The Strategies for Reaching School Decision Makers that Wins Customers

The key decision-maker at every educational institution is the person who is in control of everything and holds the highest level of management. When you are trying to sell your product or service to a school, you need to market it to the decision-maker so that they buy it. The education system from K-12 has people that hold responsibility for purchasing decisions who are actually the decision-makers and people that encourage the idea along with the positive and negative reviews of the products also known as influencers to the decision-makers. It is imperative to know the role of every decision-maker and the people in authority under the decision-makers.

Academic institutions nowadays require products, technology, services, equipment and all kinds of supplies to make them run successfully. There are plenty of ways one can promote services to decision makers at school. Let’s break it down to 5 ways:-

Find out what the school doesn’t have: Not every school is perfectly well equipped with products and resources essential for a student, staff administration or faculty. Many educational institutions lack certain things that suit the requirements of the school. Take a tour around the institution and observe every end. What technology are they using? Is the technology well upgraded and functional? Do they have proper furniture like chairs and tables for the comfort of students and teachers? Are electrical appliances lighting up the classrooms and are the fans circulating well? Is there appropriate food being supplied to students and staff? Do they have enough equipment for physical activities like sports, dance, music, arts and other extracurricular activities? Will they need a good supply of stationery and school uniforms? Walk your research throughout the school and make a list.

When you are aware of what the school doesn’t have, you could market your essential service or product to the decision maker of the school explaining the benefits students could get out of it. Be clear to target them by employing the right tactics.

Make the decision-maker understand the importance of your service: Convincing someone to buy a product can be difficult because not every product gets sold. To sell your product, you need to develop unique qualities that can attract a buyer effectively. Say you want to encourage a healthy food campaign to a school. Since, schools nowadays load their canteens and cafeterias with junk food that contain artificial additives, colors and high fat, they could affect the children’s health resulting in heart disease or obesity. You could try and change the food habits of the school by implementing ‘eat healthy’ techniques. First, educate the students about the importance of a ‘Balanced Diet’ and how it could benefit them. Second, Create a ‘Healthy Eating’ campaign in the respective canteen within the school campus and make the food on display look colorful and attractive. Third, ensure every nutrient is present in the food, covering a complete balanced diet of all nutrients and that every child gets all the right nutrients to fuel them. Fourth, make them get accustomed to this habit so that they implement it in their personal life as well.

Find ways you could polish your marketing skills with effective strategies that can build your business. Don’t work to generate profits, work to be the reason for the change.

Understand the student’s buying behaviour: Target the students and do research on them to understand their buying behaviour. When you know the needs of the students and the school, you can start selling your products and services based on their buying potential. Look at every element of their purchase behaviour. What are they buying? Why are they buying it? Who are they buying it from? How often do they buy it? What makes them choose a specific brand over others? What kind of medium do they listen to or watch more? What do they read? Understand the means of advertising they resort to. Conduct surveys and case studies to understand what they need. This gives you a clear idea about how to tailor something for them.

Email Marketing: Targeting the right schools are a struggle. More often than not, the gatekeeper gets information that is later filtered before reaching the busy decision-maker. That’s when the email comes into rescue. Drafting an email to get it to read is the key. To get heard and receive attention, you need to bring good value to your audience. When you bring value and have their attention, you will greatly benefit from that. So, sell your words right.

Conclusion: The education industry is looking for opportunities to grow and expand. What makes a school grow is what you feed to it. When you feed your school with the right resources, you see the school and the people in it flourish. You see the growth for more development and opportunities for change. And when you realize the reason for the change, you feel well benefit from it.