Educate yourself

I’m Tristan Spencer and i am the sales and marketing director for the solutions business at Capita Education Software. Essentially what we do here is help education businesses – anything from a small primary school through to a large university – run their organisations more effectively through a range of software solutions. So, for example, we could collect all the information they need to manage the statutory returns for the government, or provide them with an engagement solution that helps to improve the communication between students and teachers or parents and teachers.

I look after the sales and marketing side of the business. With the marketing side we set the strategy for the business and come up with a plan for the year for how we’re going to achieve our numbers. 

Then with sales, I have four teams of sales people, each headed up by a Sales Director and with them, as a sales and marketing leadership group, we drive the direction of the teams as well as the initiatives and improvements we’re looking to achieve.

Success and progress

A successful salesperson doesn’t just pick up the phone and start making random phone calls; they do some analysis of their sales territory – they look where the white space is and come up with a territory plan, they plan to be successful, it’s not just chance. And then they’re very good at executing and sticking to their plan and learning as they go along. It’s also important to look at how salespeople collaborate with others. In our organisation, no-one stands on their own, you have a team of people behind you, whether it’s pre-sales people or finance people, so you’ve got to be able to collaborate.

Capita Education Services is a great place to work if you’re the sort of person who sees changes as an opportunity. There’s lots of exciting change here, which creates an opportunity for people to try something new and broaden their role, it’s very dynamic. Technology as an industry is always changing, so we see things constantly refreshing, which keeps it interesting. It’s also becoming a more competitive market and we have some high ambitions to grow the business, not only in the UK, but also internationally, which is exciting.

There are lots of career opportunities across Capita Education Software, from entry level sales roles for someone leaving university, to account management roles and new business roles. The right salesperson could progress through these levels and have a great sales career within the education business. It’s almost too good to be true.