How to sell to schools, colleges, universities

[BartJr]

Hi all, I'm wondering how to approach these institutions to sell our future products to them. I cannot release any information on it yet, therefore let's use an example of product as 'Laser Printer'. Any help and feedback is more than welcome

 

[paulears]

The biggest problem with these organisations is that they have a finance structure and a user structure that are often in conflict. In general, they tend to have two budgets, the one for their capital equipment is now often planned a year ahead and departments bid against each other to get their share of the available funding. So for an item costing perhaps £1000 or above, it cannot be purchased without going through the budgeting system with bidding and usually multiple suppliers. The teachers (or IT dept) are likely to be the people keen on a product, and if it is below the bidding rule price, then they can use their own running budgets to buy something that excites them. However, that budget often runs out of money. It's fairly common for people to win a bid and buy an expensive bit of kit, often for many thousands, but then not be able to afford to replace ink, lamps, consumables etc.

You need to get to the users, not the bean counters. Search out the right people, sell the concept to them, and then they may be prepared to get it into the system. This takes a fair amount of time. Nowadays they rarely have money sitting there, it's planned maybe 18 months in advance. It is also very common for wish list, nice to have items to be trumped by items mention in course specs. Many for example can buy 3D printers, because the devices are a requirement in some specifications. However, if they have a basic 3D printer, the chances of buying a better, cleverer one are less likely, because maybe the engineering dept need a computer controlled lathe, that is a new addition to their specs. The bean counters don't understand the products, they just ask the departments to prove the need. College finance is perhaps the worst, as it's simply maximising funding. Schools are less departmentalised - or at least, the staff do tend to know each other. Universities may well have a little more flexibility, but this depends so much on their finance structure.

 

[BartJr]

Thanks mate, very useful reply