CEO @ Aspireship | Helping people get hired in tech sales and customer success

I’ve dedicated my professional career to helping people who want to help themselves. Currently, I’m building Orchard, an AI career counseling platform for K-12 education, and Aspireship, an employee benefits platform for emerging companies that want to stay lean and profitable.

Corey Kossack

There’s a paradoxical challenge facing innovation in schools.

You’ll hear a lot about what’s wrong with EdTech today. Here’s a few common ones I see talked about regularly.

Sales reps are too aggressive, don’t do enough up front research and only care about hitting their quota. The school is just a number on a spreadsheet, instead of a community to invest in.

EdTech companies are charging too much. Schools don’t have the money, don’t get enough hands on support and face serious trade offs with every dollar. Costs must come down.

The scientific evidence of impact isn’t there. Marketing claims are overblown. Impact studies get twisted to support the company’s marketing narrative.

The stakes are too high for school leaders to make bold bets on something new. Better to stick closer to the well established, status quo vendors.

While everything above is generally true, the irony is that much of it inhibits the change everyone wants to see in education.

There are founders out there who want nothing more than to change the future for the better for our children. We see the struggles ahead, and we know it’s more important to pursue this change than most anything else we could focus our time on.

Yet for new EdTech startups, the process of gaining adoption is slow and very expensive, especially without major funding.

Even with an exceptional product that delivers real value, it takes so long to get schools on board, complete the procurement process, roll out to students, create real impact, capture the evidence of that impact, and repeat the cycle to the point where the business remains sustainable and competitive in the marketplace.

The net result? Many of today’s innovators will give up and leave the education market to big companies or startups with mega funding who can withstand these cycles. In both scenarios, prices get driven up, investor growth demands remain insatiable, and schools, educators, parents and students lose.

This is not an easy problem to solve, and this is not a criticism of education leaders who are carefully safeguarding their students from getting exposed to the wrong vendor, or the wrong technology.

This is a friendly note from the other side of the table, on behalf of the many founders who are walking through the fire to help create a better future for all of us.

Have ideas on how to break this cycle? Drop them in the comments or shoot me a DM. There’s a big community of EdTech founders who are ready to listen and take action to make a difference this coming school year.

Founder & CEO @ Orchard & Aspireship | Helping People Climb to Their Goals

University of Arizona College of Medicine - Phoenix

Academic Coordinator

Administrative Assistant

RTA: The Fleet Success Company

Led team of 7 employees. Worked closely with team members to improve processes and procedures that impact the customer experience. 
*  Increased productivity of existing employees by right-sizing department. 
*  Established monthly webinar series attended by 15% of the client base each month. 
*  Streamlined existing new customer implementation process to increase time to value. 
*  Developed, tracked and reported on key Customer Success Metrics to understand the health of the department.

Director of Customer Success

NAVEX

Led all demand generation efforts for existing customers. 
*  Increased newsletter engagement by 20% year over year.
*  Established customer nurture email stream to existing customers to increase product adoption.
*  Set up, managed and promoted several webinars promoting customer engagement. 
*  Established testing document to outline and track opportunities to increase customer engagement.

Senior Customer Growth Marketing Manager

SambaSafety

Instructional Technologies, Inc acquired by SambaSafety in March 2021
Lead client services team to provide extraordinary customer service.
•	Increased retained revenue by 15% year over year and to date for 2020. 
•	Managed outstanding invoices reduced accounts payable by 50%.
•	Created and refined the customer journey, ensuring that each touch point aligned with our goals 
        to increase engagement and retention.
•	Trained and developed client services staff to provide support, guidance and information to clients 
        that helped support their safety training goals.
•	Developed innovative new programs to educate, advocate for and retain existing clients.

Customer Success Director

Tektronix

Directed and streamlined marketing and customer service processes. 
•	Managed client service goals based on customer and company needs, exceeding goals by over 25%.
•	Completed Problem Solving Process (PSP) course, creating a project that allowed me to reduce the number of units waiting for approval by 10%.
•	Trained new CSR Buyer on process, quotes more than doubled we will still able to exceed goals by 25%.
•	Created, analyzed and refined marketing programs to communicate current promotions and upgrades to existing customers.

Customer Service / Buyer / Marcom Manager

Rodale

Partnered with cross-functional teams to create, execute and analyze web marketing programs for online subscriptions.
•	Increased marketing performance by 15% through testing of online promotions and optimizing online marketing programs. 
•	Created monthly reports for business to share with marketing teams to share best practices across departments.

Digital Marketing Manager

Self Employed

Provided marketing support and direction for several companies including Nautilus, Norm Thompson and Sylvan Learning Centers. 
•	Increased Norm Thompson’s online sales to 50%, up from 25%.
•	Innovated and launched Nautilus’ marketing catalog.  Created new data model to measure success.
•	Provided data mining and consulting services to Sylvan Learning Centers to execute programs to increase enrollments and customer satisfaction.

Marketing Consultant / Contractor

Hanna Andersson

Managed all catalog marketing programs for US customers and prospects to increase sales and profit for organization. 
•	Created expense and sales budgets for over $65 million in sales.
•	Developed, executed, and analyzed testing programs to increase sales and profit.

Marketing Manager

Effective and collaborative self-starter with proven success in creating programs, processes and analyzing those to increase value for the organization and its customers. Thrives in organizations where she can make a difference that impacts both the employees, and the customers served. 

Avid music fan, reader and movie watcher. Loves 2 dogs, almost all types of music, reading, hiking, arts & crafts, biking and movies.

taplio

The Battle

Corey Kossack

Gina Baker

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreCorey Kossack's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Corey Kossack

Gina Baker

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Corey Kossack's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreCorey Kossack's LinkedIn Performance