If you’re losing sales then it’s usually down to these very basic reasons (despite what sales gurus might tell you!):

1. You’re missing the mark on value.

If what you’re offering doesn’t solve a problem or make life easier for your customers, they’re not going to buy. It’s as simple as that.

2. You’re not really listening.

Ever been on the phone with a salesperson who just talks at you? Not fun. Listening to what the customer needs is the first step to making a sale.

3. You’re jumping the gun.

Nobody likes feeling rushed. Pushing for a sale before you’ve built any kind of relationship is a surefire way to turn people off.

4. You’re wasting time on dead ends

Not all leads are worth pursuing. Learn to spot the ones that are just going to waste your time.

5. You’re ignoring objections

Brushing off concerns instead of addressing them only makes the customer more hesitant. Take objections seriously and work through them.

6. You’re forgetting to follow up

Out of sight, out of mind. Don’t let prospects forget about you—follow up and stay on their radar.

7. You’re making things complicated

Keep it simple. A confusing sales process is a sure way to lose customers.

8. You’re pretending competitors don’t exist.

Know your enemy. No solution is so unique that it doesn’t have any competition. Ignoring the competition won’t make them go away—it’ll just leave you in the dust.

9. You’re blending in instead of standing out.

If you’re just another fish in the sea, why should anyone choose you? Find your unique selling point and shout it from the rooftops.

10. You’re skipping the relationship-building part.

People buy from people they like. Take the time to build relationships—it’ll pay off in the long run.

Losing sales feels awful but it’s not the end of the world. Learn from your mistakes, tweak your approach, and carefully rebuild your pipeline being mindful of the above.

Is there anything I’ve missed? What would you add?

#sales #selling #edtech #pipeline #relationships #closing #saleprocess #edtech

Continuing our series of edtech thought leader interviews, I recently caught up with Martin Hall, Senior Product Manager for MIS at RM.

Having spoken with almost all other major MIS suppliers in England, I’ve been wanting to speak with RM on their plans for the Integris solution for a while. RM Integris is the second-largest MIS supplier in England in terms of market share, and RM also offers an ecosystem of other school management solutions which work alongside their MIS, including their own finance solution.

In part 1 of this fireside chat, we discuss:

• How RM has changed over the years, having started as a couple of people building servers in their garage to becoming a global education company
• The 3 key pillars of business for RM, and their plans to invest in their Integris MIS and finance solutions
• How customers expectations have changed, and how RM works with them to allow them to focus on students’ progress – the most important thing
• Where RM are currently with their Integris MIS: how it works with RM Unify, what’s their partner strategy, plans for growth into new system areas (such as HR, compliance, safeguarding, etc.) and also into new phases and markets
• Their approach to future development

In part 2 we cover:

• RM’s focus on the MIS market and current competitor solutions
• What makes RM Integris different
• How the market might change in the future given recent consolidation and acquisitions
• How support has changed, especially as businesses such as SBS and Strictly Education have been acquired by one owner
• The role of LAs v the new role of Trusts: how MATs act and work differently, using data centrally and intelligently

Finally, in part 3 I ask:

• Where does Martin see the MIS market going in 5-years time?
• Can and should data be used to inform policy?
• How does RM work in partnership with schools and academies?
• How can edtech suppliers get better at delivering disruptive, and is this a good thing?

A “Persona” is a fictional representation of an actual user and is applied in the early stages of product development or product redesign.

Personas are vital to the success of a product because they drive design decisions by taking common user needs and bringing them to the forefront of planning before design has actually started. Personas provide the team with a shared understanding of users in terms of goals and capabilities.

The Benefits of Persona Development

If you don’t think Personas are worth the trouble, think again. Benefits include:

Personas give stakeholders an opportunity to discuss critical features of a redesign: This is especially helpful when you have multiple stakeholders with different ideas about what needs to be developed first. Using Personas to walk stakeholders through common interactions unveils frustrations and pain-points that will help clarify actual user priorities over the stakeholder’s personal wish list.

They help team members share a consistent understanding of the user group: Personas take data and make the stories more compelling and fun, thus making them easier to remember and consider when the team is working towards a solution – together.

Personas help designers develop informed wireframes and site architecture: Since Personas focus on the needs of the users, the team can walk through scenarios and determine optimal placement of content to specifically support the goal of the product. This is vital to the success of a website or application, and will save your client thousands in budget and/or man-hours reworking a product after it’s launched (and “officially” tested by actual users).

Personas provide a “face” to the user story, creating more empathy and understanding about the person using the product: This prevents designers and developers from applying their own mental models to the product design which may not align with actual user needs.

As EdTech companies grow and the nature of technology evolves into the world of SaaS and apps, there’s often confusion around where Product Management should sit in the organisation.

Traditional consumer organisations have had a tendency to consider Product Management in the same arena as Marketing.  However, the danger here is when Marketing is actually ‘Marketing Communications’ (sadly often the case in EdTech) – it means that no-one is involved in defining and delivering the products.

In a lot of Tech companies, the Product Management function tends to be viewed in the technical arena, lumped in with the Development Directorate.  The problem here is that the Product Managers can get tied up in functionality and requirements. They can spend so much time building products that there is no-one engaging the customers to understand their problems; no-one looking ahead and strategising as to what the business needs to do in the future to continue to be successful

To drive the maximum success from a Product Management team, you need to understand exactly what their role is.

A successful Product Management Directorate looks at the needs of the entire business and the entire market.  It’s broadly comprised of three main focuses:

• Product strategy
• Product marketing
• Technical product management

The Product Management Directorate will focus the product management team on the business of building solutions for needs now and into the future.  The team will:

• engage and communicate with existing and potential customers
• articulate and quantify market problems
• create business cases and market requirements documents
• define standard procedures for product delivery and launch
• support the creation of collateral and sales enablement tools
• train the sales teams on the product

Within the EdTech market the truth is: if you want better products in the future, and for the product management team to be held accountable at organisational level, then it must be represented at Board level in its own right.