Are you looking for more than just a job and want to make difference? If so, then join the National Student Clearinghouse talent community and discover your impact today!

We are a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization and the leading provider of educational reporting, data exchange, verification, and research services. Serving the education, workforce and learner communities has been at the heart of our mission for over 30 years. Our work — performed in a trusted, secure, and private environment — provides numerous time- and cost-saving benefits to students, schools, administrators, and requestors.

About the Role:

The Senior Specialist, Secondary Education Relationships (a.k.a. Regional Relationship Manager) is responsible for promoting the use of Clearinghouse offerings to educational organizations that have a need to access the company’s data about post-secondary progress, state education organizations charged with oversight of the public schools, the country’s largest school districts, and outreach organizations committed to ensuring student success. These organizations include governmental and other entities with a legitimate reason to use Clearinghouse data to monitor student progress or to examine trends that impact public policy. In this role, you will be the primary relationship manager for the Clearinghouse’s work with outreach and educational organizations and support the field efforts related to business with states and large school districts. You will develop and execute a national approach to sustain and grow the Clearinghouse’s services to educational organizations and support efforts to retain and grow business with all states and the leading school districts.

You will be the ideal candidate if you have a robust understanding of how verified data informs educational policy and program analysis, and you understand the importance and how the role feeds to the success of the organization. Traveling nationally (up to 50% of the time) is not a concern and you enjoy meeting current and prospective customers virtually and face-to-face.

Currently, this is a remote-first position, and this position may be required to periodically work on-site at our office and the frequency would depend on the department/division's requirements. Therefore, candidates must either reside within a reasonable distance to commute to our office or be willing to travel to our office in Herndon, when required.

How You Contribute:

• Demonstrate NSC’s competencies, which align with our corporate values. Manager will provide more detail to candidates as needed.
  • Core Competencies include: Customer Focus, Optimizes Work Processes, Collaborates, Communicates Effectively, and Be Open and Authentic.

Customer Focus:

• Use a structured approach to opportunity planning to understand customer motivation, buying criteria, selection processes and solution preferences.
• Use a disciplined approach to prepare, set meeting objectives, dialog, position, handle objections, close and follow-up to calls.
• Demonstrate proficiency in relating, questioning, listening, positioning, and checking to determine client needs and concerns.
• Conduct regular client satisfaction visits with as many accounts as possible throughout the year on site, virtually and at conferences and events.
• Serve as a strategic partner to build, grow, and maintain profitable and long-lasting relationships with key accounts.
• Accurately record activities within Salesforce.
• Participate in major national and regional industry association and themed conferences.

Optimizes Work Processes:

• Build territory, account, and opportunity plans to focus activities based on Education Solution’s mission and product priorities.
• Use information from Clearinghouse sources to help clients understand how to better use the company’s products and solutions.
• Employ opportunity management practices to prospect, qualify, propose, negotiate, contract, and provide ongoing support to clients.
• Recognize how new processes can help make the department more successful and willingly provides input to measure success.

Collaborates:

• Partner with others across the organization (e.g. product teams, implementation, legal, finance) to ensure shared objectives are met in serving a client.
• Ensure open dialog to determine how each party’s interest can be considered in the development of a solution.
• Bring an outward mindset towards including others in solutioning while maintaining one’s own personal interests – demonstrates balance of self-awareness and self determination to create better results.
• Demonstrate problem solving skills including brainstorming options, evaluation of alternatives, enlarging the potential benefits, building reciprocity, and employing objective standards.

Communicates Effectively:

• Bring energy, curiosity, and conviction to conversations; Effective in a wide range of settings, from one on one meetings to presentations.
• Build rapport by relating to others, acknowledging, and empathizing; listen to understand the business issues, and for emotional content.
• Craft questions that convey expertise, elicit information, and drive deeper to ensure needs and ideas are explored fully.
• Use persuasive techniques to overcome objections and demonstrate how perceptions are shared.
• Regularly elicit feedback and confirm agreements or need for further clarity.

Be Open and Authentic:

• Demonstrate openness to new perspectives and ideas.
• Seeks to understand others’ interests and needs through thoughtful questioning and listening.
• Build trust with internal and external stakeholders by demonstrating consistency between words and actions.
• Faces difficult issues and tackles them with optimism and confidence; confident delivering all messages to internal and external stakeholders.
• Understands which issues to tackle and demonstrates a willingness to develop tactics to address concerns.

Position may be required to perform other duties as required. These essential functions are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the job. Reasonable accommodations will be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform these essential functions.

What You Bring to the Table:

• Bachelor’s degree, or a combination of education and experience including military service will also be considered.
• 5+ years of professional experience in the education industry, business development and/or sales.
• Experience working in or selling into state educational agencies and/or school districts or educational organizations focused on measuring student success and/or guiding student pathways into college,
• A history of consistently meeting or exceeding annual sales/business development targets.
• Proven track-record of developing positive relationships with internal and external stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability:
  • Working on multiple initiatives simultaneously in a time critical environment.
  • Lead complex business development opportunities that are win-win for the client and the organization.
• Strong negotiating skills.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office Suite and Salesforce and willingness to learn new applications.
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to communicate effectively with all levels of staff.
• Position may be based remotely in the following states and must live within a commutable distance to a major airport: California, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.

Additional Desired Requirements:

• Advanced degree.
• Familiarity with commercializing big data and/or data-related services.
• Familiarity with the problems, issues, and methods of states and secondary education institutions.
• Experience in education administration or previous knowledge of the features and benefits of Clearinghouse services.
• Experience with Salesforce and/or Pardot.

Physical Demands:

• Use of a computer for 8 or more hours a day.
• Use of a copy machine and telephone.
• Frequently required to sit for 7 or more hours per day. When at HQ, required to work in close proximity to others in an open office environment
• Occasionally required to use hands and fingers to operate, handle, and reach.
• Vision abilities include close vision and the ability to adjust focus.
• Occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds and use hands and fingers to operate, handle, and reach.
• Must be able to hear, speak, read, and concentrate.
• Stand for extended periods of time, up to 3 hours at a time at conferences or while making presentations.
• Must be flexible to perform out-of-town assignments and travel via car, travel, train, regionally 50% or more of the time including evening and weekends when needed.

Benefits and Related Information

The National Student Clearinghouse provides a robust benefit program designed to help meet the needs of each employee and their family, both now and in the future. We offer comprehensive medical, dental, and vision insurance, as well as life and disability insurance benefits, for employees and their qualified dependents. Health care, dependent care, and limited purpose flexible spending accounts, as well as a health savings account, are options available for employees to set aside pre-taxed dollars for certain qualifying expenses. We offer a very generous 401k matching contribution program with the opportunity to defer pre-tax and Roth contributions, as well as catch-up contributions for those who are eligible! We are proud to offer a competitive paid leave program consisting of vacation, sick, and personal time, as well as paid holidays and up to 3 weeks of paid parental leave during a 12-month period. Vacation time will accrue based on length of service, and new full-time hires can accrue up to 13 days of vacation and up to 10 days of sick time per year. On an annual basis, new employees may use up to 32 hours of accrued sick time as personal time. Additionally, the Clearinghouse observes at least 11 paid holidays per year.

Another perk is that employees have the option to get reimbursed for basic wholesale company and roadside assistance memberships (e.g., Costco and AAA) and to request a buy back on portions of unused accrued vacation based on tenure and certain other qualifications. Employees can further their education and professional development by using our Employee Education Assistance Program, which establishes reimbursement for qualified education expenses upon successful completion of the program, and leveraging the enterprise-wide LinkedIn Learning subscription. There are additional employee benefits too, including but not limited to, mental health and wellness benefits. To find out more, please request a copy of our Benefits at a Glance!

Additionally, we reasonably believe that the salary range for this position is between $115,000 and $125,000. Eligible for incentive compensation.

The requisition will be open for a minimum of three days, and applications will be accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

The contractor will not discharge or in any other manner discriminate against employees or applicants because they have inquired about, discussed, or disclosed their own pay or the pay of another employee or applicant. However, employees who have access to the compensation information of other employees or applicants as a part of their essential job functions cannot disclose the pay of other employees or applicants to individuals who do not otherwise have access to compensation information, unless the disclosure is (a) in response to a formal complaint or charge, (b) in furtherance of an investigation, proceeding, hearing, or action, including an investigation conducted by the employer, or (c) consistent with the contractor’s legal duty to furnish information. 41 CFR 60-1.35(c)