MDR's Free Webinar Series
July 18, 2007
Selling to Schools: Strategies for Fall Success

Question and Answer Session Recap

What is CRM?
SG: Customer relationship management...in basic terms, a software system (like Salesforce.com, Siebel, Pivotal) that is used by the sales force to track activity, pipeline, and manage contacts.

LW: Click here for Wikipedia entry and lots of related links.

How many companies were polled for the survey?
SG: We had survey responses from roughly 400 individuals.

How do you get Marketing and Sales on the same page about this stuff?
LW: A team approach to planning and strategic direction is essential. Making sure that Sales has had input on selecting target markets and that Marketing has some say in how leads flow through the Sales organization are important to buy in. Pick small-focused projects to start with and build confidence and a shared sense of purpose over time.

JM: Start by ensuring that you have systems and processes in place that allow Marketing, Sales, Editorial, and Customer Service to contribute to the organization’s overall intelligence about its customers and prospects. CRMs are a great way to start. As Lee pointed out, though, the focus shouldn’t be exclusively on what each group can put into such systems but instead on what they can get out of them.

RN: Good communication between Marketing and Sales is one of the best ways to get folks on the same page. One way to help make this happen is to have a small group of strong sales reps, say four or five, meet with Marketing on a regular basis and give feedback on what they need and how the current Marketing programs are working for them. Good communication between Marketing and Sales management is also essential.

We heard about aligning with funding. Can you shed light on this — real-life examples? LW: At a macro level, it's knowing what large buckets of funds your products qualify for (federal/state/local). But there is also the ability to match "micro" funding flows to opportunities using MarketView. There is the ability to search and match districts with funding flows and at the level of individual grants—many of which the customer may not be aware of. Another approach here is to target the close of funding cycles for extra dollars. There is always some change left on the table, and if you can show how your products can quickly and easily qualify, you can sweep that change off the table.

Despite what we may have claimed, most of us were not ready for NCLB. It changed the decision makers, product, pain, and pain relief. Any advice on how to get ready for the coming post-NCLB (overhauled NCLB) era?
JM: One place to start is with your customers. In-depth market research about customer attitudes and behaviors helps provide a current perspective. Add to that, inquiries about forward-looking trends as voiced by customers. This is also an area where dialogue can be key. "I want to wait and see what happens with NCLB" just might become a common objective. Use this as a catalyst for talking about what's next.

RN: As NCLB ages, it should lose some of its controlling tentacles. Look for school systems and schools to return to more site-based managed decisions that will have more meaning and impact for their particular needs. Prepare for this by keeping in close touch with key administrators and by putting in a strong lead generation program, which will give you quick access to large numbers of decision makers nationally. Also, email surveys sent out on a regular basis can help you keep your fingers on the pulse of the decision makers.

LW: I don't expect the fundamental shifts that started with NCLB to change that much. The reauthorization will tweak and tune, but the focus on accountability and federalization of education will continue. That said, I did outline some of the change in focus I'd like to see in the article "NCLB – What Is Missing" on my blog last week.

Any suggestions for lead gen when the goal is strategic rather than organic growth; that is, to develop new solutions focused on new budget streams, where the potential customers look different from the existing customer base?
LW: Carefully select a couple of reps for a combination of listening skills, flexibility, and innovation. Assign them to the new product along with a product manager as support to begin developing the new market. The first year their comp should be tied to meeting market development benchmarks more than revenue — their goal is to explore and find where the points of traction are.

RN: Develop a plan based on good sense and on research. Start with the lists of prospects that you think you should be going to; be sure to get some input from MDR--they will have some ideas. Then test this list. One of the best ways is to make several phone calls to educators who represent the various lists. Ask them key questions, such as "Are you interested in the product?" and if they show interest, “How will you make the buying decision?" "Who will be involved in the decision making?", etc. This research will help you find out two key points: 1) Who you should target and 2) What you should write in the lead generator. This research is relatively inexpensive and will make your lead gen, which can be a big expenditure, much more effective.

Any special advice when using an independent field sales force (the key word here is "independent")?
JM: To the extent that you can, work with independent sales forces to achieve some level of transparency. Independents often view as their premium the relationships they have in place, so it can be hard to learn from them exactly what's working within the sales process.

RN: Independents appreciate good leads too! Talk to a few of your good ones before you design a campaign; they will help you decide if a lead gen campaign will be worth it, and they'll also give you some good input about what information you should capture.

LW: General advice — you can't communicate enough with your independents. This is usually near the top of their list of complaints about their suppliers. Build a Wiki, hold events, and recognize their achievements. Realize that all the things you need to do to motivate your own reps apply here with the added proviso that you are competing with their other suppliers for attention.

At Chancery we developed the concept of "effective exclusivity." Too often I had seen independents that had been granted exclusivity coast on the supplier's marketing and lead generation. On the other hand, if they are going to make a real investment in you, they need some guarantee of a return. With data-driven selling, you also want to keep your lines of communication simple — you don't want to have to sort out who should get which leads. We accomplished this by designing territories that didn't overlap but by not signing exclusive contracts. This allowed us to switch out or overlap if a particular independent wasn't carrying their share of the load. We were right up front with them about why we were doing this, and we found we only had to use it a couple of times over several years.

Given the historical view of educators wanting to see the "whites of their eyes" and a high-touch audience, combined with very expensive gas prices and travel costs, do you have any perspective on the mix of inside/field sales and practical use of webinars?
JM: We find that inside sales and, in particular, the use of webinars creates an escalation path that corresponds to the role of our contact and the relative value of the opportunity. This means that inside groups can focus on smaller deals or on the front-end of larger deals. In larger deals, they may begin by talking to networkers and insiders and then help the field force engage with influencers and buyers. I ' d also recommend weighing the composition of your product line, recognizing that smaller, high-volume products are probably better suited to inside sales, whereas big-ticket items make more sense for face-to-face. The only caveat I'd throw in there is, based on our experience, a good inside sales rep can outpace and outperform an outside sales rep. We ' re landing PO ' s worth $40K and more on certain projects.

LW: This need varies a lot by district and location. In my experience, remote districts — the most expensive ones to get to — reacted warmly to webinars and even video links because they don't get much attention. Even many districts in states where funds have been tight find it hard to get to conferences these days and are more open to this approach as well.

We have heard a lot about field sales reps. Can you be specific about some best practices for telesales?
JM: I think the art of relationship building and the science of using data to inform strategy both work well with inside groups.

RN: Two things – 1) Have each inside rep work with the same schools, districts, and educators. This way strong relationships are built, and the reps take ownership of their accounts. 2) Build in some compensation around results — sales!

LW: What I've seen work well is to send inside reps out to the state-level shows a couple of times a year so customers can put a face with a name. Also, treat inside sales as its own region in a sales organization with equal status to the field regions.

Comment on the trend of decision making moving from site to district level with regard to niche segments, such as Adult Education.
RN: This puts strong emphasis on spending time developing good relationships in the schools and districts that are going to purchase. This means that your information gathering about who is buying and when are they buying must be accurate in order to know where to spend your valuable time building relationships. Keep good records from sales calls, responses to lead gen campaigns, etc. You may want to look into a CRM system.

In regards to creating dialogue with customers, do you think that doing this in direct conjunction with marketing activity is effective, or does it cause too much confusion and lose the audience?
JM: Again, this speaks to the need for effective systems and strong communications within the organization. Provided your sales rep is up to speed on marketing initiatives and assuming that your company can speak with a singular voice, these issues should be mitigated.

RN: Good "dialogue" with customers and prospects can be created in a number of ways. There is face-to-face dialogue, phone dialogue, email dialogue, text messaging, etc. These should all be in alignment with each other. Also, information needs to be passed back and forth between Marketing and Sales so that each knows what the other is doing.

LW: All marketing as an opportunity for creating dialogue. It isn't an add -on; it's the whole deal. See the article Socratic Marketing on my blog for more details on this.

How do you track a direct mail piece's success when multiple titles within a district are targeted and sales may come through a single generic district-level PO? How can you determine who the actual buyer was?
RN: Tying the "front end" of a lead or a sales call to the "back end" of the sale is difficult at times, and no one method is completely accurate. When you've agreed on a metric that Marketing and Sales finds agreeable, then stick to it over the years for consistency. MDR can help you make ties within the districts. Multiple titles can be tracked by doing a sales analysis, which gives you individual product sales by school and school district. Use PID numbers and PIN numbers (from MDR) to keep track.

LW: Short answer — you can't. Long answer — there are ways to track the performance of individual pieces, notably through the use of custom landing pages for fulfillment of the call to action (you do have a call to action in everything you send out, right?). You can then track the number of folks who access the landing page (either from direct mail or as a click-through from email) and the number who go on to request the fulfillment item. You could even create custom landing pages for different job titles, if you want to drill down deeper (bytes are effectively free; atoms cost money). Admittedly, this is a secondary indicator. But in some situations, it's the best you can do.

SG: This is very difficult to do and is an age-old industry pain point. There are some keycoding methods you can use that might improve visibility, but realistically, keycode tracking will always leave a lot of gray in the response tracking. We have worked with customers on matchbacks (taking the outbound file and comparing it to the responses) as a way to understand response rates and patterns. You can do a matchback at the name and/or institution level. In my experience, it's helpful and directive but does not give all the response insight most marketers desire.

Another process I have seen is to not focus as much on tracking to the piece or to the individual but to roll up to the school or district and to compare the marketing expense to that school and the revenue generated. For example, you (or we) can archive all of your marketing touches (direct mail, email, etc.) to an institution and then take back your customer database (with revenue) and assign a value. As an example, let's say you mailed ABC Middle School 100 pieces that cost $1 each (fully loaded) over the past 12 months, for a total direct marketing "cost" of $100 for that school. You received orders from said school totaling $500. So this school was quite profitable. XYZ Middle School also got 100 catalogs but revenue as only $50, so this school did not perform well. You can build this history over many years (it might be risky just to make decisions on one mailing or even one mailing year) to provide a longer term view that should hold up. This basic concept can give you a general idea of the sites to target based on response and marketing expense. You can even take it a step further and roll it all up to a district and score the district in the same way you did the school. This concept is not perfect, but it can be helpful in determining macro response rates and profitability, and it conforms to the way most schools actually order the majority of school products (via PO).

All in all, as you can see, there are a few ways to try to tackle this issue. While none are perfect, I think your goal should be to find a reliable way to get directional data on response, because for most school marketers, it's very difficult to get precise insight like that which is available on the B2C side.

Do you have any recommendations for working with independent sales reps vs. company reps? We have trouble doing integrated campaigns.
LW: If the territories overlap, make sure the company reps are compensated for business the independents bring in. This eliminates conflicts of interest in how they manage lead flow. I've seen this model work well where the company reps focused on large deals while coaching the independents for the rest of the business. If the territories don't overlap, see my advice above.

Are there any systems available that notify vendors of upcoming capital expenditure?
LW: MarketView, which tracks construction projects. Some states report on bond issues.

SG: MDR tracks school construction and that might be a good place to start. We will also be tracking bids/RFPs in the coming months, which might provide some degree of further insight.

Can Lee talk more about MarketView and how it's used to find funding sources for customers?
LW: MarketView incorporates School Funding Services. It allows reps to get timely and accurate updates on a daily basis on a wide variety of funding sources (federal, state, grants, etc.). Reps can find out what the funds can be used for, when funds are dispersed, how to apply, and a wide variety of other criteria. Best of all, lists of prospects can be easily pulled using the other tools in MarketView once a funding source has been identified.

SG: In addition to what Lee has stated above, MarketView provides a highly detailed and actionable packet of insight regarding funding. Successful reps and managers are using this level of detailed info to 1) alert schools to potential funding sources, 2) help schools understand how some of their initiative can potentially be funded via these funds, and 3) help schools prepare the grant (which would contain the company ' s products as the preferred product component). There are even some reps that send their district contacts a listing of all the grants that have been granted to said district as a way to help get their foot in the door.

Why can we not get all the school email addresses on the CD when purchasing school lists?
SG: We deploy email addresses directly from MDR because of our commitment to align with CAN SPAM and because our pricing model is based on the customer only paying for deliverable emails.