Regional Director of Sales and Marketing
Description
Purpose of Role
The Regional Director of Sales and Marketing is responsible for leading and driving lead generation to increase student enrolments in our growing portfolio of schools in Malaysia. The role will oversee all aspects of Marketing and Sales/Admissions for the region, working in collaboration with the Regional Head of Retention and Re-enrolment.
This is a senior role, reporting to the Regional Managing Director (RMD), responsible for driving student enrolments to meet our ambitious targets. This is a role for someone who is a natural leader, performance-driven, people-centric and comfortable with using data strategically. The role also involves influencing and building strong relationships with the nine Campus Principals, the School Heads of Sales/Admissions and Heads of Marketing to ensure we work together and grow both our people and enrolments annually.
Our ideal candidate is a commercially driven leader with a strong Sales and Marketing background, ideally from consumer-focused, service-led, or growth-oriented industries. The individual will bring deep expertise in lead/demand generation, customer acquisition, funnel management, conversion optimisation and brand strategy. While experience in K-12 or education is beneficial, the role is open to candidates from outside the education sector who can successfully apply advanced sales and marketing practices to student recruitment and enrolment growth.
The role will define and lead the student admissions and marketing strategy for Malaysia, shaping both short-term enrolment performance and long-term market positioning, while upskilling teams in sales, marketing and conversion methodologies.
ISP Principles
Begin with our children and students: Our children and students are at the heart of what we do. Simply, their success is our success. Well-being and safety are both essential for learners and learning. Therefore, we are consistent in identifying potential safeguarding issues and acting and following up on all concerns appropriately.
Treat everyone with care and respect: We look after one another, embrace similarities and differences and promote the wellbeing of self and others.
Operate effectively: We focus relentlessly on the things that are most important and will make the most difference. We apply school policies and procedures and embody the shared ideas of our community.
Financially Responsible: We make financial choices carefully based on the needs of our children, students and schools.
Learn continuously: Getting better is what drives us. We positively engage with personal and professional development and school improvement.
For more information visit http://www.internationalschoolspartnership.com
About ISP Malaysia
One of the leading education groups in Malaysia, ISP Malaysia operates Tenby Schools, Asia Pacific Schools and Straits International Schools. Our nine campuses are strategically located in the developed areas of Klang Valley in Selangor, Perak, Penang and Johor.
Our schools in Malaysia follow the international school curriculum comprising IGCSE and A-levels, starting at the kindergarten level, while five of the schools also offer the Malaysian National Curriculum.
With over 8,000 students, we have a 60-year history of providing education to students in the country and have gained a reputation for excellence and high standards in education.
We champion a transformative approach to learning that goes beyond the classroom. By igniting our students' curiosity and growing their self-confidence, we empower them to become the next generation of changemakers.
ISP Malaysia is part of ISP, a global community of over 100 international schools across more than 20 countries.
Regional Director of Sales and Marketing: Key Responsibilities
Key Responsibility 1: Ensure that the defined admissions procedures and processes in schools are consistently implemented to maximise enrolments.
Take ownership of, and hold schools including Campus Principals accountable to, agreed admissions targets.
Develop policies and practice documentation to ensure best practice alignment across the group.
Deliver a clear vision and strategy for the region with effective communication to all stakeholders.
Able to review and quality-assure strategy against outcome and think flexibly to meet market demands.
Continue to implement and enhance the admissions procedures in the Region aligned to the ISP reporting framework.
Ensure procedures are clearly defined, reviewed and processed on and between the group CRM and MIS to efficiently manage and nurture qualified leads and appointments to successful enrolments.
Support campuses to continue to improve ISP admissions procedures so they maximise efficiency. Ensure teams are trained in processes and procedures regularly through face-to-face training to troubleshoot issues and find solutions.
Continue to contribute and develop the ISP admissions toolkit according to best practices for seamlessly enrolling students and taking regional compliance into account.
Create Best Practice working groups in the region to better evaluate and share efficient admissions work across schools.
Work with the central team to support training modules and ensure this is contextualised and supported with country-driven professional development for school and regional teams.
Lead the regional call centre to ensure they deliver qualified leads to schools.
Keep up to date on country market demands and changes, including visa regulations, to ensure offers conditional on meeting requirements are correctly identified and processed efficiently.
Ensure the admission assessment process for each school in Malaysia is defined and provides a well-managed, personal, and positive experience for families.
Key Responsibility 2: Working with agents and creating new business.
In collaboration with the Head of Agents, clearly define a strategy for the region to maximise agent enrolments.
Develop a comprehensive and effective agent network.
Continue to develop admissions processes with Campus Principals that support faster overseas student enrolments.
Develop admissions teams at the campus level to communicate content messaging effectively to agents.
Develop agent sales materials, including comprehensive video content, to ensure effective messages about our schools are effectively communicated in key overseas markets.
Develop a B2B network to collaborate on partnerships with employees and track the performance of these initiatives.
Ensure there is a planned costing strategy for the overseas strategy to deliver value for money.
In collaboration with the Head of Retention and Re-enrolment, ensure that a customer loyalty programme is in place and aligned with the customer loyalty programme created for the region.
Ensure the agent engagement team has clear planned actions for each year, and these link to target-based appraisal documentation.
Keep up to date with market trend analysis and adapt the strategy based on local, national, and regional trend data.
Key Responsibility 3: Ensure regions and schools work to achieve enrolment targets and provide accurate and timely data reporting.
Help communicate, agree, and deliver school enrolment targets in line with clear reporting frameworks.
Work with campus admissions staff, Campus Principals, Financial Planners and Analysts and Regional Financial Director to ensure the importance of accurate and timely data entry and reporting.
Work closely with Campus Principals and Regional Sales/Admissions team to ensure targets are reflected within school appraisal documents.
Deliver effective communication strategies to all stakeholders to understand and forecast conversion rates so the budget can be met or adapted.
Along with Campus Principals, ensure Heads of Sales/Admissions make campus teams accountable for improvement in enrolments.
Support campuses with consistent, accurate tracking and reporting of the sales funnel, conversion rates, and ensure this is aligned with marketing strategy.
Ensure all pipeline reporting narratives are clear to key stakeholders, particularly when reporting to the central global team.
Ensure that over time, we get better, and targets improve using clear target-driven long and short-term plans.
Ensure there is a continual review of reporting formats, both upwards to central and downwards to schools, to maximise gaps and support with a clear narrative of the current situation with enrolments.
Forecast student numbers effectively at regular intervals using effective data sets and contextual knowledge to regional, divisional, and global teams. Work with Power BI data.
Work with the Regional Finance Director to ensure budgetary enrolment numbers are realistic and ambitious and create plans to ensure these are met.
Key Responsibility 4: Ensure a positive admission customer experience on campuses.
Create an annual incentive plan for all admissions and marketing staff to help target achievement.
Establish strong working relationships with regional team members, school Senior Leadership Teams and school admissions colleagues to maximise impact.
Ensure campus admissions teams work closely with marketing teams to deliver enrolment targets.
Ensure that all admissions colleagues can identify and understand FAQs from potential parents, update and summarise the most frequent objections from potential parents with corresponding best responses, and clearly articulate their school story and promises.
Support the customer experience programme and audit school admissions processes to ensure schools are delivering concierge-level customer service to prospective parents across all the main touchpoints.
Work with Head of Retention and Re-enrolment on a customer journey experience from admission to enrolment.
Ensure collaterals across the pipeline has clear messaging linked to ISP and campus USPs.
Deliver frequent (at least termly) admissions workshops to ensure admissions staff are fully trained in processes, procedures, and their approach to supporting prospective and existing families.
Work with schools to ensure continuous active engagement with feeder schools and local businesses, and ensure that the schools are kept up to date and can maximise on ISP Group-wide partnerships in Malaysia.
Key Responsibility 5: Lead on the successful delivery of dynamic marketing and communication strategies.
Work closely with the respective Campus Principals, Regional Managing Director, Regional Finance Director to ensure that overall marketing strategies are aligned with annual budgets and objectives for schools in Asia.
Develop catchment area data, analysis and insight (from internal and external data sources).
Develop annual marketing plans and internal communications strategies for Malaysia schools by working closely with the Campus Principals and Marketing teams.
Develop digital marketing strategies and tactical approaches for Malaysia schools that support the regional teams with their country-specific marketing campaigns, social media plans and budgets.
Oversee marketing budgets across Malaysia schools and across the available digital platforms, ensuring budgets are highly optimised and benchmarked against ISP regional costs and industry standards.
Provide expertise in media planning, placements and optimisation for all online platforms utilised by the regional team and schools across the year, including but not limited to, websites, social media, third-party placements and SEM.
Develop a marketing tool kit that can be quickly adapted across schools.
Foster an environment of shared learning and act as a trusted source of marketing information during regional meetings by providing strategic insights, as well as valuable industry benchmarks, trends, and analysis.
Create a Marketing Group in the region to better evaluate and champion efficient marketing work across schools.
Ensure all schools within regional areas have up-to-date brand guidelines in place that are translated and reflected on their website, prospectus, handbook, and any other collaterals produced.
Provide the necessary guidance for new schools/acquisitions within regional teams on the process of brand audit, website audit, developing brand guidelines and their own brand book.
Provide guidance on out-of-home and traditional installations where necessary to reinforce brand presence and recall.
Work with the regional marketing teams and CPs to define content pillars and ensure that all school marketing teams within each region are aware of their own school stories, narratives, school personality and value proposition to help create consistent awareness messages.
Ensure respective ISP school websites in Malaysia are compelling, designed with optimal lead capture in mind, and are constantly evolving in terms of narratives and content.
Key Responsibility 6: Design and deliver targeted and successful digital strategies.
Lead the Regional Marketing Team (and individual school teams) by providing professional support across all schools aligned with annual targets and budgets set to support recruitment and agreed upon with the Regional Managing Director and respective Campus Principals.
Understand (and subsequently optimise) the current digital marketing platforms utilised in the regions and across all schools.
Understand the past efforts implemented, CPL and CPA as well as conversions from leads to QLs, leads to booked appointments, booked appointments to enrolments, and leads to enrolments.
Review reports regularly with the school marketing teams for accuracy in tracking and reporting.
Work with the school marketing teams to optimise lead generation and digital marketing spends across all the schools.
Identify gaps in lead generation marketing and make recommendations to close those gaps and/or improve conversions.
Work closely with the Campus Principals, school marketing teams and academic teams to ensure new efforts/programmes and/or courses that need marketing support are launched and/or published at the most opportune times and are well-planned across all available platforms.
Work closely with the Group and regional Digital Leads to ensure that HubSpot is set up and implemented across all schools and regions within Malaysia and continues to develop.
Oversee the onboarding of new ISP schools to ensure that every school team receives the training and support to capture leads on HubSpot and that all necessary workflows are set up to track all leads in the pipeline correctly.
Ensure marketing teams and schools receive the proper training and support to nurture leads on HubSpot down to enrolment.
Stakeholders:
Internal: Campus Principals; Regional Finance Director; Head of Sales/Admissions Portfolios, School Admissions and Marketing leaders; and respective Heads of International and National Schools.
External: Parents, Agents, Businesses.
Line Management:
Reporting to Postholder: Functional School Sales/Admissions teams (Matrix reporting) and Regional Sales/Admissions Manager and Marketing Manager, Agent Manager, Sales Team Manager.
The Head of Sales and Marketing reports directly to the Regional Managing Director, with a matrix reporting line to the Divisional Chief Operating Officer, Asia.
Qualifications and Experience
Bachelor’s degree preferably in Marketing, Business, Commerce or a related field.
At least 10 years’ experience in senior Sales and Marketing roles, ideally within consumer-facing, service-led or growth-driven sectors (e.g. education, hospitality, healthcare, real estate, FMCG or professional services).
Proven track record in driving revenue growth, market share expansion, customer acquisition and conversion optimisation.
Experience leading multi-site marketing and sales strategies is highly desirable.
Demonstrated experience in leading and developing high-performing, multi-disciplinary sales and marketing teams.
Strong strategic leadership capability, with the ability to set direction, influence senior stakeholders, and translate strategy into execution.
Proven ability to coach, train and uplift teams in sales effectiveness, customer engagement and conversion techniques.
Confident operating in matrix or complex organisational structures, with the ability to partner closely with school leaders and school functional teams.
ISP Commitment to Safeguarding Principles
ISP is committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expects all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
All postholders are subject to appropriate vetting procedures, including an online due diligence search, references and satisfactory Criminal Background Checks or equivalent covering the previous 10 years of employment history.
ISP Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
ISP is committed to strengthening our inclusive culture by identifying, hiring, developing, and retaining high-performing teammates regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender expression, age, disability status, neurodivergence, socio-economic background or other demographic characteristics. Candidates who share our vision and principles and are interested in contributing to the success of ISP through this role are strongly encouraged to apply.