Sales Partnerships Manager

## About Exponent Exponent is the leading tech interview prep platform, partnering with 40+ universities including Stanford GSB, UPenn, Chicago Booth, and MIT Sloan. We help students land offers at the world's top companies, and we're scaling toward 200+ university partners over the next few years. ## About the Role You'll own our university go-to-market motion end-to-end: prospecting, discovery, demos, negotiation, and close, plus nurturing a portfolio of current university customers. This is a remote, full-cycle role on a small team, open to candidates across United States time zones. You'll wear SDR, AE, and CSM hats, and you'll help shape the sales process itself, not just run it. This role is a great fit for a self-starter who can chart their own path by drawing on past experience, experimentation, and the documentation, playbooks, and team support around them. You won't be starting from scratch: you'll inherit an active pipeline, documented playbooks, and a team that has your back from day one, and we'll count on you to improve all of it as you go. ## What You'll Do - Net-new sales (roughly 70–90% of your time, seasonally adjusted): Own the full sales cycle autonomously: outbound lead generation, qualification, discovery, customized demos and proposals, procurement, and close, targeting tens of deals at $8–20k contract sizes - Take over and advance an active pipeline of university deals from day one - Deliver accurate forecasts and clear pipeline communication to leadership - Innovate on the playbook: identify new target profiles beyond our core university ICP, including AI-workshop expansion opportunities - Current-customer demos and check-ins (roughly 10–30% of your time): Run student and staff demos and check-ins for existing partners. This share grows in Q3/Q4, when net-new closing slows and demo coverage matters most heading into fall recruiting. - Document everything (always on): Leverage AI (e.g., Claude Cowork) to streamline call notes, deal fields, and learnings, following and improving our sales process and CRM hygiene standards ## Who You Are - 3–5+ years of B2B sales experience, full-cycle from lead gen to close - A self-starter who digs in and finds the answer where one exists, then brings sharp, specific questions where it doesn't; you take ownership and are resourceful before you escalate - Highly responsive and proactive in a remote, async-first environment - Exceptionally organized and disciplined with your time; you'll balance net-new pipeline with current-customer commitments - Expert at listening, discovery, navigating complex org structures, and creating champions - Strong presenter and communicator with sharp attention to detail - Kind, empathetic, and personable - Bonus: experience selling into universities or career services ## Success Metrics - 30 days: Pipeline fully transitioned; touchpoints with every active deal; working the prospect list; 3+ current-customer demos/week booked by week 3 - 60 days: Consistent meeting generation with net-new prospects (~8 net-new meetings/month run rate); first closes in motion; demo coverage of ~50% of current customers - 90 days: Demo coverage of ~100% of current customers before fall recruiting peaks ## KPIs - Primary KPIs: pipeline generation and ARR closed - Secondary: student engagement ## Interview Loop - Phone screen (30 min): Initial screening to learn more about your background and motivations, and to share more about the role so we can assess fit on both sides. - Strategy / Case Interview (30 min): The goal of this interview is to understand how you'll research and approach sales execution at Exponent. You'll work through a couple of scenarios around lead gen / prospecting strategy, closing strategy and ops, and we'll talk through how you'd manage them and how you'd measure success. - Context to know going in: Exponent is historically a B2C company (we sell interview prep directly to individual job seekers), and we're now building out a B2B motion selling to universities. We'll explore how you'd approach prospecting and closing in that environment. If you've helped build or scale a B2B motion before, especially inside a company that was previously B2C or B2B2C, come ready to share what translated, what didn't, and what you'd do differently here. - Customer Success Strategy and Ops (30 min): The goal of this interview is to assess your collaboration and partnership with customer success in ensuring the success and longevity of existing and new partnerships. Since a portion of your role will be spent meeting with customers to host student and staff demos, a strong line of communication between sales and the lifetime of a customer with Exponent is important. You'll be asked how you plan to ensure a smooth handoff from deals closed to onboarding, as well as ideas you have for expanding an existing deal or leveraging referrals. - To prepare, we recommend reviewing your relevant experience and brainstorming ideas and questions for how we can improve our process at Exponent. - Behavioral / Ops Interview (30 min): The goal of this interview is to evaluate your ability to lead and manage your work and the sales pipeline independently, while documenting learnings and broadcasting forecast updates and progress with the team. You'll be asked behavioral and ops questions about how you've demonstrated this in the past, and what you might do differently at Exponent. - Nothing special to prepare here, other than reflecting on your personal approach and perspectives.