Remote Account Executive at Almabase

Our mission is to make education affordable by helping institutions increase alumni giving. The idea started from our founders’ struggle with the lack of scholarships when they were students. Watch this TEDx talk from Kalyan to learn more. 
 
We are a bootstrapped company that has grown to be a leader in the alumni software space in the US. We’re slated for even faster growth on the path to becoming market leaders through a unique strategic partnership with Blackbaud (read more here & here) 
 
Our customers are universities and high schools and in most cases, we’re working with staff in the alumni relations and fundraising office at these institutions. The value prop for them at a high level is simple – “Engage more alumni and raise more money from them”. 90%+ of our customers are from the US currently but we’re starting sales in UK and Canada this year so we’ll start to see some more customer regions this year. Our team is based in India and the USA. The India team is based in Bangalore and the US team is fully remote. 
 
Impact so far: 

• 10M+ million alumni connected 
• 1M+ students impacted 
• $50M+ donations facilitated 
• 100M+ engagement opportunities created 
• #1 Alumni management software in the US (G2Crowd)

• Insurance: Medical, dental, and vision coverage, with the option to insure dependents/family members at a reasonable cost (Reimbursed through QSEHRA program) 
• Work from anywhere in the US 
• Unlimited vacation. Yes, you heard it right! 
• Stock options after 12 months, based on performance 
• Opportunity for accelerated growth to Sr. Account Executive (read below)

• $125k OTE ($75k base + $50k on-target commissions) 
• Commissions Uncapped (one of our AEs hit 200% OTC last year) 
• Annual Quota: $1.25M total contract value (TCV) (Translates to roughly $415k – 460k ARR) 
• Most of our customer contracts are three year contracts and include a one-time implementation/setup fee. The total contract value is calculated as the total revenue for the company from that contract over the three years including non-recurring fees. 
• Commission rate: 5% of total contract value (TCV). Accelerates to 7.5% TCV in each quarter you achieve over quota ($312k TCV)

• KPIs – $ revenue closed won, opportunity to closed-won conversion rate, contributions to pipeline through conferences. 
• Handle qualification calls for new marketing qualified leads – Identify if the prospect’s BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, & Timing) are in line with our expectations. It’s critical to empathize with the prospect and make sure their goals are aligned with our service. 
• Handle product demos for sales-qualified leads – Show them how Almabase can solve their challenges and achieve their goals. You’ll also present pricing, according to their requirements. 
• Handle all further conversations from product questions to contract negotiations after an opportunity is created to eventually close the deal and hand it over to the customer success team. 
• Nurture all the marketing qualified leads in your pipeline with high-quality follow-ups. 
• You will be supported by the rest of the team whenever you need assistance. Eg: if there are deep technical questions, a Solutions Consultant will join the call with you. The SC will handle the questions about the product roadmap on the call. If you need help with negotiating a contract, the VP of Sales will join the call with you. 
• Identify insights and pain points from conversations with prospects, and contribute to the product roadmap by providing active feedback to the product team. 
• You are not required to develop your own pipeline, our DemandGen team will create most of the pipeline for you to close. However, we expect AEs to bring in at least 10% of their pipeline themselves through conferences that they attend. 
• You are required to work closely with partner organizations in co-selling opportunities. This is a key part of your job. 

Must have skills: 

• 2-3 years of experience in either: 
  • B2B software sales (deal closing) to mid-market/enterprise customers in the nonprofit/education space. OR 
  • Fundraising/Major Gifts experience in nonprofit or higher education institutions, managing and closing large donor commitments. 
•  Proven track record of closing deals/gifts above $20K+ (ARR for AEs or Major Gifts for MGOs). 
• Strong ability to build and nurture long-term relationships with decision-makers and stakeholders. 
• Excellent presentation and communication skills, with experience handling high-stakes conversations. 
• Ability to learn quickly – whether it’s a new product, sales methodology, or understanding institutional needs. 
• Familiarity with CRMs such as HubSpot (for sales professionals) or donor/fundraising platforms (for fundraising professionals). 
• Experience attending conferences and networking events to generate pipeline or donor prospects. 
• Comfortable working in a metrics-based environment. 
• Prior experience negotiating contracts (for sales professionals) or donor agreements (for fundraising professionals). 

 
Good to have skills:

•  Exposure to solution selling or consultative sales methodology. 
•  Ability to effectively leverage AI tools while applying sound judgment and contextualization. 

In 3 Months:

•  In your first quarter, you’ll receive clear targets that outline the number of new deals to close and revenue to add. You’ll immerse yourself in our lead prioritization process to establish and nurture a robust pipeline. Every quarter, you’ll continue leveraging and refining the strategies from previous periods. 
•  You’ll actively participate in weekly deal reviews with the VP of Sales to discuss tactics, address challenges, and refine your approach for better closings. 
•  Expect to attend 1-2 industry conferences per quarter, spreading across the US, to build your network and learn best practices in our competitive landscape. 

 
In 6 Months:

•  Building on the work from the previous quarter, you’ll continue executing high-value tasks and refining your approach based on past learnings. Your focus on prioritizing high-potential leads will further drive your success. 
•  You’ll play a role in setting up the next quarter’s targets and strategy, using your experiences and insights to refine our approach. 
•  Hitting key revenue milestones could secure you a $25K OTE increase and a title bump to Sr. Account Executive, a fast-track recognition for high performance. 

 
In 12 Months:

•  You’ll be a key contributor to shaping our sales strategy. Collaborate with leadership to fine-tune goals and drive broader revenue initiatives. 
•  Beyond the initial title bump, your career trajectory at Almabase is built on merit, with the potential for additional advancement as you continue to drive significant revenue growth. 

• First and foremost, you need to be good at building rapport with prospects. Relationship building is very critical to be successful as a salesperson in this market. Your prospects need to first trust you before buying anything from you. 
•  You need to get really good at solution selling. Our product is not a commodity with simple features. You need to be able to connect the prospect’s needs, wear a consultant’s hat, and provide the right solution to them. That’s half the sale. You need to develop a good enough understanding of the product and the market to be effective at this. 
•  You need patience but you need to be proactive in nurturing the prospect to succeed in this role, it pays well to be patient in this role 
•  You need to be resilient, be ready to face rejections, and still keep going. Without an intrinsic motivation to perform well and constantly improve, this is a hard job. It will take time to succeed. 
•  You need to be disciplined and good at multi-tasking. When you have many deals in your pipeline at any time, prioritization & context switching become critical skills. Otherwise, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. 
•  How did we do in 2024: 
  •  We hit our ambitious sales goals 
  •  We closed more enterprise deals than previous years combined 
  •  AEs hit president’s club – Hawaii here we come! 
  •  Closed one of our biggest deal in company’s history on the last day of the year. 

• We will provide you with detailed training to give you a head start in the world of alumni relations and educational fundraising. We’ll also talk about our positioning, the competitive landscape, provide you access to hundreds of recorded conversations, and existing marketing materials. Our CRM is a treasure trove 🙂 
•  We will find an opportunity to bring you to India to bond with the larger team and build relationships to help you be successful in this role. 
•  We will provide you with in-depth training into our product along with sandbox access to let you play around. The focus is for you to figure out how each piece helps toward solving the puzzle for customers. 
•  We’ll walk you through our current sales playbook and sales enablement materials. We’ll also do a deep dive on competitors and handling other objections, along with role plays to get you prepared. 
•  During the first 4 weeks, you will be invited to shadow plenty of sales calls just to listen in and understand how we go about sales currently. We believe everybody will learn different things from this process but it has worked very effectively in the past. 
•  We will have a weekly sync up with the rest of the GTM team (SDRs, Marketing, etc.) to stay aligned and understand overall growth goals. 
•  You will have a quarterly 1:1 review with the Sales Director to discuss your career goals and overall success, apart from regular mentoring. 
•  We will provide you access to the best SaaS sales resources and add you to a few SaaS sales communities so you can discuss with other people in similar roles – learn and teach at the same time. We’ve found that this is the fastest way to improve your skills. 
•  Most importantly, we will help you set up a one-on-one casual chat with members of different functions of the Almabase team, so you get to know everyone well. 

 If all of this sounds exciting to you, join us for an exciting and fulfilling ride at Almabase.