Sr Customer Success Manager - Business & Government

Blackboard is a company that advances teaching excellence and unlocks the full potential of technology to deliver meaningful outcomes. They are seeking a Senior Customer Success Manager to ensure that customers see value throughout their Blackboard journey, focusing on success and retention by engaging with customers to understand their goals and create plans that achieve partnership objectives. The role involves collaborating with various teams to provide support and resources, while also identifying expansion opportunities.

Responsibilities:

• Maintaining expert-level knowledge and domain proficiency in a range of products including their functionality, application, administration, and deployment methodologies
• Maintaining familiarity with our partner solutions and knowing when to propose them as part of a customer solution set
• Participating in customer discovery calls, listening to customer needs, and creating account value proposals that relate Blackboard solutions to customers’ strategic goals and initiatives
• Managing and delivering high quality technical validation events (demonstrations, evaluations, pilots, pre-sales workshops) to include tailoring the solution, configuration, and data to support customer requirements
• Working with all members of the regional sales teams to articulate product strategic value, develop customer-focused solutions, and document solutions in proposals
• Building and maintaining Blackboard champions in our customer/user community to include participation in trade shows, conferences, user groups, virtual events, etc
• Providing rapid, accurate responses to questions from sales teams and channel partners
• Providing insight, feedback, and recommendations to improve Blackboard's ability to respond to customer challenges
• Support developing and delivering responses to RFPs/RFIs
• Building and maintaining relationships across the customer's organization, including with C-suite institutional leadership on ensuring their success and business goals achieved
• Developing and implementing account engagement and execution plans to ensure business objectives are met and customer sentiment is positive
• Managing the customer partnership proactively, including monitoring customer health, identifying and managing risk, and escalating customer support or account issues as needed
• Developing an understanding of and responding to customer questions on the full Blackboard portfolio of products and services, including their value proposition, the challenges they solve, and how they are supported
• Conducting regular partnership reviews with customers to ensure progress on shared business objectives
• Acting on customer sentiment information, such as survey, solicited and unsolicited customer feedback
• Connecting customers to best practice resources and/or recommendations; assisting customers in solving point-in-time challenges; connecting customers with opportunities for engagement in feedback sessions and with research projects as applicable; partnering with the customer to support the overall goal of increased satisfaction and adoption of Blackboard solutions
• Promoting customer engagement in the online Blackboard Community, as well as Blackboard-hosted virtual and in-person events to facilitate customer opportunities to network, share, and learn from their peers
• Assisting Regional Sales Managers (RSMs) and regional leadership with identifying customer goals/values and cross-sell and up-sell and services opportunities, as well as assisting with renewal proposals
• Driving advocacy in the form of references and success stories
• This role requires approximately 25 - 50% travel

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree (or equivalent) in Business, Information Technology Management, Instructional Design, or other education-related field
• Understanding of the application of instructional technologies to varied teaching and learning environments
• Understanding of enterprise level IT infrastructure, deployment methodologies, and cloud/SaaS environments
• 8-12 years of pre-sales experience, preferably in enterprise sales and/or education technology
• Strong oral and written communication skills
• Exceptional ability to present to small and large groups of people who may have varied roles, experience, and perspectives
• Ability to work independently in a geographically dispersed team and be self-motivated
• Proven ability to engage effectively at the executive-level
• Fluency in written and spoken English
• Advanced degree
• Previous government sales or account management experience (Federal, State & Local, or other)