contract. Once they sign a contract, customer success will take over and help them succeed.
While most of the sales happen remotely over Zoom, you will also have opportunities to represent the company at various conferences around the US along with meeting potential customers and selling in-person.
Our ideal candidate has at least 1 year of B2B software sales experience and understands solution-selling to mid-market/enterprise customers.
While a majority of our team is based in India, we are looking for someone located in the US for this role. This is a remote job and you can work from anywhere in the US.
Benefits
- Insurance: Medical, dental, and vision coverage, with the option to insure dependents/family members at a reasonable cost.
- Work from anywhere in the US
- Unlimited vacation. Yes, you heard it right!
- Stock options after 12 months, based on performance
Salary
- $100k OTE ($50k base + $50k commissions on-target). Commissions uncapped.
- Annual Quota: $1M total contract value (TCV) (Translates to roughly $400k-500k ARR)
- Commission rate: 5% of total contract value
- Accelerated commissions (7.5% of TCV) each quarter once you go past quota.
Responsibilities:
- KPIs - Number of new deals closed, $ revenue added, an opportunity to closed-won conversion rate.
- Handle qualification calls for new marketing qualified leads - Identify if the prospect’s BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, & Timing) are in line with our expectations. It’s critical to empathize with the prospect and make sure their goals are aligned with our service.
- Handle product demos for sales-qualified leads - Show them how Almabase can solve their challenges and achieve their goals. You’ll also present pricing, according to their requirements.
- Handle all further conversations from product questions to contract negotiations after an opportunity is created to eventually close the deal and hand it over to the customer success team.
- Nurture all the marketing qualified leads in your pipeline with high-quality follow-ups.
- You will be supported by the rest of the team whenever you need assistance. Eg: if there are deep technical questions, an engineer can join the call with you. If there are questions about the product roadmap, a product manager will join the call. If you need help with negotiating a contract, the CEO will join the call with you.
- Identify insights and pain points from conversations with prospects, and contribute to the product roadmap by providing active feedback to the product team.
Requirements
Skills & Experience:
- 1+ years of B2B software sales (deal closing) experience to mid-market/enterprise customers.
- Excellent written and verbal business communication skills.
- Ability to learn quickly. Eg: learn the product, learn the market, learn solution selling methodology, etc.
Personality traits:
- Fun & confident personality. Loves to meet new people and build relationships.
- Pays great attention to detail, loves taking notes and maintains discipline with CRM.
- Highly motivated to work at a scaling startup.
- Proactive with actions, but patient with results
What will a typical quarter look like?
- By the beginning of the quarter we’ll come up with the targets for the quarter, in terms of the number of new deals closed, and $ revenue added.
- Based on the targets, you will prioritize the right leads to maximize your pipeline and close more revenue.
- You will participate in weekly deal reviews along with the CEO & Director of Sales to discuss and get tactical advice to drive closure.
- In the last two weeks of the quarter, we’ll start working on goals for the next quarter.
What will make you successful in this role?
- First and foremost, you need to be good at building rapport with prospects. Relationship building is very critical to be successful as a salesperson in this market. They need to first trust you before buying anything from you.
- You need to get really good at solution selling. Our product is not a commodity with simple features. You need to be able to connect the customer’s needs, don the consultant’s hat, and provide the right solution to them. That’s half the sale. You need to develop a good enough understanding of the product and the market to be effective at this.
- Educational institutions are not the fastest moving organizations. You need patience but you need to be proactive in nurturing the prospect to succeed in this role.
- You need to be resilient, be ready to face rejections, and still keep going. Without an intrinsic motivation to perform well and constantly improve, this is a hard job. It will take time to succeed.
- You need to be disciplined and good at multi-tasking. When you have many leads in your pipeline at any time, prioritization & context switching become critical skills. Otherwise, it’s easy to get overwhelmed.
How will we set you up for success in this role?
- We will provide you with detailed training to give you a head start in the world of alumni relations and educational fundraising. We’ll also talk about our positioning, the competitive landscape, provide you access to hundreds of recorded conversations, and existing marketing materials. Our CRM is a treasure trove :)
- We will bring you to India (post-COVID) to bond with the larger team and build relationships to help you be successful in this role.
- We will provide you with in-depth training into our product along with sandbox access to let you play around. The focus is for you to figure out how each piece helps toward solving the puzzle for customers.
- We’ll walk you through our current sales playbook and sales enablement materials. We’ll also do a deep dive on competitors and handling other objections, along with role plays to get you prepared.
- During the first 4 weeks, you will be invited to shadow plenty of sales calls just to listen in and understand how we go about sales currently. We believe everybody will learn different things from this process but it has worked very effectively in the past.
- We have a daily 30 min standup with the focus being different each day. This allows you to stay aligned with SDRs, Marketing and understand overall growth goals.
- You will have a quarterly 1:1 review with the CEO to discuss your career goals and overall success, apart from regular mentoring.
- We will provide you access to the best SaaS sales resources and add you to a few SaaS sales communities so you can discuss with other people in similar roles - learn and teach at the same time. We’ve found that this is the fastest way to improve your skills.
- Most importantly, we will help you set up a one-on-one casual chat with members of different functions of the Almabase team, so you get to know everyone well.
Why should you join Almabase?
Educational institutions are not the easiest to sell to. But that’s what makes this experience challenging and unique. Over the years we have developed some of the best practices in inside sales.
In this role, you will get to build on your skills and establish yourself as a successful salesperson. Given the relatively small team, you can have an outsized impact. Knowing that the work you do every day improves access to education for millions of students is highly motivating - it’s what keeps us going too.
Benefits
This is what our team members enjoy the most about Almabase:
- Freedom & Responsibility: If you are a person who wants to take up challenging work & push your personal boundaries, then this is the right place for you. This article does a fantastic job of articulating the growth mindset we're trying to develop - https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/
- Great Salary & Equity: As Almabase continues to grow, you’ll have a real opportunity to create wealth for yourself and your family. All our best performers hold stock options in the company.
- Holistic Growth: Building a career doesn’t have to be at the cost of missing out on your personal front. We believe that professional success is worthwhile when personal goals are nurtured with equal importance. We will support you on that journey of yours.
- Transparency: If you ever wanted to know what it’s like to be on an entrepreneurial journey, then working with Almabase gives you that opportunity to experience it all firsthand.
- Unlimited vacation: We don’t measure or cap your vacation days. Our only policy is that you use your good judgment. We only care about the work being effective and on time. Do it from wherever you want to do it.
If all of this sounds exciting to you, join us for an exciting and fulfilling ride at Almabase