It is difficult to be successful selling EdTech products because of the budgetary cycle, vendor approval lists, ebb and flow of the school year, and every school district is a little bit different. The answer is data science. Build your own sales pipeline by tracking every buyer-oriented activity and relentlessly analyzing the data. Do more of what works and less of what does not work. Sounds simple, but it is impossible without lead tracking and campaign management tools.
Use the data collected to build your own sales pipeline. Understand how many (and what types of) touchpoints are needed to progress from building interest to earning a paid customer. Do lots of A/B testing to uncover the selling permutations (see diagram below) that work for your company. Target different job titles at different schools. Try different calls to action. Run the same campaign at different times of the year. Refine the sales campaigns (and maybe sales pipeline composition) based on what you see.
When you have a reasonable number of customers, invest in Customer Success tools to understand how and why customers are using your product. Analyze the frequency and flows to identify the differences between free versus paid users and healthy versus unhealthy users. Relentlessly analyze the data to find daily insights and feed them back into the lead generation process.
