Overview

Elevate K-12 is expanding access to certified teachers nationwide through live virtual instruction, helping school districts overcome staffing shortages and bring critical courses to more students.

But as staffing shortages intensified and the education landscape grew more uncertain, the team needed a faster way to identify districts with real needs and reach the right decision-makers.

Starbridge became a key part of Elevate K-12’s go-to-market motion by helping the team identify districts with active vacancies faster, improve lead quality, and make outreach more relevant.

The Opportunity

Before Starbridge, Elevate K-12’s sales team relied on manual research to identify opportunities. Reps searched district job boards for teacher vacancies across inconsistent websites, making prospecting slow and unclear.

Matt Landwehr, Senior Director of Sales, described it as “an operation that didn't have as much direction or clarity."

The team needed a faster way to identify districts with real staffing needs and start more relevant conversations.

The Solution

Elevate K-12 adopted Starbridge to streamline how the sales team identifies and prioritizes opportunities across thousands of school districts.

Starbridge enabled the team to aggregate district job board data at scale, automatically surface vacancy signals, and quickly identify districts with staffing gaps Elevate K-12 could address.

"Starbridge was able to scrape and find a lot of that information much more quickly for us, which saved us a lot of hours so that we could get on the phone more," said Matt. "But we were also calling the right people, which really made us more efficient and effective."

With clear insight into district needs, reps could replace generic outreach with targeted conversations, for example: "You have a math opening at your middle school. We'd love to talk about how we can support you."

"That's a much different conversation," Matt said. "Even if they don't know who we are, they know they have a need they're struggling with."

The Impact - More Meetings, Better Leads, Stronger Conversion

With Starbridge, Elevate K-12 shifted from manual prospecting to signal-driven outreach based on real district staffing needs. By surfacing teacher vacancy signals across thousands of districts, the platform eliminated hours of research and allowed SDRs to focus on targeted outreach.

"We saw more lead generation, higher-quality leads, and better conversion rates — and our meetings booked per SDR increased," says Matt.

With clearer signals and more relevant messaging, reps began leading conversations with a district’s actual challenge rather than a generic pitch.

"Those hours being used on warm leads led to better conversion rates and better meetings — not just more meetings, but higher-quality meetings," Matt explains.

The result: a more effective sales motion that helps Elevate K-12 focus on the districts where it can have the greatest impact. 

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