K-12 Sales Strategy: The Ten Deadly Sins You Must Avoid

K-12 Sales Strategy: The Ten Deadly Sins You Must Avoid

by Glen McCandless

Glen is an expert on selling and marketing products to schools. For over 25 years he has provided the best sales advice and business development services to the education industry.

How to Deploy a High-Impact School Sales Channel

Understanding how to build and successfully deploy field-based school sales channels has always been an essential skill for managers who run companies that sell to schools.

Achieving distribution results

“Best practices” can drive a high-impact field channel that will reliably impact revenue performance and allow you to meet your profitability goals.

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

Sin #1 - An undefined sales process• A step-by-step plan is necessary to align your field

sales process with how your audience makes purchasing decisions.

• Marketing investments include removing barriers during every stage of the buying process and keeping your focus on your customer and not your reps.

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

Sin #2 - The channel model, roles and responsibilities, are not specified • Specify every resource and

method you plan to use during the process.

• Clearly communicate the roles and responsibilities of every channel.

Avoid this landmine with tools from Selling to Schools:

http://www.sellingtoschools.com

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

• Avoid channel confusion by clearly assigning ownership for sales and marketing tasks aligned to each step of the customer buying process

• Overlaps and redundancies sometimes cause customer confusion and hurt profitability, which may lead to price erosion and a decline in sales.

Sin #3 - Channel conflicts exist

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

Sin #4 - Missing or ineffective sales tools• To remove barriers that stall the buying decision,

communicate a well-constructed sales process to the marketing manager.

• Develop sales tools that eliminate or minimize obstacles, maintain your corporate message, identity, and brand.

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

Sin #5 - Lack of commitment from outside sales to follow through on marketing programs• Ensure that sales managers, field reps, and channel partners

have a voice in marketing program development.• Make field reps aware of marketing plans well in advance of

them being implemented. • Set up a formal planning process and regular performance

reviews to be sure that the channels and channel marketing programs deliver.

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

Sin #6 - Poorly integrated CRM

• Customize your sales automation system to mirror the process.

• Track and measure sales activities against performance objectives.

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

Sin #7 - Lack of solid channel marketing programs• Design field marketing programs that are quick and

easy to implement.• Utilize incentives: Rewarding field reps for following

through on leads can be impactful.

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

Sin #8 - Mismatch between what the sales channels can do and what you want them to do• Field sales channels should be

equipped to perform the tasks that you expect them to without expecting them to do everything.

• Give specifics of what is expected. Vague instructions produce undesired results.

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

Sin #9 - Paying reps too much• Always complete a solid analysis of the true cost

of selling your product or service to schools. In order to calculate the cost of sales, evaluate the tasks needed to ensure you are not paying out more than you’re taking in.

Ten Sins that Cause Field Sales Initiatives to Fail in the Education Market

Sin #10 - The wrong timing, the wrong product, or a poor fit with corporate culture• You must have a sufficiently high average sales and profit

margins to support field sales, along with the financial strength to invest, build and support your sales channels.

• Consider the stage of the product life cycle, business model and culture when making decisions.

Selling to Schools: There's No “Easy Button”

Whether you do it with your own field sales reps, work through resellers, engage channel agents, or hire independent reps, follow sound advice to avoid bad channel behavior and achieve top results.

Additional Resources

• For the full article of “K-12 Sales Strategy: The Ten Deadly Sins You Must Avoid”, click here.

• For more free sales and marketing advice, click here.

• For a free 30-minute expert consultation, click here.