Knowing Before You Go

Dec 14, 2009

By: LeiLani Cauthen, VP Sales, Publisher, Converge

More than seven years ago, the Center for Digital Education launched the Digital Education Navigator.  A sales tool extraordinaire.  Then we set about marketing it and lo, found that while some people trying to sell education jumped on it and drank up every drop like the tool was an icy drink and they just stumbled in from the Sahara, others were so-so.  Getting the so-so ones fully on board, each sales person fully toured through the site and using it to the limit, was hard work.  Along the way companies discovered some interesting things and so did we.  

Interesting things:

• Sales staffs fully trained on how to use the Navigator tool used it frequently.  
• Sales staff that were making the most revenue for their companies were the most frequent users of the Navigator tool.
• Sales managers who had periodic group calls with Center analysts on to brief their staffs on market dynamics were able to make realistic goals and keep enthusiasm high. 
• Success stories like “We made $5 million the first year just with use of the tool” and “I made my quota because of Navigator” became usual. 

Knowing all these things, it is remarkable to me that it is still a lot of work to get more education sales people from new high tech companies involved.  I of course had to discover why, and these are the reasons I’ve learned along the way.  

1)    Many sales staff do not know the market well enough to discern the relative importance of the Navigator tool.  They are not trained in the structure of the market, the market trends, how bids work, the significance of “knowing before you go” when calling into education.  Being caught in this maelstrom of confusion, a first reaction from many is “well there are no bids specifically for me.”  Well of course not.  Not every company is blessed with so much market share and renown that bids are sole-sourced and even use the brand name in the language of the bid for your convenience using the search engine.  If you know your product, and you understand procurement and how it works in education, then there is a lot of who’s-spending-on-what that leads you to your own nirvana of bids that will work for you.  

2)    The frenetic pace of sales activity seemingly does not allow a “know before you go” mentality.  It’s totally alien in many organizations.  This means each activity is a stab-in-the-dark seeking sales.  The dreaded cold-call or saunter-up-to-someone-that-looks-promising at an event.   It doesn’t take into account prior activity in accounts, the full complement of contacts within an account, the budgets, the size of an account.  This is usual business – for the 19th century.   

3)    Many sales staff are trained to follow “leads” only, handed to them by marketing staff, and have never been taught big league sales and working an area up and down, mapping out accounts, and using strategy before tactics.  

4)    Not to beat a dead horse, but not knowing the market’s procurement methods kills enthusiasm the minute a deal comes down to a close and the sales person is asked for a State “contract number,” and they have no idea what that means.  

Okay there are other reasons such as “marketing won’t let me become a Member” and more, and
I could probably go on and on, but the original point of this diatribe is that education sales people can and should “know before going.”  We live in an age of amazing amounts of information and savvy.  You can find a lot of it by poking around yourself, looking up your accounts, becoming one with the region you sell.  

You can get sales training on the market’s structure, the trends, what sells and how to talk the talk.  You can find out about the terminology unique to education procurement.    You’ll sell more, you’ll stress less.  

You can know before you go.