Chief Sales Officer

Requirements

• You bring a powerful blend of leadership, strategic thinking, and operational expertise, making you an ideal fit for driving growth and innovation at OpenClassrooms. Ideally, a strong understanding of the education, vocational training, corporate learning, apprenticeship and ed-tech markets would further complement your skill set
• Leadership and Team Management:
• Proven success in leading diverse, high‑performing teams while fostering collaboration, accountability, and innovation
• Ability to inspire trust, influence external and internal stakeholders at all levels, and drive organizational change while ensuring alignment with company‑wide goals
• Skilled at balancing short‑term delivery with long‑term strategic goals, empowering teams to excel in dynamic environments
• Sales Expertise and Operations:
• Strong business acumen and proven track record of developing and executing strategies that drive growth across B2B and B2C markets
• Demonstrated ability to optimise commercial operations, increase client engagement, be client‑facing, generate next frontier opportunities, and enhance brand visibility
• Customer Services Excellence
• Skill in designing and managing scalable customer service processes to enhance satisfaction, retention, and loyalty
• Proficient in managing pre‑sales and post‑sales customer support functions to ensure high levels of service, addressing inquiries, and resolving issues efficiently
• Ability to optimise customer journeys, leveraging feedback and data to continuously improve customer‑facing operations
• Operational Excellence
• Expertise in designing scalable processes, leveraging technology, automation and AI, and data insights to streamline workflows and improve efficiency
• Skilled at implementing best practices that enhance productivity, quality, and competitive advantage
• Strategic Vision and Innovation:
• Strong ability to navigate complex challenges and craft creative solutions, notably using Gen‑AI
• Adept at aligning short‑term execution with long‑term goals to deliver measurable outcomes
• Experience in managing reputation and influencing regulatory environments to position the company as a key industry leader
• Data‑Driven Approach: Proficient in using data to inform decision‑making, identify opportunities, and measure performance effectively
• Adaptability and Change Leadership:
• Thrive in dynamic, fast‑paced settings, demonstrating resilience and adaptability while leading teams through transformation
• Entrepreneurial mindset with a focus on driving impactful change in a scale‑up environment
• C2 level in French
• At least C1 level in English (C2 highly recommended)

What the job involves

• As Chief Sales Officer for French‑speaking markets in the short term, adding the US scope in the long term, you will play a pivotal role in driving OpenClassrooms' growth and covering approximately 30 million euros of bookings per year
• Reporting directly to the CEO, you will join the executive leadership team, shaping our commercial strategy and contributing to our global impact
• This position combines strategic vision with operational execution
• Your mission is to make education more accessible by maximizing the number of student enrollees, employer clients, and bookings growth across the employer (B2B), student (B2C), and social programmes (B2G) segments
• You will lead a diverse team of approximately 30 professionals while fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement
• Sales strategy and sales execution: developing a strong commercial strategy and an excellent AI‑powered sales engine to maximise orders and bookings, with strong unit economics and efficiency, covering employers, students and social programmes scopes, with a high spectrum of employers ranging from small businesses, start‑ups, scale‑ups, mid‑market up to enterprise accounts, first in France then globally in the long term
• Enrollment strategy and delivery: leading streamlined processes and supporting student orientation, admission, contractualisation, and apprenticeship matching to maximise the number of quality student enrollees and close bookings on all lines of business, shorten conversion cycles, improve conversion rates and optimise unit economics
• Team Leadership: building and inspiring high‑performing and efficient sales & student teams, fostering collaboration, a growth mindset, and ensuring excellence in delivery in alignment with company goals
• Develop and execute a comprehensive commercial strategy with a specific focus on proactive outbound sales activities to drive bookings growth across employers, students and social programmes segments, targeting organisations ranging from small businesses, start‑ups and scale‑ups to large enterprises, to sell apprenticeship and reskilling programmes
• Establish ambitious sales targets and ensure accountability through robust tracking of pipeline and sales activity, forecasting and performance management processes, and sales training
• Ensure high level of renewal and upselling/cross‑selling, and implement a customer success strategy to maximise customer satisfaction
• Use insights from Data & BI to empower the sales operations team on data‑driven insights to optimise bookings, pipeline velocity and conversion
• Develop and leverage strategic influence networks with key stakeholders and decision‑makers to align commercial objectives with market opportunities
• Apply a deep understanding of relevant regulatory, institutional and labour‑market dynamics to ensure sales strategies are informed, compliant and market‑relevant
• Oversee streamlined enrollment processes to maximise student admissions and orientation, contractualisation and apprenticeship matching
• Manage all pre‑sales student and employer‑facing support to provide a fast and high‑quality service and a superior level of satisfaction to our future clients (email, phone, chat, etc.)
• Implement AI‑powered scalable solutions that improve conversion rates, optimise unit economics, reduce costs and ensure an exceptional customer experience
• Design and implement best‑in‑class sales operations, training, leveraging technology notably AI and agentic orchestration to optimise efficiency (managing inbound and outbound interactions with both employers and students) and ensure data‑driven decision‑making and execution
• Drive higher contribution margins, optimise unit economics, continuously improve processes and automate to maximise productivity and scale effectively in dynamic market conditions
• Collaborate with other C‑level executives to align commercial initiatives with organisational priorities and long‑term strategy
• Represent sales insights in board meetings, contributing to strategic discussions with investors and stakeholders
• Partners across regions (including the US) to share best practices, unify processes, tools and platforms to prepare for global alignment
• Achieve and exceed orders and bookings targets across segments (employers, students and social programmes)
• Improve sales pipeline velocity and conversion, as well as forecast accuracy
• Optimise contribution margins, sales cost per enrollee, sales cost per contract, conversion rates and lead times
• KEY METRICS: