Vasilii Kiselev, Co-Founder & Adviser at Legacy Online K12 School. Empowering Future Generations through Digital Education.
When it comes to designing and refining edtech offerings in today’s market, it’s not enough to just develop a unique educational technology; you also need to find a client ready to embrace your product and find a proper use for it. No matter what your targets are—schools, universities or individual learners—you should be a skilled salesperson, as well, capable of interesting potential investors and buyers. And how you act should depend on who you are working with. Based on my experience in the edtech and educational fields, here are some insights into how edtech developers can build stronger rapport with clients.
Understanding Education Procurement Processes
Education procurement is a process of acquiring goods, such as textbooks, applications and services, for educational institutions. The latter may include renovation projects, introduction of new technologies, etc. All of this applies to the goal of maintaining proper functioning of the establishment, boosting its efficiency and overall providing quality education.
Following modern trends, many educational institutions now strive to implement various technologies that facilitate the learning process and make it more exciting, including interactive apps for immersive learning, tracking systems, smart devices, educational games and more. When dealing with vendors, they tend to assess such aspects as reliability, quality of goods or services and cost-effectiveness, since budgeting is often vital for schools and universities.
Other points that are typically top of mind for educational institutes include the product or service’s adaptability and flexibility, social responsibility, training opportunities, regular monitoring and evaluation, effective collaboration, strategic planning and the long-term relationship with the edtech supplier. In my experience, limiting yourself to traditional selling techniques is unlikely to help you build credibility. That’s why I recommend looking for a more customer-centric approach.
Value-Based Selling
Even if you consider selling your product as the primary goal, this process should not be blunt and oppressive. You likely already know better than to push too hard and unwittingly alienate customers with an excessively direct approach.
When it comes to modern marketing strategies, I’ve found that value-based selling is many customers’ most preferred option. In contrast to abusing, persistent sales messages, customer-centric methods can help you stand out favorably against competitors, create a positive reputation and ensure happy long-term clients.
In essence, value-based selling prioritizes direct communication with the prospect and is built upon conveying information about the product’s unique properties that can be offered to the customer. By sticking to this strategy, you can focus on promoting the very characteristics of your educational technology that would most benefit the needs and goals of the particular client.
In short, the major principles of value-based selling to keep in mind are:
• Articulate the product’s main characteristics that potentially tackle the prospect’s key problems and thus matter most to them.
• Give substantial data analysis as to future expectations and outcomes.
• Use effective collaboration all along the way.
Become a trusted partner and advisor to your customer, ready to clarify up unclear points and solve any emerging problem. And when the product is introduced, follow up with the customer to address their concerns and provide constant comprehensive support, which is important for the image of your company and product.
Tailoring Pitches To Different Stakeholders
According to Forrester, in 2024, consumers will exercise better awareness and selectiveness in their buying habits and strive to maximize economic value. With such caution and skepticism in mind, I find that focusing on personalized benefits and problem-tackling is a reasonable way to reach a customer.
To appeal to different consumers and eventually win them over, you must first know their needs. Conduct a proper study to learn the prospects’ sphere of activity, competitors, current role and background, as well as to understand their pain points. For this, you can use the company’s website, social media, recent press releases or LinkedIn career history. With all this information at hand, you should be able to more easily determine the right direction for future negotiations.
Learning from a value-based approach, one should not jump into the sales pitch too early. Earning the trust of the client is often a long and complex process with many factors to consider; however, it can pay off greatly. Give them space and let them explain the situation themselves, while you provide only necessary comments or ask leading questions to give them more insight into the values of your product. Make sure that your product’s benefits are easy to understand, relevant to the customer and aligned with their needs. Depending on the prospect, you can focus on a qualitative, financial, differentiation-based or security-based strategy.
Let’s say you have designed an educational app for a junior school. When contacting a potential buyer, try targeting the advantages of your program for working with younger children, such as a clear and colorful interface, explanations in plain language, customized settings for children with special needs or maybe some mascot characters that help get kids involved in educational games. Similarly, you could address the main issues of educating high schoolers, such as systematization, interesting presentation of the study content, friendly competition within a class, etc. The more you educate about your product, the better; appearing as a credible source of information to the prospect can add weight to your offer in general.
Final Thoughts
When you gain the trust of a potential client by providing proof of your edtech product’s values in a clear, informative and engaging way instead of hard selling, it’s only natural that your proposition should become more appealing. Be a friendly consultant who is there to help the customer make the most reasonable purchasing decision. Share possible strategies for overcoming their challenges, but do not tell them what to do; instead, provide an example involving other buyers. Finally, keep your conversation in an amiable, personable and supportive tone, with open-ended questions and bits of small talk, demonstrating a sincere interest in the prospect and their situation.
As I am also an adviser at an online school, I try to abide by all the principles that I mentioned in this article, and the results I get keep proving them right. Every small step you take on the way to a sales pitch should be aimed at the specifics of the client’s goals as well as the most relevant features of your edtech product.
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