Vice President of Sales
Company: Scholarly
Location: Denver metro area; open to remote for exceptional candidates
Reports to: CEO & Co-Founder
Compensation: $175,000 - $215,000 base salary, based on experience; on-target earnings (OTE) of $300,000 - $400,000; substantial equity
Position Overview
Scholarly is seeking a Vice President of Sales to own new-logo revenue and build a repeatable, scalable sales engine as we grow. This is an ideal role for a proven higher education or EdTech sales leader who has closed complex institutional deals, built and coached a high-performing team, and wants to have a direct, visible impact at a fast-growing startup.
This role is a mix of hands-on selling, team leadership, and go-to-market building. You'll lead our team of Account Executives and Sales Development Representatives, personally engage in our most strategic pursuits (R1 research universities, academic medical centers, multi-campus systems, and formal RFPs), and build the process, forecasting discipline, and playbook that let the team scale behind you.
We're looking for someone who is comfortable switching between a meeting in the provost's office, a procurement negotiation, and a pipeline review with their team.
Key Responsibilities
Revenue & Pipeline Ownership
• Own the company's new-logo ARR target, pipeline generation, and sales forecast.
• Personally lead or co-lead strategic pursuits at large accounts, engaging provosts, vice provosts for faculty affairs, deans, CIOs, and procurement teams.
• Navigate long, multi-stakeholder higher education buying cycles, including RFPs, consortium contracts, and fiscal-year budget timing.
• Build accurate weekly forecasting and pipeline discipline in our CRM (HubSpot).
• Partner with the CEO on pricing, packaging, and deal strategy for complex opportunities.
Team Leadership
• Lead, coach, and develop Account Executives and SDRs; set clear quotas, activity standards, and territory plans.
• Recruit, hire, and onboard new sales team members as the team grows.
• Run deal reviews and call coaching, and establish a consistent sales methodology across the team.
Go-to-Market Building
• Build and continuously improve the Scholarly sales playbook, including ideal customer profile and segment definitions, qualification criteria, discovery and demo standards, proposal and RFP processes, and competitive positioning.
• Define and track the metrics that matter (e.g., pipeline coverage, win rate, sales cycle length, average contract value, quota attainment, SDR-to-AE conversion) and drive improvements against them.
• Partner with marketing on outbound, events, and account-based campaigns targeting priority institutions.
Internal Collaboration
• Ensure clean handoffs to Implementation and Customer Success, with accurate expectations on scope and timeline.
• Bring customer and market feedback to Product and Engineering to shape the roadmap.
• Work with Customer Success to identify and close expansion opportunities within existing accounts.
Qualifications
• Bachelor's degree required.
• 10+ years of B2B SaaS sales experience, including 4+ years leading a quota-carrying team.
• Track record selling enterprise software into higher education strongly preferred; experience with other complex institutional buyers (academic medicine, healthcare, public sector) also considered.
• Consistent record of meeting or exceeding quota and closing six-figure, multi-year deals with long sales cycles.
• Experience responding to and winning formal RFPs and navigating public procurement.
• Experience building sales process at an early- or growth-stage company; comfortable operating without a large support structure.
• Strong command of CRM tools and pipeline forecasting.
• Exceptional written and verbal communication skills; executive presence with senior academic leaders.
• Passion for higher education, EdTech, or mission-driven software preferred.
Compensation & Benefits
• Base salary: $175,000 - $215,000, depending on experience.
• On-target earnings (OTE): $300,000 - $400,000, including base salary and variable compensation.
• Variable compensation: Paid primarily on company net-new ARR, with a portion tied to quarterly business objectives. Uncapped, with accelerators for performance above plan.
• Substantial equity in a fast-growing startup.
• Health, dental, and vision insurance.
• Flexible work environment with hybrid options.
