Every school improvement provider serving markets beyond an hour’s drive from headquarters or the collective Rolodex needs sales representatives. Their productivity can be improved by a steady stream of “qualified leads” - “ready, willing and able buyers.” Marketing managers should always be thinking about better, faster, cheaper ways to supply such information. This requires ongoing review of the qualified leads concept, the relationship between firms’ research and sales activities, and the extent to which marketing research should be done in-house or outsourced.
The discretionary Grant RFP illustrates the strategic challenge. Every year, federal and state education, social service and research agencies announce hundreds of opportunities for schools to receive funds for more or less specific purposes that also permit the purchase of various school improvement providers’ offerings. Some grants are available to all schools. Others are available only to schools with specific characteristics. Some require schools to partner with other schools or organizations. All are variations on a particular class of sales leads.
Qualified Leads Concept
Readiness refers to possible customers’ intent as to the timing of a purchase. Potential clients may be prepared to buy now. They may have decided to buy later. They may intend to buy if some event occurs. Like the other sales elements, readiness is not an “either/or” condition, but a continuum.
Willingness relates to interest in the product or service offered by a provider. Potential clients may know they need precisely what a provider offers. They may have decided they want something from the category of products or services where a provider competes. They may worry about problems addressed by a provider’s offering, but also by other categories.
Ability speaks to payment. Possible clients may have identified and set aside funds for the purchase. They may be able to find funds once they decide to buy. And even where clients are ready and willing, they may need money.
Research v. Sales Activities
The Contract RFPs in Part IV identify ready, willing and able buyers. This ideal cannot be matched by any other source of marketing research data - or combination of data sources. Once Contract RFPs are exhausted, the willingness of a potential buyer to purchase the kind of product or service offered by the firm can only be determined by sales staff.
This is no excuse to put sales staff out on the road entirely on their own. Marketing research can point sales staff in the direction of more likely buyers. By providing insight into potential clients’ readiness and ability, research can place sales reps in positions where they are more likely to close deals.
Every discretionary Grant RFP has specific eligibility parameters. In most cases, lists of schools meeting each criteria are available to the public. Some grants are confined to schools in some type of academic distress defined by federal of state agencies. Lists of these schools are easily found on every state education agency’s website. In many cases, eligibility involves another feature of school status (e.g., demography). With more effort by marketing staff on sales-related research, lists of schools meeting these criteria generally can be found on SEA, other agency, or policy research and advocacy websites.
This research does not reveal definite qualified leads, but it does address readiness and ability. With Grant RFP applications incorporating what sales reps are offering, the school will be ready to make the purchase if it wins a grant. Schools that meet grant announcement parameters then will be able to purchase because the need for funds will be met. The job of sales staff becomes making these potential buyers willing to write the provider's offering into the grant proposal. That capacity to convince and close is what selling is all about, and where providers should want sales staff to be spending their time.
In-House v. Outsourced Marketing Research
Like Contract RFPs, discretionary Grant RFP announcements are monitored at a very low price by services like K-12Leads. This service can be outsourced far more cheaply than done in house. But beyond this, what’s useful to a marketing research depends on factors unique to each provider.
Decision factors that go into a decision to pursue a Grant RFP as a sales lead include:
• the types and dollar value of purchases permitted under the grant,
• the level of effort a provider is likely to assume in helping a school prepare a grant application, and
• the nature and number of schools eligible for these grants, relative to the total funding of the grant program.
Outside providers can point a firm's marketing researchers to the right information sources for sales intelligence - K-12Leads provides such links for all federal grant programs and basic school and district data for each state. School Improvement Industry's Policy and Politics Announcements provides access to important federal data, and important market reports are identified weekly in the "Must Download Data" section of New Education Economy®. The costs of this kind of information gathering can be spread across many potential information service clients at a very low price.
But the customized nature of each provider's specific information needs means that outsourcing will almost certainly be far more expensive than doing it in-house. Moreover, the ability to identify and leverage this information for sales purposes is an important potential source of competitive advantage - and even if outsourcing proved to be modestly less expensive, this argues strongly for keeping specialized marketing and sales research activites in-house.
Next: Using School Status and Indicators Information for sales intelligence.
Learn More About K-12 Leads Here.