Scholarly is an education-focused SaaS company building AI-powered software for higher education administration. Its centralized platform helps institutions manage faculty data, streamline evaluations, support discipline-specific workflows across fields such as medicine, business, law, engineering, and the arts, and turn academic information into workload analytics, reports, and operational insights. The company emphasizes privacy-conscious implementation and reducing the administrative burden of manual data entry for academic teams.
Vice President of Sales, Higher Education SaaS — Colorado Remote
Lead Scholarly’s enterprise sales function for AI-powered higher-education software. Drive university revenue, strategic deals, forecasting, and development of the sales organization.
Description
- Own new-logo ARR, pipeline creation, and revenue forecasting.
- Lead strategic enterprise pursuits with senior university and procurement stakeholders.
- Manage complex higher-education sales cycles involving RFPs, consortium agreements, and fiscal-year budgets.
- Maintain accurate weekly forecasts and rigorous HubSpot pipeline management.
- Collaborate with the CEO on pricing, packaging, and deal strategy.
- Coach and develop Account Executives and SDRs.
- Establish quotas, activity expectations, and territory plans.
- Hire and onboard additional members of the sales team.
- Lead deal reviews and call coaching while standardizing sales methodology.
- Develop the sales playbook across ICPs, segments, qualification, discovery, demos, proposals, RFPs, and competitive positioning.
- Measure pipeline coverage, win rate, sales-cycle duration, contract value, quota attainment, and SDR-to-AE conversion.
- Coordinate with Marketing on outbound programs, events, and account-based campaigns.
- Create effective transitions to Implementation and Customer Success.
- Share customer and market insights with Product and Engineering.
- Partner with Customer Success to uncover and close expansion opportunities.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree required.
- At least 10 years of B2B SaaS sales experience.
- At least four years managing quota-carrying sales teams.
- Enterprise software sales experience in higher education is strongly preferred; experience with other complex institutional buyers may also qualify.
- Demonstrated success meeting or exceeding quota and closing six-figure, multi-year contracts with extended sales cycles.
- Experience winning formal RFPs and working through public procurement processes.
- Experience establishing sales processes at an early-stage or growth-stage company.
- Strong command of CRM systems and pipeline forecasting.
- Outstanding written and verbal communication skills, with executive presence among senior academic leaders.
- Interest in higher education, EdTech, or mission-driven software is preferred.
- Denver metro area residence or remote work for exceptional candidates.
- U.S. citizenship or Green Card required; visa sponsorship is unavailable.
Benefits
- On-target earnings of $300,000–$400,000, combining base and variable compensation.
- Uncapped variable pay with accelerators for performance above plan.
- Significant equity in a fast-growing startup.
- Health, dental, and vision coverage.
- Flexible work environment with hybrid options.
- Direct collaboration with the founders and senior leadership team.
- Potential to expand into broader revenue leadership as the company grows.