What school and district buyers really want you to know

I’ve spent the more than 15 years leading sales organizations that sell to K12 schools and districts and I’m still learning about what school and district buyers really want K12 entrepreneurs to know. As an educator-focused impact investor, I look for entrepreneurs who understand what their customers and potential customers expect from a true partner. Here are some lessons I’ve learned over the course of hundreds of conversations in the last 20 years with district and school leaders across the U.S.

1. They want you to know how schools and districts really work.
   I’ve met more than 2,500 K12 entrepreneurs as an investor, and the successful ones have a deep understanding for the work that school and district leaders do. They understand the challenges, resource limitations, and roles of educators.
   
   To me, the advantage goes to the entrepreneur who is obsessed with solving a problem in K12 and is deeply committed to doing the hard work of understanding the roles and goals of K12 leaders. This deep understanding so often comes from someone who’s lived the problem first, looked to the market for a way to solve it, and then launched a startup to solve it when they couldn’t find the ideal approach. If you don’t have this experience firsthand, find a partner who does.
2. Focus on improving the “jobs to be done” by school and district personnel.
   I’m a big fan of Clayton Christensen’s work on “Jobs to Be Done”. In short, the “Jobs to Be Done” theory argues that people don’t simply buy products or services, they “pull them into their lives to make progress.” I think this applies to K12 in so many contexts.
   
   For example, teachers have many jobs to do each and every day. They are classroom managers, instructional leaders, psychologists, content experts, and more. Entrepreneurs who focus on significantly improving efficiency and/or effectiveness at one or more of these jobs will find success. Others who create yet another job (they are usually well-intentioned ideas, but “nice-to-haves”) are going to struggle to find traction.
3. Provide the implementation support needed to be successful.
   While this one feels obvious, I’ve met entrepreneurs who spend a great deal of energy in building a product but haven’t given enough thought to successful implementation. When I speak with school and district leaders, I often mention that evaluating a partner involves closely examining both the product and the implementation plan.
   
   To me, a good evaluation is approximately 50% about the product and 50% about the implementation. It’s rare that B2B products in K12 work as intended without a well thought out and well-resourced implementation plan. It’s not easy to get this right, but great implementation support and service is an enduring competitive advantage.
4. Help me get smarter about the subject matter.
   To me, the nature of selling has changed in a generation with the rise of information technology. Through the Internet, K12 buyers have so much information at their fingertips about educational technology, features, benefits, and more. To stand out from the crowd, smart edtech entrepreneurs are figuring out how to provide insight and expertise about the “Jobs to be Done” to school and district buyers that are difficult to find elsewhere.
   
   We all want to be smarter and better at our work, and if you have insights to share, you have an advantage that others don’t. Figure out ways to share these insights and you’ll create trust, credibility, and an audience with K12 buyers.
5. Show me compelling results.
   It’s human nature to invest our time, energy, and resources where we can make meaningful progress in high-priority areas, and that certainly holds true for K12 buyers. If you provide a classroom-level product for students, you need compelling evidence of student outcomes. If you have an administrative product, you need to show how you’re going to dramatically (not incrementally) improve workflow.
   
   A demonstrably effective product is going to have staying power in K12 education. You can support your arguments with customer testimonials, rapid-cycle evaluations of your product (see LearnPlatform for how to do this), or third-party evaluations of your product. Real results will get the attention of many K12 buyers and, more importantly, will keep them coming back to you for years to come.

There are other things that school and district buyers want entrepreneurs to know, but these are the top observations that stand out to me. What else do school and district buyers want you to know? Drop me a note with any ideas you want to share.