Head of Sales and Collections - Spark Schools at SPARK Schools

Responsibilities:

Strategic Sales & Enrolment Leadership:

• Develop and execute a comprehensive growth and sales strategy aligned to
• SPARK’s mission and multi-year goals.
• Lead the entire customer journey, from awareness to after-sales engagement, ensuring seamless and consistent customer experiences.
• Partner with Marketing, Technology, and School Operations teams to align campaigns and digital tools with the admissions funnel and sales cycles.
• Drive market segmentation, lead generation, conversion optimisation, and new market identification to expand enrolment reach.
• Monitor enrolment performance and ensure systems (e.g., CRM) are used effectively for pipeline management, forecasting, and reporting.
• Develop and maintain a strong after-sales process to improve customer retention and satisfaction.

Collections & Credit Control:

• Lead the collections function with a focus on ensuring timely, accurate, and ethical tuition collection.
• Establish clear credit control policies and protocols for customer engagement, payment terms, and collections escalation.
• Oversee the development and execution of structured payment plans, early risk identification, and high-risk account interventions.
• Ensure compliance with financial, legal, and data protection standards across all billing and debt recovery practices.
• Collaborate with Finance to align revenue recognition, reporting, and forecasting processes.
• Monitor and report on key debtors' metrics and implement strategies to reduce outstanding debt.
• Implement fraud prevention and risk mitigation strategies in billing and collections processes.

People Leadership & Culture:

• Build, lead, and develop high-performing sales and collections teams with a strong culture of accountability, service, and excellence.
• Design and maintain performance dashboards for tracking key team and individual KPIs.
• Set performance targets, monitor KPIs, and implement recognition programs and performance improvement interventions where needed.
• Foster collaboration between customer-facing and back-office teams to ensure alignment and cross-functional efficiency.
• Provide coaching and professional development opportunities to build leadership capability within the team.

Financial & Operational Oversight:

• Own and manage departmental budgets and revenue targets, ensuring cost efficiency and financial performance.
• Produce timely and actionable reports on enrolment trends, revenue status, aged debt, and performance KPIs for executive leadership.
• Leverage data and market trends to continuously refine revenue and collection strategies.
• Establish strong working relationships with internal and external stakeholders to drive alignment and efficiency.

Strategic Capabilities and Mindset:

•  Leadership & Influence: Ability to lead the sales and collections team in the day-to-day functions and operations with the result of a collaborative, cohesive and efficacy-based team of committed employees who instill a climate and culture of SERVICE in all that they do. Inspires, motivates, and aligns cross-functional teams toward a common vision and high-impact results.
•  Strategic Thinking & Commercial Acumen: Able to anticipate trends, seize opportunities, and align initiatives with long-term goals.
•  Collaboration: Proactively works in partnership with others to achieve a common goal or necessary objective; builds rapport and cooperative relationships with others; establishes and maintains strong relations with relevant stakeholders.
•  Effective Teamwork: Serves on the executive committee (MANCO) as the functional and operational expert of the school network. Informs, involves and seeks input from others by sharing important relevant information, in a timely fashion, with all affected parties. Places high priority on team and network goals and long-term strategy.
•  Customer-Centricity: Deep commitment to delivering value and maintaining trust in every customer interaction.
•  Operational Execution: Strong capability in translating strategy into systems, processes, and performance improvements.
•  Innovation & Agility: Continuously identifies improvement opportunities, adapts to market changes, and drives transformation.
•  Ethical Judgment & Integrity: Demonstrates discretion, professionalism, and commitment to values in decision-making.

Requirements

Qualifications and Criteria:

The ideal candidate will possess the following qualifications and criteria:

• Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, Finance, Commerce, or a related field.
• Postgraduate qualification (MBA or similar) preferred.
• Minimum 10 years of experience in sales, revenue management, or collections, with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role.
• Demonstrated success in managing high-volume customer pipelines, debt recovery, and P&L responsibility.
• Experience in a customer-focused, high-growth, or education-focused organization is advantageous.