The Importance Of Consistently Connecting with Schools and MATs

This blog is all about connecting and expanding your network in schools and MATs on LinkedIn. Trust me, it really works wonders! Think about it – more meetings, more sales, and more upsells and cross-sells. Who doesn’t want that?

I want to explain why it’s so important to carve out some time each week to connect with the people in schools and MATs that you really need to talk to.

You see, there are multiple techniques that can get you 10+ extra prospect meetings every single week with schools and MATs. And that’s what this blog is all about.

I’m about to give tips, secrets and help that will make a genuine difference in the way education vendors approach their sales activities.

There are a number of techniques that need to be understood to make this a huge success. In this blog, I’m going to concentrate on two of them: 1) Constantly expanding your network and 2) posting content that relates to the problem you solve.

Constantly Expand Your Network

This is all about building connections – expanding your network – and I do it every single day. If you were to check my network today and check again tomorrow, I guarantee you’ll see that number go up. It’s not just about mindlessly adding people though. Nope, there’s a method to this madness.

It’s crucial to connect with the right people in the schools and MATs that you’re targeting. For example, if you’re a salesperson looking to bring in new business, these will be your target accounts. And if you’re a customer success person aiming for renewals, upsells, or cross-sells, you’ll want to focus on the schools and MATs that you’re responsible for.

You’ve got to know which schools and MATs to target and which personas within those organisations are your key connections. It could be a headteacher, assessment coordinator, CEO, COO, and so on, depending on your product or service. You need to work this out. Make sure you’ve got this sorted before diving into LinkedIn for yourself and your business.

Once you’ve got that down, it’s time to connect with those people. Trust me, you need them in your network. Why? Well, because next up, you’ll be sharing content that really resonates with the problems they face. And down the line, you’ll be asking them for a meeting.

Oh, and there’s a secret cadence to all of this – perfect timing to ensure those meetings actually happen. You can learn all about it in our social selling and influence course, The Conversation Revolution.
But for now, let’s start by getting into the habit of constantly expanding your network. And once you’ve got that down, it’s time to share some problem-centric posts that really hit home with your audience.

Always Share Problem-Centric Posts

So you’re expanding your network every day. Great!

Now you need to get the message over to these people – without pitching – that you are the person who can solve the problem they’re facing. This is the problem that your product or service solves.

If you haven’t nailed this down, feel free to message me – I can help you do this. We have a great workshop that helps you think deeper about the actual problem that you solve for your customers.

If you’ve got this sorted already, great! Read on.

You need to post once per day – it’s OK – you can have Sunday off! Ha! And what do these posts need to be about? That’s it! You’ve got it. The problem you solve! Not your product! Not your company! Not even you (yet)! They need to be about the problem you can help the school or MAT solve.

Let me give you an example. If you look through my LinkedIn posts, you’ll notice that they’re all related – in one way or another – to the problem we solve here at Accelerate. That problem is: a lack of prospect and customer meetings for salespeople and customer success people who work with schools and MATs. A lack of meetings leads to an unhealthy sales pipeline, lower retention rates, lower upsells and cross-sells. Then the overarching business problem is: a lack of revenue. So, it’s a big problem we help businesses solve.

A lot of my posts talk about how current practices like cold calling and email campaigns are not as effective as they used to be. I’ll post a lot about how they just don’t yield the number of meetings and conversations that salespeople and CSMs need.

Then other posts that I put out there may be really direct and to the point. These will be about how a great social selling method helps generate more sales meetings and more opportunities. But nonetheless, regardless of my angle in my post, the main problem I’m addressing is the lack of meetings for sales and customer success people.

The reason I do this is because the related problems to lack of meetings include: a dry sales pipeline, lack of advocacy, the lack of customer meetings for retention purposes, or the lack of predictable revenue. And these relate to an industry-wide issue.

So, you need to do that bit of work in your business. You need to really nail down what problem you solve. And when you’ve done that. Post about it. And post daily.

Should Posts Always Problem-Centric?

In short. No. But the vast majority of the time, absolutely yes!

So, at the very least you should post once per day, Monday to Friday, relating to the problem you solve. And on a weekend? Show your personality!

So the posts on a Saturday should be all about you, your hobbies, or your family life. Just be human!

This is important, because when you do ask for that all-important meeting. These posts will show how relatable you are. Remember, even your prospects and customers are human. They’re not just budget holders and users – they too have families and hobbies and friends!

So by showing you can solve their problem and that you’re an approachable, non-salesy person – you’re much more likely to get that meeting booked.

A side note, and a word of warning! Don’t ask for the meeting too early! Don’t be spammy and pitch at them. Don’t be salesy without adding value. Don’t turn LinkedIn into the latest version of cold calling and cold emailing! It will damage your reputation and you’ll find it hard to recover from that.

The Results?

By following this advice you get two streams of opportunities:

• Inbound enquiries start to happen, and that’s great! Really great! People start coming to you! Now obviously inbound should never be a strategy that you solely rely on. But you do need to get your inbound engine working. And the two techniques mentioned above will help you do that.
• And by mixing this advice with understanding when and how to ask for that all-important meeting, your outbound activity will yield 10+ extra meetings per week.

And this all leads to more sales, more renewals, more advocacy and more revenue.