Business Operations Manager - Zearn

The purpose of Zearn

Zearn is the nonprofit educational organization whose mission is to inspire all kids to love learning math. Everything we do is driven by our belief that every kid is a math kid.

Our top-rated learning platform is designed to catch kids up and move them forward in grade-level math. And it works. Large-scale efficacy research shows students who use Zearn make significant gains in math proficiency, including the students who start multiple grade levels behind.

The vital importance of learning math today is hard to understate, and yet today, it is common to think that only some are born to achieve in math. Math learning is often disparaged and feared (e.g. I'd rather go to the dentist than do algebra) or viewed as a special interest or luxury (e.g. if kids don't have a passion for math that is okay, maybe they have a passion for pottery). We don't look at learning to read the same way. 

Zearn exists to help create a world where all children love learning math. 

As a nonprofit, all of our work is driven by what is best for kids. At the same time, we operate as an intense and fast-moving technology company, inclusively solving hard problems that will impact current and future generations. The problems we solve require expertise in pedagogy, software development, persuasion, psychology, design, writing, video production, problem solving, and countless other disciplines. As an organization that is always stretching to get to the next level of impact, every single person owns mission critical work.

If you’re ready to join our team of problem solvers, and own work that will drive us to achieve impact at scale, we are looking for you.

Learn more about us at https://about.zearn.org/.

The purpose of the Business Operations Manager at Zearn is to play a crucial role in ensuring Zearn’s Partnerships team achieves adoption at scale with the numerous schools and districts across the country.  This is achieved by:

Being a sales efficiency champion across all aspects of the sales process, by creating and maintaining systems and processes that drive our Partnerships Team’s velocity.

• Identify opportunities to drive efficiency across all aspects of the sales process from inquiry to invoicing to account management, including automating processes using systems, tools, or artificial intelligence
• Research and recommend potential add-ons, automations, and integrations to our Salesforce CRM
• Collaborate with technical team to design and roll-out updates to existing systems, including training team members on new processes and systems
• Work cross-functionally with other teams at Zearn including Finance, Support, and Legal to identify and roll-out opportunities to improve the efficiency of cross-team work

Driving growth of new strategic partnerships by developing and executing on a new approach to district outreach

• Create and maintain a database of strategic states and districts 
• Develop plan for outreach to strategic states and districts, including automated campaigns, lead scoring and lead qualification across Salesforce and Marketo
• Support preparation for high priority events or meetings by compiling relevant data, researching key talking points, and packaging information in digestible format for Partner Success team
• Develop and execute a plan for district recruitment in new large-scale partnerships including internal factbase, Salesforce progress tracking, and campaign creation

Acting as an analytic powerhouse and strategic partner to drive innovation and scaled adoption of Zearn

• Identify and track key sales metrics (e.g., win rate, sales cycle length, customer ROI)
• Help create an adaptive experimentation culture where we continuously look at metrics, test ways to improve them, measure, learn and reflect on ways to improve efficiency as we grow
• Analyze lead gen metrics, as well as external best practices, and iterate based on learnings
• Work cross-functionally with Data/Research Team to fulfill data requirements for states or big districts, for both external and internal use
• Support Partnerships team with additional data or Salesforce projects for strategic states

Examples of problems someone in this role can be expected to solve:

• How do we better leverage our existing systems to make our sales processes more efficient?
• Where are the biggest hurdles/pain-points in our current sales process? What small and large experiments can we conduct to improve those pain-points?
• Which districts should we focus our outreach efforts on?  
• How do we optimize our district outreach to be efficient and effective? 

SKILLS: Below are the skills we believe would be impactful for this role.  While we certainly do not expect a candidate to be fluent in any more than five to eight of these skills, we would expect a candidate to be excited to learn many of the others through continuous coaching and on-the-job apprenticeship.

Being a Team Player:

• Living to team norms
• Owning your own mindset, motivation and skill development
• Building productive relationships with colleagues

Project Management:

• Setting goals and priorities for yourself and a group
• Managing a group to execute toward deadlines
• Organizing and leading meetings 

Communication:

• Critical reading and active listening
• Communicating through visuals and slides
• Sharing your perspective productively and with structure

Solving Problems:

• Using performance data to create insightful ideas
• Pressure testing and continuously improving workflows and processes
• Structuring problems so others can solve them
• Participating in team problem solving
• Leading experiment-based problem solving, consensus and straw model-based problem solving and analysis-based problem solving

Organizational Strategy:

• Building an adaptive strategy

Applied Mathematics:

• Conducting numerical analyses to generate insight
• Optimizing processes analytically

POTENTIAL MARKERS OF THESE SKILLS:

• 5+ years of experience in business, sales operations, strategy or management consulting
• Highly proficient with data analytics in Google Sheets and/or Excel
• Demonstrated ability to project manage longer-term cross-functional projects and initiatives in a fast-paced high-growth environment
• Humility, a team-oriented mindset, and a willingness to roll up your sleeves and dig into the tactical alongside the strategic
• Bachelor’s Degree in a related field required

THIS IS AN INDIVIDUAL CONTRIBUTOR ROLE

• Title: Business Operations Manager
• Reports to: Director of Business Operations

HOW WE WORK:

• We aim to create a numeracy movement. This is no easy feat, and no one of us can solve this on our own.  Given that, Zearn is a transparent, collaborative, and open-to-feedback culture. 
• Our work is often collaborative in nature:
• We own our deliverables in close collaboration with others
• We communicate openly, and share early thinking and drafts often
• We seek ways to create and improve systems, and work with each other to contribute thinking in both asynchronous and synchronous discussions.
• We create a sense of community through regularly sharing context so we can collectively solve problems to drive Zearn’s velocity.

LOCATION:

This role is remote, however you may be required to travel for business and team building meetings.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

The compensation range for this role is $90,000 - $110,000 per year.

We offer a competitive benefits package, including comprehensive medical, dental and vision plans, short- and long-term disability, life insurance, 401K matching, parental leave, and a flexible PTO policy. We also offer a collegial and passionate culture and the potential to positively impact the lives of millions of children.

TO APPLY: https://apply.workable.com/j/CD9101140B

Zearn is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.