hello everyone and welcome to today's
webinar the business of selling to
schools we appreciate your taking a
break from your busy day to join us
before we start the program I'll review
just a few quick housekeeping items
we're going to be covering a lot of
information today about the education
market and how to maximize your sales
and marketing efforts but we will leave
time at the end of the presentation for
questions you can go ahead and send in
your questions as they come up for you
throughout the presentation and we'll
put them in the queue to be answered at
the end just send a question simply
click on the questions tab on your
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type your question into the top box and
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we'll get it and as I said we'll put it
in the queue to be answered at the Q&A
period at the end if you have any
technical difficulties during the
presentation please use that same
question feature to get our attention
and we'll do our best to resolve the
problem for you we will be providing you
with a recording of the webinar and a
copy of the PowerPoint slides again
there's a lot of data and charts and
graphs and good stuff that you're going
to see today don't worry too much about
taking screenshots and taking notes
you'll get a copy of the PowerPoint and
that recording by email probably
tomorrow morning so keep an eye on your
inbox for that we'll also be posting the
materials to the agile website at a July
Sun edcom so if you miss that email or
it ends up in your spam box okay take a
look on the website and you'll be able
to access them there as well now let's
get started I'm pleased to innovate
introduce our speakers today verlan
Stevens and Scott Brooks as agile
education marketing CA oh and managing
partner Berlin Stephan specializes in
helping companies use data to better
understand the specific traits and
nuances around education and then use
that information to drive
decision-making that produces successful
results with educators Berlin has
developed this unique expertise over
more than 30 years spent compiling
managing and analyzing large information
databases after graduating with a
Bachelor of Science and Mathematics with
an infant emphasis in computer science
from Boise State University Bruin went
on to hold senior management positions
including director of information
technology and database compilation for
quality education data vice president of
development of code correct and director
of M firm
technology for the Arabian horse
registry of America he also served as
director of information systems at
health decisions international and
director of operations and product
management at IHS health information
Berlin uses his passion and expertise in
data trending and market intelligence to
spearhead to agile data compilation
efforts and to guide customers in their
sales and marketing efforts to educators
Berlin is joined today by Scott Brooks
who is vice president of corporate
development for agile Scott has more
than 25 years of experience in a variety
of corporate and business development
leadership positions including vice
president of corporate business
development at Kuragin and Managing
Director at Iran he also has experience
building software and services
organizations from the ground up as an
entrepreneur he launched and solar
successful software company to IBM built
and ran software and services practices
and serve as a key member of leadership
for several tech data companies Scott
earned his degree in computer and
information sciences and support from
Queen's University in Kingston Ontario
we're excited to have Rona Scott with us
today and are excited to dive into the
data that they've got to share so I'm
going to go ahead and hand the program
over to Scott now well thank you very
much Emily and thank you for that
introduction we're gonna start off by
talking about you know the education
market information today we're going to
talk about market intelligence we're
going to talk about the purchasing
lifecycle and so on and first of all I
want to say you know why do you even
really care about this and really it's
about the marketing to the right
educator at the right time with the
right content and understanding the
school year by cycle and what educators
are looking for when they're looking for
it is essential when marketing to k12
you can use this kind of information in
various areas to build and grow your
business
using up-to-date market information
helps you build better business plans
and product plans it helps you determine
if you even have a viable market for
your product or service using this to
develop better products and realistic
business plans can really help you build
a company that educators trust and then
secondly knowing that segment you're
marketing to allows you to be more
specific and innovative in your
offerings and your messaging and allows
you to craft your marketing to capture
the attention of the right people at the
right time and then your marketing team
can use the same information to target
messaging and content more thoughtfully
because really the days of mass mailing
and general messaging are over we're
going to cover how marketing can use
this information to personalize content
across channels districts and educators
and improve your marketing are alive and
as I'm sure you're well aware the
decision-making process and buying cycle
in this market is very unique from
others so we'll talk a little bit about
the process and how we can navigate
through it and then thirdly when your
sales reps reach out you want to make
sure that they have a substantive
conversation with these people because
it takes time to get someone on the
phone and respond to email in our posts
during a sales cycle and you don't want
your sales reps to just get that far
along to simply ask a superintendent you
tell me about your district by
understanding what's most important to
the person in the specific district that
they're in at the specific time reps can
build a stronger lasting relationship so
on the next slide we're going to start I
thought I would start off mostly with a
few interesting facts about the
education sector and the first one is
that decision making and purchasing is a
group activity most schools and district
purchase decision purchase decision
makings are made collaboratively by
groups of educators this means that you
can't just target one title in a
district or even if that job title is
the one who signs your purchase orders
it's important to understand all of the
players who need to be involved and what
roles that they play for instance for an
online literacy program you'll
potentially need to reach out to
curriculum directors technology
directors and literacy specialists at
the district level depending on the size
of the district you may also want to
include
intendant's and assistant
superintendents now librarians
principals assistant principals
technology coordinators and lead
teachers are also important to include
at the school level
each of these job titles has different
needs and questions so each of their
perspectives should be addressed
specifically in your marketing
communications and to back that up for
example here is a group of people that
are involved in decision making for an
EdTech EdTech purchase there's lots of
different people that play a part in
purchasing your product from the IT and
curriculum directors to the media
specialists and teachers make sure you
know who you are messaging what each of
these people are looking for and when
they want to hear your message now
interesting fact too is that the length
of time it takes to make a purchase
decision it's fairly consistent across
all product categories however
purchasing decisions are rarely made
quickly more than half of the schools
over 52% take between one and six months
to make purchasing decisions with less
than 40% taken between one to three
months now interesting fact 3 is the
majority of schools almost 60% finalize
their budget in q2 April May and June of
each year that means they've decided
what products that bill purchased but
the actual purchases most likely won't
occur until the summer where 60 to 70%
of purchases occur between late May and
late August so now let's go on to the
overall purchasing lifecycle now we all
know in that k-12 education is an
exciting market but depending on the
product or service you're selling the
purchasing cycle can be a little bit
bewildering and often frustrating and
paving the way for a smooth sales
process
starts with tailoring your marketing
communications to provide what educators
need at each stage of the
decision-making process and in k-12
timing is essential you must connect
with educators at the right time you
want to understand when how and to whom
to market throughout the year so to
optimize this k12 by cycle we look at it
as three stages and that lead towards
the purchase decision planning awareness
and familiarity and consideration and
trial and then hopefully that rolls into
a purchase and I'm going to go into each
of these in a little bit more detail as
we go over there but a quick overview
now is that May June and July is when we
basically create the plans within the
education sector and then August through
December you're building awareness and
familiarity they want to know start to
learn who you are this is a company and
product level branding effort on your
part it answers questions like who are
you what are your products and why
should I care and then January through
April is when k-12 starts to express
their interest and they want to see a
little bit more about your product and
maybe even kick into a trial and then in
early summer is now when they're
interested in purchasing they pass it to
the purchasing department and they want
to actually have your product purchased
and ready to go
for the start of the school year now
this is a 12-month cycle that we're
looking at here it's really a nine month
consideration into a purchasing in the
summer most products can fit within this
but but you'll find that some more
complex might take a little bit longer
you'll have to maybe tack on a few more
months on the awareness phase and other
phases throughout this but the key is
the consideration and trial phase from
January to April tends to be fairly
locked and stone based on the annual
school year for for the educators as
well and then if your product is kind of
supplementary or discretionary spending
you can basically be
quote by now message out there on pretty
much throughout the entire year so if we
go to the first phase planning is this
is where you create a plan and you
should be creating plans every year and
this really happens and focuses through
the months of May through July and this
is when educators assess their needs and
do their research even though students
are gone for the summer school and
district administrators are still hard
at work
this makes summer a good time to connect
with these decision makers whose time is
at a premium when they're in the school
session so while classroom teachers
certainly had lighter schedules in the
summer they still are using their time
out of the classroom for activities like
professional learning and lessons
planning they're also researching new
products and programs to support their
teaching now to maximize the planning
months you want to scale back your
marketing just a little bit in the
summer but it's important to stay in
communication with them even if it's you
know on a less frequent basis you can
optimize your website for your target
keywords as that educators evaluate the
previous school year and assess their
plans for the coming year they're likely
to head to the Internet to find answers
ideas and solutions so make sure your
website pops up on page one or two of
the search engines for the keywords and
phrases most relevant to the challenges
your product solves for the educators
and then also share evaluation tools and
planning guides because your SEO may get
them there but you have to have the
content and answers to help keep them
there so you could have Rubik planning
guides articles that detail how
strategies are implemented and with the
results with what results are the kind
of content educators are looking for for
the during the summer months you can
also share it over your email and social
media as well and feel free to even host
some webinars because educators have a
little bit more free time to attend
those that's the planning phase
so now only jump to the awareness and
familiarity phase by the time the doors
open in August all major purchases for
the new school year have been made so
it's time to start guiding the educators
on their journey towards their next
buying season the types of questions
that you want to have them be able to
answer is who are you why should I care
how are you different and how can you
ease my considerable burden so lead
leads are basically what you're really
looking for during this period so you
want to focus your marketing tacit
tactics on top of the lead funnel
generation email continues to be one of
the best ways to generate and nurture
leads during this time of year you can
use email to share newsletters and
content like case studies white papers
and videos that showcase what your
product does and why it's better than
other solutions and competitors Direct
Mail can make your organization's stand
out from the crowd
believe it or not it's still actually
coming on as a resurgence now and
printed material are kept longer than
emails or other materials downloaded
from a website so it has longer shelf
life and then webinars workshops and
conferences can all be a big lead
generator and are highly effective ways
to introduce their company and start
conversations with educators you can
reach a wide national audience with
webinars and also use recorded webinars
for ongoing leads gen on your website
and workshops conferences may be more
localized than webinars but nothing is
more powerful than that face-to-face
meeting and then put yourself in the
spotlight as well use social media it's
a perfect way to it's a perfect
marketing channel to share content and
help educators to get to know your
organization and you can even start to
use PR at this point to showcase the
successes of your current clients
because they want to know how it's going
to fix their burdens what how it's going
to benefit them and the fall is also a
really great time to sell directly to
classroom teachers particularly products
like classroom
decorations supplemental materials such
as workbooks flashcards apps classroom
supplies and so on because teachers
spend on average four hundred and ninety
dollars of their own money on their
classroom themselves so it's definitely
an opportunity for you to capture some
of those funds as well so from the
awareness phase we want to roll into
what's the consideration and trial so by
now they've gotten a really good feel
for your product your brand awareness is
done very well your calls to action at
that time we'll learn more find it a
little bit more now you want to get to a
point where more than half of the
school's finalized their budgets in
April May and June so this means really
that the start of the calendar year has
an important time to be in front of the
educators they can't budget for your
products that they don't know about them
so that awareness and familiarity phase
is critical and now we want to give them
information they need to make decisions
when educators research solutions for
the classrooms and schools or districts
there's a specific information or seat
they're looking for as you can see here
in the slide and when crafting your
spring marketing campaigns make sure
you're making it easy for educators to
make informed decisions by proactively
providing the information that they need
marketing channels that tend to work the
best at this time of year email is
always continue sending those emails in
the spring but you might want to shift
your focus from providing overi
information and inviting people to learn
to delivering strong information around
efficacy and results push for demos and
product trials and your calls to action
make sure you're staying in touch with
all the leads you generate in the fall
spring is the time to move them forward
in the decision-making process if you
use content marketing to generate leads
start to send more product focused
information and less general content get
people excited about the product and
what it can do for them Direct Mail
works great here as well depending on
what you're selling spring is a great
time to send catalogs and products
product samples and educators still rely
on and share catalogs even in the
digital age and webinars workshops and
conferences spring is a great time to
put your customers to work for you and
list them to share your product is
working how your product is working and
being used educators want to know that
your solution has worked for classroom
schools and districts that are similar
to their own testimonials this is the
time to use them invite your customers
to present during a webinar or at a
conference and then keep your visibility
high again put your customers to work
writing blogs articles you can share
with the education media and across your
social media channels showcasing how
your product is working and what kinds
of environments it's working in and part
of that consideration trial on the next
slide would be what are you actually
what are people actually going to
respond to so you need to know who you
are communicating with and when and
you'll see that it's not a
one-size-fits-all so we drill down in
here a little bit more one thing agile
that we're constantly doing is gathering
information and developing tools and
solutions to help marketers understand
the education market and we gather it at
the district the school administrator
and teacher level through various means
including performing regular surveys
similar to this one recently we asked
educators what do you really want to
know from vendors about their product or
service and then you as marketing and
sales people not only have to understand
the market who's in it the role they
play the part that they play a decision
making and when to connect with them
depending on which district size that
they're in but at the end of the day it
really gets down to who has used this
product and did it work how is it going
to solve my problem or problems and and
personally how am I going to pay for
this and principals are less interested
in features than they are about how is
this going to make my life better and
who's already used this to make it to
show some testimonials and if you think
about it in the types of marketing we're
talking about you only really have a few
seconds to get their attention and make
sure you're hitting them with something
that they actually care about and then
now once you've gone through all of this
then BOOM you're at the summer you're at
the very end you're at the purchasing
side of it in the next slide and summer
is the best time of year and not just
because it's like sunshine and long days
but summer is when 60 to 70 percent of
purchases are made in the school market
and it's summertime when all of your
hard work generating and nurturing leads
over the previous nine months starts to
pay off so hopefully at this point
congratulations you've made a sale and
now we can convert into what really
feeds into this from a an information
standpoint so we've talked mostly about
the buy cycle and the timing right now
now we want to get into the information
intelligence and demographic side of it
so this is when I'll pass it over to
Voight thanks god appreciate the
Passover and the intro part of this
particular presentation so we all know
the u.s. education market tends to be a
somewhat fragmented market between the
schools the district's charter schools
early childhood centers and it's really
a matter of starting to break that down
into manageable pieces and really
understand the characteristics of who
you're talking to and who you're trying
to talk to what they're interested in
and and be able to group those down and
have appropriate messages it Scott said
it's so important to get the identify
the right educator the right time and
with the right message so that your
marketing efforts are effective leading
to that sales cycle in the summer months
we can see here we've got over 16,000
school districts 150,000 schools and in
total we see a huge amount of churn in
that that marketplace he was get an
annual churn rate of over 20 percent I
was just reading an article yesterday on
a
local school district here in Colorado
of Harrison and they saw they're seeing
this year a 26% turnover in their their
overall staff 26% of their teaching
staff their superintendent is left there
just seeing a massive kind of churn and
we certainly see overall in our file
that's on a certainly on the high side
but there is a fairly constant fairly
high rate of change on the k-12 side we
see more than a million educators come
on each year and a million educators
leave it's a very dynamic space let's go
ahead and talk a little bit about what
the districts really look like we
recently kind of broke down the
districts and really started to segment
we'll look at them a bit differently
from the the largest mega districts at a
hundred thousand students down to the
smallest at fifteen hundred students and
below and some of those are clear down
to you know fifty sixty students so the
diversity of this market in terms of the
size of these organizations is fairly
dramatic as well as the the kind of
numbers that fall within each one of
those if we look at the mega districts
there's really a very small number of
them I was even surprised myself I
pulled the numbers for this that there
are only thirty of these districts in
the country that have more than a
hundred thousand students on average
it's right around two hundred thousand
students they have 12 thousand teachers
three hundred schools and their average
budget exceeds two billion dollars these
are the Dallas Chicago LA Unified type
of districts they're a very challenging
group to be able to to sell to almost
always takes a direct sales team that
has the ability to get in interact with
the right people they are characterized
by large Committees of a lots of
different people the stakeholders are
across a large group and typically take
a long time for them to to make
decisions and gather and form a
for this group communication is varied
you know email social digital and web
advertising your website Direct Mail can
be a possibility so there's really you
know these guys are going to be a
particularly challenging group and take
a long it's a long sale cycle with a
significant investment in terms of to be
able to reach into those those schools
in districts the next group is is what
we characterize is a large district more
than 10,000 students and 924 in the
country fall into this category on
average about twenty three twenty five
thousand students 1,500 teachers 35
schools they're an order of magnitudes
from our first group so we're the first
group was to over 2 billion these have
245 million in terms of average budget
so you know we're things scaled down but
we're talking about a much larger group
here instead of the 30 we had initially
we've got 924 in this group to work with
and starting to understand what those
districts look like how they make
decisions we still have you know
committee level purchasing and there's
going to be teams of people analyzing
looking at making these kind of
decisions and so still the kind of reach
out is very similar to the large ones in
terms of the the overall channels we're
utilizing and how we're reaching out to
those but these will be characterized
with quicker decision making than the
very largest districts smaller numbers
of people being involved less
stakeholders fewer number of schools
being impacted with with the purchasing
decisions our next group is our medium
districts so four to ten thousand
average six thousand students ten
schools in the district almost five
hundred teachers now we're down to 75
million dollar budget but we're up in
terms of numbers to sixteen hundred
almost seventeen hundred districts have
fallen to this cat
Corie they start to have those common
characteristics these you know are
characterized if we look at districts
like a Flagstaff for a Barstow Unified
in California so nice medium-sized
districts where it's easier to connect
with the right people because there's
just so many fewer in the organization
when we're only talking the entire
district having under five hundred
teachers you know if we look at the the
ratio of you know ten schools we only
have ten principles we're reaching out
to so the scale starts to come down and
become much more manageable in terms of
understanding who they are and what
their needs are our next group small to
medium sized districts our numbers keep
jumping
you know those with more than 1500
students we've got 3,300 of those five
schools on average 31 million dollar
annual budget so continues to scale and
up in terms of numbers of available down
in terms of number of people were having
to interact and understand what's going
on in the smallest group those with less
than 1,500 students represents over
10,000 of the sixteen thousand school
districts fall into this category they
have an average of only two schools 56
teachers and so and an average budget of
just under ten ten million dollars so
the large number here one of the things
that really characterizes these small
districts is the large number hats that
are being worn you know we've got two
schools in terms of real administrative
level people we probably have a
superintendent and two principals and so
we're really dealing with a very small
group of high-level decision makers and
they're each wearing multiple hats you
know either one of the principal's is
taking on maybe the elementary principal
also manages all their elementary
curriculum or the superintendent takes
on curriculum for secondary
understanding their additional roles and
things that they're doing is important
but we're communicating now
with you know we don't have the large
committees we had in the other one but
we still have distributed
decision-making but on a much smaller
scale than we did these districts have
the ability to make much quicker
decisions and move more quickly than the
larger districts we look next at how
decisions are made we we saw some of the
earlier pieces around what's important
but you know I think again one of the
most the the piece I liked on this one
was really around aligning with the need
that's the number one factor in terms of
buying decisions
if understanding what their needs are
and the schools are pretty explicit in
terms of producing that we know all
kinds of information in this market from
the number of ALL type students the
number of Title one students the
ethnicity mix we understand huge amounts
of information on student performance
and on a particular school is this
school performing well in the middle or
are they a struggling school and so we
have a huge amount of information that
we can really understand the particular
school and what their needs are and we
can make sure that as we're marketing
and reaching out that we're putting out
the right message to the right group
there's no reason to put out a message
about struggling students to a very high
performing school
that's not their number one challenge
you have to make sure that when you're
reaching out you understand the needs of
the district and the school and you're
aligning to that and making sure that
that's what's going to get you get you
the the response that you're looking for
is having that right message you know
the other the other side that you know
go ahead I'm sorry back up one they do
whatever one more comment there the the
other thing is the you know most the
factor most likely to turn off of a
vendor off people to a vendor excuse me
offers that aren't relevant to my job
you know it's just again you got to
understand your audience or you're
actually damaging your brand reputation
by putting out
irrelevant messaging to a particular to
a particular person so part of it is you
know it's really starting to understand
more and more about what our districts
thinking about what are they talking
about and several years ago we developed
our ed intel product where we're going
out and gathering you know large amounts
of information about schools and
districts and what they're actually
talking about we we built our own data
mining capability to go out gather this
information and this mean one of the
first times where we really started to
look at the trending in those areas and
what that looks like in terms of what
are people talking about and how
frequently next slide please so when we
look at that it was really interesting
to see we I took the information we had
starting in 2016 and our current
information from from 2018 our ED Intel
data is updated constantly so we're
constantly out gathering this
information because of the large number
of districts and schools that we're
gathering this information from it takes
two sixty days to make the entire
circuit each time so this information is
constantly changing there's always new
information being added and when we look
we can see things that are you know
everything most things have trended up
if we will and the biggest gains are in
areas like stem you know we two years
ago we had about forty five hundred
districts talking about stem we now are
over 8,000 districts that are talking
about stem and the stem activities in
their district project-based learning
has been a big gainer
we went from around 3,500 districts
talking about that to over six thousand
districts now focused on project-based
learning blended learning another big
game you know we went from just two
years ago only 2,500 districts now well
over 4,500 districts that are focused in
it and talking about blended learn
the opportunities that presents for
their clients are for the clients for
their students the next one is flipped
learning whoops I'm sorry
not quite
flipped learning flipped has continued
to gain but not at quite the same rate
that some of the others are online
learning has gained but very steady
competency-based learning has been
pretty flat and that term in particular
is used in certain states very heavily
but not necessarily universally across
but by understanding not only the trend
information and what's important and
what are people more and more talking
about but we can also drill down very
specifically to exactly what districts
are talking about these particular
topics so when you go in you can start
the conversation knowing that they're
already having they already have blended
learning in place or they already have
competency-based or project-based
learning and so you can start the
conversation knowing more about the
district and hey maybe you should try
this thing you know what phase they're
in in terms of their evaluation and
discussion thanks
we also look at things like particular
devices so we can see that iPads two
years ago a little over 8,000 districts
were had specific discussion around
iPads now it's over 12,000 so that has
continued to climb and the fact that
12,000 out of the 16,000 districts are
have discussion of iPad on their website
that's that's pretty pretty interesting
to me I was really surprised that the
numbers were continued to be that strong
chromebook went from right around 4,000
to 8,000 so they've doubled in the last
two years one to one has continued to
overall to climb climb steadily so I've
gone from 4,000 to 7500 a little over
7500 and again it's important when
you're approaching a you know with a
particular product knowing what the
environment is what platform are they
running on do they have the one-to-one
do they have the bandwidth necessary to
support the product there's no reason
going out and chasing after schools that
don't have the the technology to support
a particular product yeah focus your
efforts on those that really do have the
underlying capabilities
changing a little bit we're going to
move on into kind of a different areas
how do how do our educators gather
information you know it was interesting
survey we did that word of mouth
continues to be the most dominant method
that educators gather information they
talked to other educators followed by
email so reason our email has continued
to be you know a strong performer is
that's where most of you where a large
where a majority of educators continue
to get solid information but they're
also conferences webinars publications
you know they gather information from a
large number of areas and it's important
in your marketing efforts to continue to
make sure that wherever that educator is
reaching out that they have that you
have the information for them the second
one is purchases heavily influenced by
another educator sending on a link so
you know you you do see that you know
that is a prime factor in in copying
others that they think will be
interested in a particular topic one of
the things that's really changed with
the the whole word-of-mouth is you now
have an opportunity to listen in to that
so social media has really given us the
opportunity to listen in to the word of
mouth so when an educator reaches out to
their group of friends or their group of
co-workers or other people they respect
you have the ability now to listen in on
that conversation you get to eavesdrop
and see what's being said and how is it
being said overall educators 71 percent
of educators indicate they're on
Facebook general population fifty-five
percent they're over-represented they
are social by their very nature they
they interact with other people that's
what they do professionally and it's not
surprisingly that that's also part of
how they interact on a personal level
thirty five percent are on Pinterest
fifteen percent on Twitter again they
over represent the general population in
terms of that that particular area
on the right hand side here we can see
that you know on an hourly basis we see
you know on the following the EdTech
hashtag on on Twitter there's a hundred
eighty three tweets in an hour on a deck
the overall audience three point two
five million people fifty five retweets
an hour tweets with images twenty two
percent and so there's a lot of that
information being shared and you have
that great ability to listen in and see
what's being talked about how it's being
talked about and and we all know you
know when we look at the overall the
overall traffic if you will on on
Twitter of the four point of the half a
billion tweets every day 4.2 million are
related to education that's a lot yeah
nearly 10% of the total traffic on
Twitter is around education it's a
powerful area to be able to monitor and
see what's being talked about how it's
being talked about and ultimately
actually engage with these people not
only monitoring but being part of the
conversation
so how do you leverage that
word-of-mouth conversation it's through
the use of social currency people want
to have access to share content that's
relevant that they can retweet or they
can send on they can read and they can
share with others so it's important to
put your content into a into a means
that allows you to not only collect the
names of who who are the influencers but
actually work with them to identify
their problems solve it promote a
solution and easily share those
solutions not only listen become part of
the conversation it's the first time
that vendors probably are really part of
that word-of-mouth and being able to
understand what's going on there and
interact with with the particular
audiences so how can you understand
what's going on there's tools out there
that allow you to like TweetDeck where
you can see all the tweets on various
particular topics and you can kind of
have it running and follow what's going
on and you can see what's going on in
future-ready or blended learning topics
and follow the particular hashtags it's
a great way to just kind of see what
educators are talking about what they're
asking about you can also take
transcripts and use those to create
things like a word cloud we can see on
our next screen where we've actually
been able to take a particular
transcript run it into word cloud and we
can see your particular things that are
being talked about and you can then use
that to identify what's going on but in
the end it's really around building
relationships we know that in for
educators relationships matter they say
that you know building relationships is
a is easier and more effective and
reasonable set those classes but really
it's about building relationships and
ultimately that's what you want to do
with these educators is build
relationships with them like the
relationships they're building with
their students
as we wrap up we've talked about when
where why and some of the how biking
cycle can be lengthy we know virtually
all these cycles it's a full annual
cycle some pieces more some people some
pieces less but it's just it's a real
cycle and it's important to know kind of
from your calendar where you're at in
that cycle different districts required
different selling approaches understand
who you're talking to it was on a an ed
week seminar about six months ago with a
superintendent and his big thing was and
they asked him so what do you not like
when you're interacting with a company
says the thing I don't like is them
getting on and just saying tell me about
your district he says all that says is
you didn't do your homework and you
don't know who you're talking to do your
homework at a time and know who you're
talking to the last part is this whole
market is I think fairly unique in that
educators really work collaboratively
decisions are seldom made by one person
in the organization they talk they
communicate they share it's important
for you to understand that be in front
of those influencers and use both your
your your current marketing to do that
but also start to tap into what the
social offerings are and allow that to
give you visibility into what those
conversations look like great well can
so much scott and berlin both of you I'm
sure a lot of really insightful
information and again lots of data and
charts and stats and things for us to to
chew on and noodle on as we head into
that back-to-school season as we begin
our own planning for those really
important outreach to educators
throughout the summer and into
back-to-school so just a reminder to
folks before we get to the QA that you
will get an email tomorrow that includes
a link to view the recording of today's
webinar and also to download these
slides so you'll have access to all of
the stats here that's gotten Berlin
shared with us so guys if you are ready
for some questions we will dive into
those and we've got quite a few so we'll
just get through what we can on before
our time runs out together so the first
one we actually got a couple of these of
different varieties but it's around that
buying cycle and wanting to know you
know how does software compare to a
physical product on this buying cycle
you know is there variation and what's
the impact of the different products on
this buying cycle all right well I'll
jump in and then Berlin feel free to add
your context as well
yeah it's everything that we've seen so
far is that it's basically standard
outside of things like discretionary or
complex sales so it's hard when you're
coming from different industries for
example to understand kind of how
regimented the buy cycle is within the
education sector and the main point
really is to understand how long it
takes for one and the order of
operations that happen within the buy
cycle so because funding generally does
get released between May and June and
you're not they're not going to buy
anything before that because they just
won't have any funds that doesn't
preclude you from getting discretionary
funds at the end of the at the end of
the school year where they have to get
rid of their funds before their year
starts again that's fine you can try and
get some of that those dollars but say
for example if you have a a type of a
product that's an LMS or something
that's 18 to 24 months sales cycle
obviously it doesn't fit the
within this but you do want to have have
this by cycle in in them in your back
pocket to understand when they're going
to for example start to consider your
product for trial which is January to
April so you definitely want to be
focusing all of your efforts even if
it's for eighteen months prior to that
of building awareness and familiarity
with your product so that when January
hits of the year that you're trying to
sell your product then then they would
consider it and and start jumping into
that the purchasing does tend to still
happen in the summer time frame
especially for larger products as well
so depending on the product it's it
really is I would say it's a pretty
standard cycle and you just have to
follow where the money is which does
tend to get at least some time to meet
in june ok great that was very helpful
um so Roland this next question is
probably for you and that is how much do
personnel change throughout the year
versus just in the fall with
back-to-school time you know the the big
numbers in terms of change around the
teachers and those clearly are very
oriented towards the summer months most
of your teachers turnover during the
summer months there are a few during the
year you know where a you know a
retirement comes up or something but
most of the teachers are pretty
committed to a particular calendar year
and a group of students are particularly
are in the group of students their
district administrators that's just not
true at all we see them turnover and you
know there's a large number that
turnover in the summer we see the
biggest turnover of superintendents and
principals in the summer months but we
see you know September October November
we see a whole bunch around the calendar
year IT people turnover every month and
so you know the district's is a very
different thing the their jobs are not
focused on a group of students that
they're committed to at that particular
school year and so we see those turnover
throughout the year and we gather that
information much more frequently because
of that turnover
okay yeah that's helpful it's definitely
a moving target as you well know in your
data compilation work so we're a small
business and just starting up and this
is kind of a two-fold question which is
the best tier of district that we should
start with in terms of opportunity and
also what's the best time of year to
actually launch our product oh so I'll
grab the first one Scott if you want to
talk about time of year to launch so
without knowing the specifics and things
about it it's hard to say a little bit
but we have a lot of clients that you
know there are smaller startups
particularly that focus on kind of that
small and medium size districts and that
have much better initial success there
that it's a much smaller group of people
making decisions they they're they're
much more responsive to being able to
get information via an email or another
manner and and respond to that without
large committees and a lot of time and
so in general we see that as you start
to gather sales though one of the things
we always recommend is try and analyze
who your client base is so you know we
use our profile product to go in look at
what the profile your current sales are
so that we can start to say oh you're
doing great in these medium-sized
districts we can focus efforts in there
we can help you identify who else looks
like the people we've had success with
so part of it is start out with you know
what you think is going to be a
reasonable plan to a reasonable group
then follow whoever the who the
respondents are Scott yeah yeah that's
great because it makes so much sense a
lot of companies think that they need to
go after the large districts the LA
Unified and things like that and they're
just they don't realize just how long
the sales cycle is and how collaborative
the decision making process is so when
you start looking at the decision timing
timing of your product and so on you
really have to look at that size of
district that they're just talking about
so if you're looking at small to medium
sized districts the timing of
trying to go after those you got to
think about when they're going to be
doing their planning they fall right in
we're into the this purchasing lifecycle
that we're talking about this this nine
months to purchasing in the summer so if
they've already depending on when you
want to look at when your your
development efforts are going to be
coming up you want to you want to
definitely tie it into that purchasing
lifecycle if you're looking at the
districts both small to medium sized
because they're going to stay within
that time line and then depending on the
type of product you have you might be
able to get a shorter time line for
something like this because of those
smaller districts you do tend to have
one to a few people making the decision
versus there's a large decision-making
committee up for some of the larger
larger ones so it's hard to say
specifically for which product depending
on the type of product you have but I
would definitely keep an eye on that
made of July timeframe when they're
starting to do planning because then you
want to get that get get they're going
to make their purchase for what they're
already what they're doing you made you
might be able to capture that if it's a
possibility but you're looking at
probably the August to December
timeframe is the best time because
that's when they want to start learning
about the products that they're going to
purchase and and trial the next year
thank you know the thing to remember
though is not to get discouraged with
that long cycle and realized it's going
to be an extended buying cycle yeah
especially depending on the product as
you had kind of walk us through earlier
on in the presentation Berlin we had a
lot of interest both from current agile
customers and some folks who are not yet
using agile data about the ED Intel so
from customers wondering in which data
fields they would look at to segment out
those schools and districts interested
in in this case particularly on PBL but
any of those variable who showed and I'm
just providing a little more information
to those who aren't familiar with that
Intel so you know I didn't tell is 11
different categories of information and
it sold on a per category basis so the
the first one was are all around our
learning methodologies area so you get
to see exactly what learning
methodologies that
particular district as utilizing they're
talking about so there are other ones
around what web platform and what
purchasing platforms are using in lots
of other areas the one I focused on
there was learning methodologies and the
information is you know is a number of
different data variables around that and
it's it's bundled together as the
learning methodologies portion okay and
certainly folks can reach out to their
agile Account Executive for more
information on Intel and there's also
information on the agile website which
is agile - dead calm and you can find
more details about the different
categories that are available and how
that information is compiled compiled
and can be used moving back to the
buying cycle and what's the impact of
charter and private schools on this
buying cycle how does it differ for them
it actually it really doesn't differ
because they tend to be along the same
the same timeline mainly because people
do are getting in and out of school at a
very similar time I mean there are
definitely some charters that go and
private schools that tend to go through
the summer and so on but it really the
impact is I would I would stay pretty in
line with it sure yeah just one note
there I agree that the cycle is
definitely very similar but just as
Roland was saying with those smaller
districts where there's not as many
people involved in decision-making
people tend to have more autonomy that's
also the case with those private and
charter schools so they can certainly be
a good place to get in if you're a new
company to start building those sales as
you maybe and more time trying to get
into that purchasing cycle for the
larger size districts willingness to
truck I think I think that's information
yeah you know very much in the Charter
kind of realm there is that that
willingness to try new things is
certainly part of the the mentality
there yeah I totally agreed on that
um let's see so in terms of messaging
and your outreach to all the different
people who are involved in
decision-making how do you not step on
toes when you're reaching out to
superintendents assistant
superintendents the curriculum director
all the different stakeholders involved
at least from my perspective the
important thing is to have the the
message needs to be appropriate for that
audience so if you're talking to the
superintendent there's a particular
message that they're trying to that will
resonate with them that they're looking
at and it's not the same that is for the
educator I think the you know so I think
ultimately the way not to step on it is
have the right message for the right
person and and by segmenting it up that
way and understand when we're out
pitching it we're not presenting the
same message to all people within that
organization I think it goes back to
that knowing your audience that Scott
talked about at the beginning in
particular yeah have the right great
message with the right content at the
right time and the content part we
didn't we didn't harp on too much within
this cuz we're to focus more on the
cycle time by cycle but the content is
critical depending on who you're sending
it to and later sending it to them
because you may send something to a
teacher at a different time of the month
or a year than you would to a principal
so that's that's how that all fits in
into the mix as well all right um in the
data that agile collects and you have
any data on cycle of RFPs and in that
what role that plays in the buying cycle
you know we don't we don't tend to
gather RFP information that in general
our feeling is that quite often by the
time it goes to RFP many of the
decisions have already been made
they have already identified who the
leaders are who they've gathered
information from and so you know the
from from our standpoint much of that
work is done ahead of time and by the
time it gets down to RFP level much of
the decision has already been been made
so we don't tend to focus much in much
that particular part of the cycle
alrighty
this is a question outside of k-12 but
maybe you can comment on it
do you have insight into the buying
cycle for colleges and universities is
it similar to what we outlined here for
k-12 it is we have it we do have some
insight into it and it's nothing it does
not follow a standard model like it does
in the k-12 sector every every College
kind of has a different buy cycle of
their own they all have their own
budgets it's it's definitely something
you have to know which college you're
talking to and the type of college
you're talking to whether it's a
four-year two-year and so on
they are on with famous k12 they
definitely are not it's a different
beast in a different webinar on that
topic what we are getting to the end of
our time we did have some more questions
that came in and we will answer some of
those via social media and then some of
you with some very specific questions
about marketing tactics and strategies
we'll have someone get back in touch
with you individually to address those
so unless you've asked the question
don't worry we will address it once we
wrap up the webinar here and we
appreciate everyone's questions and
helping to continue the conversation
that's gotten Bruins started with us
really great fascinating information and
again I think helpful as we all start to
put on our thinking caps and work
towards that back to school campaign
cycle that we're all heading into a
reminder once again that you will get an
email tomorrow with a link to the
recording in the slide so feel free to
access those take notes and share them
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and your feedback will really help us
create webinars that are useful to you
and we definitely are looking for
suggestions for future webinars so feel
free to share those with us also
speaking of future webinars go ahead and
mark your calendar for our next one
which is coming up on June 21st
Mike LeClair who is data quality and
compilation manager over an agile it's
going to take an even deeper dive into
district demographics and walk us
through how two schools may look exactly
the same on paper but in reality are
dealing with very different initiatives
and challenges and how that impacts how
you're going to sell and market to them
so that's going to be a really
informative webinar as well so keep an
eye out again on your email and your
social media and on the agile website
for information on how to register for
that coming up on June 21st
thank you again Scott and Berlin for
taking the time to be with us today and
putting together all this great
information
I think it's been helpful to everyone
thank you thanks so much to our audience
we we certainly appreciate all their
time today
everyone have a good afternoon