Everyone wants to win MAT deals and it's understandable - why sell to dozens of individual schools when you can win them all in one deal? Simples! Only there's a slight challenge along the way...MATs are messy beasts. They're rarely alike, even if they look like there are from the outside.
And even when you think there's a good fit, there's some tricky questions you need to answer:
- Is the solution I'm selling a MAT wide priority?
- Who owns that responsibility at a Trust level?
- How do I reach them effectively?
Having watched the explosion of marketing events like MATPLN and 'MAT speed dating' services over the past few years, it's clear that there are a lot of companies who will pay thousands of pounds to get in a room with senior MAT staff.
And this is a legitimate marketing strategy if you've got big bucks to spend. Spend tens of thousands on this stuff and you'll make a good number of MAT sales. However, if you're like me in that you don't have that type of cash (and wouldn't do it if you had) there's another way to generate MAT leads that costs you next to nothing. And barely any companies do this...
Arm your school champions with a MAT specific sales presentation that they can share onwards and upwards in to their Trust. This even works for Trust staff you meet along the sales process. My mind always goes to the Lord of The Rings scene where the fellowship pledge their support to Frodo. You need to build your fellowship!
You see the difficulty in selling to MATs repeatably is getting to the people who make the decisions. If you're a MIS, Finance, or HR platform that is procured centrally, you won't be feeling this pain, but for everyone else, you've probably experienced it and that's because MATs make decision by committee. In any Trust-wide procurement, it's very rare for a single person to be able to pull the trigger. Even if you manage to meet the hallowed CEO, suppliers underestimate how much of a political game running a Trust is. CEOs are best thought of as the prime minister - Trust policy is largely developed internally, from needs and demands of their schools. Some CEOs will put their own stamp on this, but it's easily 80% reacting to existing demands and pains within their schools.
Dominic Norrish, talked publicly about this in his time as COO of United Learning. UL central team wanted to roll Arbor MIS out to all 57 schools, but as to be expected, schools had a mix of suppliers already in play - Bromcom, SIMS, ScholarPack, Integris were all live in schools and understandable school leaders and admin didn't want to move. They relied on these systems day to day. Dominic talked about how Trusts have 'limited political capital' and central teams must use it wisely. It's a good thing to remember. Eventually United Learning did move all of their schools to Arbor but it took 4 years to make that business case and execute it.
More recently I worked with Chalkie to build their MAT (and US District to a lesser extent) pipeline. The very first thing I did was to developed great group level sales assets that individual teachers could share onwards. If you're not familiar with Chalkie, it's a rocket ship - over 1 million teachers signed up in 18 months. Yet when I started consulting with them they had almost no MAT or District customer penetration. It's a good illustration as to the reality of MAT sales - you have to stimulate demand. MAT teams are so busy that outside of core ops platforms, they're very rarely looking for new solutions. If the one of the hottest EdTechs in Europe can't catch the attention of MAT leaders organically, no-one can.
The good news is it's really simple to change this dynamic and build a great inbound pipeline of five figure deals. With Chalkie I developed an Impact Report, had it designed professionally, and began seeding it with evangelist / champion teachers (who I identified via NPS, feedback, or were already known to the team). Within 3 months there was a great pipeline of engaged Trust leaders meeting and trialling the platform.
I'll be diving deeper into this topic and lots more (+ how AI streamlines all of this) on the upcoming lead generation masterclass webinar.
Early bird tickets are almost sold out - grab yours before they go!
As always, thanks for reading,
Jay
