Why You are not able to sell your product to Schools and How to fix it

“Don’t sell life insurance. Sell what life insurance can do.” — Ben Feldman.

This quote stuck to my mind when I started my career almost a decade back and I believe it is something most salesmen fail to follow while they are making a sale. Fact of the matter remains that this is common across all industries leave alone Insurance.

We sales guys are so high-strung the moment the product is placed on our hands and we just can’t wait to sell. We are of the niche variety who believe we can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo. Yes, we can; but where do we fall short? We sell them the product and mind you our beloved customers have heard out hundreds before they heard us. Instead, try selling them the difference your product will make to their lives and you have made a sale.

I have sold Fedena — The school management system and banking products to hundreds of customers before venturing into entrepreneurship. Selling Fedena to customers was no less a bumpy ride than hiking through a torrential rain in the Himalayan terrain. I had to sell to people who were real tough nuts to crack. Now almost after a decade I would like to elucidate why I wasn’t able to sell my products to Schools and how my team and I went about fixing it.

1. I sold the product, not the solution: When I was handed over onus to sell Fedena I was so overwhelmed with the technology and the security features that I started overloading the customers saying “Fedena is built on ROR with 256 bit encryption along with HTML 5”. Sounds like a classy sales statement right? Believe me it made no difference. The client is not the least bit impressed, because he has no clue of what it is and it makes no difference to him. But when I tried telling him you can save on time & cost and increase the productivity and showed him how he can achieve the same; the sale was made.
2. Teachers were Tech-Drunk: When I entered the institutions with the proposal I realized that the teachers were approached by hundreds like us and bombarded with features. The teachers are least interested to give us a patient hearing. Their feedback to the Management is “ This product is not fit for our school” Well the buck stops right there, nobody wants to hear those words; the sale gets into a dead end. The best way for us to enter the school was through partners. We partnered with vendors who already are selling to the institutions through our different Partner Plans.
3. Not solving the real problem: Once I managed to make a sale through the partners the next problem I faced was to identify the real problems they face and how to solve them. I realized that the teachers were bereft of technology and the fear factor on making mistakes and being reprimanded was high. Artificial Intelligence, Big Data or Data intelligence were all Greek and Latin to them and is no problem solver. What mattered to them is how does an ERP reduce their manual work load and how it helps them to do what they do best i.e; teaching. That is when we decided Fedena should concentrate on features the schools require the most like attendance, finance, HR etc and help the institutions achieve their objectives.
4. Schools have no money to pay for the castle: The biggest problem that any non product company would have faced is when we realize the school expects a castle and they have no money to pay. This is when the relationship breaks. It is not the mistake of the schools to demand, because every school differs in their operations and thus the requirements. The management gets into a state of bewilderment when they hear the amount they need to spend to customize to their requirement. This is where we realized you can not make every customer happy with your product. The wise move as to have a generic version on SAAS at a lower cost and the one with deep pockets were allowed to customize and this was the Achilles heel of an ERP implementation we cracked and what followed was success.
5. Decision Makers different from users: The biggest predicament which happens to be a can of worms to sort out for an ERP. The purchase is always made by the owners or the management and the users are the administrative and the teaching staff. Typically, the purchase is not in coherence and the implementation is doomed for a failure. This is where the concept of Alpha team of say 5 members help. The Alpha team constitutes of 3 members from the teaching staff, one from the Management and one from the company and they are responsible for all the decisions, results and failures. This approach has seen many successful implementations.
6. Take care of the customer’s, else your competitors will: Well, this is the thumb rule most companies ignore. Once the sale is made we think it’s the end of the duty of the salesperson. This is the point where we are losing the customer and the prospective one from his reference. It doesn’t take big customer service measures or big budgets to keep the customers happy. It only needs a few calls and a periodic email and a scheduled visit and you have a happy customer for life.

All said and done selling any product to any education institution is the most convoluted task and needs unparalleled energy, innovation, patience, and commitment to sustain in the presently crowded education market.

As Richard Branson said “The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all.” So be brave and try to conquer rather than waiting for the fairies show up with miracles.

Original Article on my Linkedin.