📝 About FanWord

FanWord is the leading AI-powered storytelling platform in college athletics. We help athletic communications teams create high-quality content more efficiently — including game recaps, feature stories, player bios, nominations, transcriptions, and more.

Today, more than 200 athletic departments and conferences across Division I, II, III, NAIA, and NJCAA use FanWord to save time, tell better stories, and create more consistent coverage for their student-athletes.

We’re a fast-growing startup with a clear mission: help college athletic departments tell more and better stories, regardless of size and budget.

📈 The Opportunity

We’re looking for a highly motivated, relationship-driven, and entrepreneurial person to join our team as a Collegiate Partnerships Manager.

This role sits at the center of our growth strategy. You’ll own and help manage the full partnership lifecycle — from prospecting and outreach to demos, onboarding, renewals, and long-term relationship management.

You’ll work directly with athletic communications professionals, conference offices, and leaders across college sports while helping expand FanWord’s presence nationwide. This is not a “maintain the status quo” role.

We’re in a major growth stage, and we’re looking for someone excited about helping build a category-defining company in college athletics and sports tech. If you thrive in fast-paced environments, find fulfillment in the grind, embrace ownership, and genuinely care about college sports, we’d love to hear from you.

🏆 Required Traits

• Work Ethic: You wake up every morning motivated to compete, create opportunities, and help the company grow. You understand that consistent outreach, follow-up, and relationship-building win over time.
• Entrepreneurial Mindset: You understand that startup sales is not a traditional 8-to-5 role. You’re excited by ownership, accountability, and the opportunity to directly impact company growth.
• Creativity: You know that no two prospects, schools, or conversations are the same. You’re comfortable thinking outside the box, personalizing outreach, and finding creative ways to build relationships and open doors.
• Communication Skills: You display exceptional communication skills across all mediums — phone, email, Zoom, LinkedIn, and in-person conversations. You’re a great listener who can quickly build trust and communicate value effectively.
• Relationship Builder: You genuinely enjoy connecting with people and building authentic long-term relationships. You understand that trust and consistency are at the core of great partnerships and successful sales.
• Attention to Detail: You pay close attention to details and understand that strong organization, thoughtful follow-up, and CRM hygiene are critical in sales. You believe the little things matter.
• Growth Mindset: You’re energized by learning new industries, products, and technologies. You actively seek feedback, continuously refine your sales approach, and are always looking for ways to improve.
• Adaptability: You thrive in fast-moving environments and understand that priorities, strategies, and responsibilities can evolve quickly in a growing startup.
• Process-Oriented: You believe great salespeople combine hustle with process. You enjoy building systems, staying organized, managing pipelines, and using tools effectively to maximize efficiency.
• Tech Savviness: You’re highly comfortable in a remote-first, digital environment and quickly learn new software platforms, sales tools, and AI technologies. You embrace technology as a competitive advantage.
• Coachability: You welcome feedback and constructive criticism because you genuinely want to improve. You understand that the best sales professionals are constantly learning, adjusting, and evolving.

📝 Responsibilities

• Lead Generation: Identify and qualify potential clients through various channels, ensuring a steady pipeline of opportunities to drive revenue growth.
• Sales Conversations: Conduct sales conversations with potential clients and build meaningful relationships with them by understanding their needs, addressing objections, and providing tailored solutions that align with their goals.
• Product Demos: Showcase the value of our offerings through engaging product demonstrations for individual leads, group presentations, and public webinars.
• Outbound Sales: Proactively engage with prospects through emails, calls, social media, networking, and other channels to introduce our solutions and expand our client base.
• Partner Retention & Renewals: Support renewal conversations and ongoing relationship management efforts to help maintain strong, long-term partnerships and ensure accounts remain in good standing.
• Industry Events & Travel: Represent the company at conventions, trade shows, conferences, and other industry events through networking, in-person meetings, product demonstrations, and relationship-building with current partners, prospective clients, and industry stakeholders.
• Product Collaboration: Contribute to product roadmap discussions by sharing feedback and insights gathered from prospects, clients, and partners while collaborating with our internal team on feature ideation, platform enhancements, UX/UI feedback, testing, and ongoing improvements.
• Business Development: Analyze industry trends, customer needs, and competitive dynamics to inform strategic sales approaches and uncover new business opportunities.

💡 Required Qualifications

• 2-4 years of professional experience
• Strong communication and relationship-building skills
• Comfortable working independently in a remote environment
• Ability to manage multiple projects and priorities simultaneously
• Willingness to travel 5-10 times throughout the year

⭐ Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in college athletics
• Experience in B2B SaaS or technology sales
• Experience working at a startup or small company
• Experience working in/with athletic communications, media relations, or content creation
• Familiarity with AI tools and workflows
• Entrepreneurial experience or mindset

💻 Preferred Software Knowledge

• Airtable
• Slack
• Notion
• Canva
• G Suite
• MixMax
• ChatGPT/OpenAI
• DocuSign
• Zoom
• SavvyCal
• LinkedIn

🎁 Compensation & Benefits

• Base Salary: $60k-$75k + Commission. (Compensation based on experience.)
• 100% remote company
• Opportunity to help shape a fast-growing sports tech company 
• Direct influence on product direction and company growth 
• Significant career growth potential as the company scales 
• Professional development opportunities

🚀 Why Join FanWord?

We’re building something meaningful in college athletics and have fun doing so at the same time. Our platform already helps schools save countless hours every week while creating more opportunities for student-athletes to be seen, celebrated, and remembered. The right person for this role will help shape the future of storytelling in college sports.

⌛ Timeline

We’re looking to move quickly and expect this posting to remain open for only a short period of time. If this sounds like the right fit, we’d love to hear from you.

To apply, please fill out the form below.