“Anything that can be automated should be because it’s going to make your life a lot easier. – Allison Lindstorm”

Oh boy! I wish there were 48 hours instead of 24 hours in a day. It all seems so chaotic. These growing pains….. Uff.

Life was not this difficult when just two of us were handling the sales. But as we grew our sales team, with each new member there were more over heads. Like reminding sales reps to do follow ups, touch base with old but dormant clients or ask for feedback on project completion. Notifying finance team to raise invoices….. and many others.

Imagine dealing with 10s of sales reps and 100s of projects, all of this happening over to and fro emails. Obviously, a highly in-efficient way of managing sales processes. Then I began to look for ways to automate various sales processes to save time and gain sanity. HubSpot Workflows came to my rescue. With HubSpot Workflows me and my team managed to become much more efficient. That saved us a lot of time and actually became a game changer for our sales numbers. The time I saved helped me strategise and take our sales to the next level.

– The Director, Niche Services Company.

Read on to find out some ways to automate sales processes and save you time for better things! For the starter let’s learn a bit about HubSpot Workflows.

HubSpot Workflow:

Simply put, a workflow is the sequence of processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion.

In a HubSpot workflow these processes could be:

• Tasks like Call, Email, or a To-do
• Updating certain information in the CRM  like lead status or deal stage.
• Sending notifications to the team.

It’s also in your control to decide which process should take place and when should it take place.

Not just that, you can also choose which user activity shall trigger which workflow. Example: You can create a HubSpot workflow to share webinar recording. Once you create a workflow, any time a user fills a form to request webinar recording, it would automatically get shared with the user. (#sideNote: HubSpot workflow is a great tool for marketing automation too.)

Here is a sample sketch of a HubSpot workflow to give you a rough idea.

Sales Processes Automation | 3 Ways

Here are 3 sales processes that you can automate using HubSpot Workflows:

1. Invoice Raising Notification.
2. Followup Reminders with Email Template.
3. Feedback Reminders for Account Mining.

Invoice Raising Notification.

Aim: Automatic notification to finance team to raise invoice on project completion.

In every company, a project might go through several different stages. And there can be several projects at different stages.

Let’s consider, that a project might have 7 different stages as follows.

1. Project Initiation.
2. Interim 1.
3. Interim 2.
4. Final Report Sent.
5. Project Closed.
6. Invoice Sent.
7. Payment Received.

And there is a pipeline that keeps a track of all the projects and their stages.

Based on the progress of the project, the sales rep can drag and drop the projects from one state to another in the projects pipeline.

Once, the sales rep moves the project to “Project Closed” state, you would want to send a notification to finance team to raise the invoice.

Instead of doing this manually, a notification email can be auto-generated using HubSpot workflow and sent to POC in finance team.

Wondering how? Let’s take a look at the implementation logic!

Implementation Logic:

Step 1: Create an email that contains project-id (value gets automatically picked) to notify finance team to raise invoice.

Here is a quick example.

Dear Fiona,

Recently, a project with (ProjectID) got marked as complete and the sales person from outside is (Sales Rep Name).

Please share the invoice with respective person marked for this project and move the project stage to “invoice sent”.

Feel free to ask if you need more information.

Best,

Nitesh

The respective project id and sales rep names shall automatically get added in the email.

Step 2: Create a workflow that gets triggered on a change in projects pipeline as shown below. Add the email you created in step 1.

Shall you need help in implementing this workflow, we are always there to help.

Followup Reminders with Email Templates

To stay on top-of-mind of the prospects/clients it’s often needed to send follow up emails. However the content of email and timing varies based on the stage of prospect, also called Lead Status.

Every company might have different follow up rules. However, as a sales lead/manager you would want a system that can automatically remind and guide sales reps for followups.

Let’s say your lead status and time to follow up looks like this:

1. 15 days – Hot.
2. 30 days – Warm.
3. 45 days – Normal.
4. 90 days – Cold.
5. 180 days – Ice.

In each case the type of follow up shall be different. And the sales reps shall need to know the science and art of the follow up.

To implement this sales process automation, we custom created a field in HubSpot CRM called “When Do I Follow Up”.

Whenever a sales rep updates this field called “When do I follow up” the workflow gets triggered.

Implementation Logic:

Step 1: Create an email to guide and remind the sales rep on how to follow up with the warm lead.

Sample Email:

Dear {Account.Owner} (Sales Rep handling the account),

You are not new to never ending sales followup cycle. The problem is more we do sales centric followup with the prospect, the less he feels interested to talk.

An example of sales centric follow ups are:

————————————

Hey Bob,

Can we do a project for you?

Regards

XXXX

————————————–

There is no rule that you should not do one lines sales followups. You can do where the relationship is rock solid and the person will recognise your follow up and understand why you are doing so.

Here is the greatest and yet simplest trick you should use. Find out content examples and use URLs to bring prospects to our website, so that we impress him/her.

Sincerely,

Nitesh

Step 2: Create the workflow using the logic presented below. Shall you need help in implementing this workflow, we are always there to help.

Feedback Reminders for Account Mining

As a sales leader, we are sure you understand the nuances of account mining: i.e. getting more work opportunities from the same clients.

One of the ways to do so is to request a  feedback session from the client on the completion of the project.

Wondering How?

The feedback session will open doors to fresh and creative ways for account mining (seeking more work opportunities from the client).

Implementation Logic:

Step 1: Create the email to explain the importance of feedback session and guide the sales rep through sales calls recording on how to seek for more work opportunities.

Step 2: Create the HubSpot workflow using the logic shared below.

Hope you found this post insightful. We are more than happy to answer any queries around optimizing your HubSpot usage.

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The sales team gets to hear from buyers day in and day out.

Thus, the sales team is better aware of the buyer’s pain-points.

The marketing team can create compelling content.

The sales team can use this content to engage effectively with buyers.

Active engagement with buyers can further result in more deal closures!

For all this to happen, the sales and marketing teams need to go hand in hand.

Here are the six actionable steps to achieve the alignment:

1. Codify Buyer Persona.

Knowing what drives the buyer helps you sell better.

However, knowing the right buyer is of utmost importance.

The sales and marketing teams need to be on the same page,

If you wish to attract the right prospects,

and to convert more prospects into buyers.

Let’s observe the difference between:

Case 1: “I want a lollipop!”

Case 2: “I want a Chupa Chups brand, caramel flavor, small size lollipop!”

In case 2, I have made my choice very specific.

And whether the sales team brings this lollipop or the marketing team does, the chances of bringing the wrong lollipop are negligible!

There are various tools available to create buyer personas.

Try the “Make My Persona” tool by HubSpot.

Just to present an example, Here is how our buyer persona looks like:

2. A Knowledge Repository

There should be a digital knowledge repository.

This platform shall serve 2 main purposes:

1. The instant accessibility of any content needed by the sales team.
   • Example: Brochures, Ebooks, Presentations, Proposal Templates, Tutorials, etc.
   • Every piece of content created in collaboration with both teams.
2. Content request feature.
   • Example: The sales team need a presentation on “Latest Technology trends in the entertainment domain”.
   • One of the reps can put up the request.
   • Any available resource from the marketing team can collaborate with the sales rep to create the needed presentation.
   • Once the presentation is ready. It is added to the repository forever.

3. Weekly Smarketing Connect.

The sales and marketing teams should meet once a week.

The main agenda of such a meeting should be:

“Help Each Other”

Sales contribute to creating more powerful content.

Marketing contributes to the aesthetics and appeal of the content.

There are a few more important things that can happen in smarketing meetings:

a) Clear goal setting: Marketing needs to generate n number of leads every month.

b) Check whether the sales team contacted each lead generated by the marketing team in the given time frame or not.

c) Discuss any issues related to the quality of leads.

4. A sales-driven content strategy.

Let me share a little story here:

A sales rep created the most useful piece of information for the buyers.

This piece of information was brilliant, yet ugly (just look-wise).

It was brilliant because the buyer’s pain-points drove its creation.

It was ugly because of an improper choice of colors or a lack of design sense.

The Marketing team made that piece of information visually appealing.

That piece of information then became the most successful lead magnet ever for their business.

Such great collaboration between the two teams is what you need to achieve success.

Here is the tip:

Step 1: Appoint a junior member in the marketing team to interview the sales team members over a coffee. (A junior member with excellent interviewing skills)

Step 2:  The interviewer then shares the insights gained with the whole marketing team. 

Step 3: The marketing team can then creates blog-posts, videos, e-books, podcasts, or any other content which attracts more qualified leads.

5. Reflect

It’s a universal rule that works in every walk of life.

Act: You do something.

Reflect: Observe the consequences.

Improve: Change your actions by delta.

example:

You solve a math problem.

Get an incorrect answer.

You try to find out where you went wrong.

You learn from your mistake.

And try not to commit it again.

Similarly, It’s important to know which content worked and which didn’t.

Based on the analytics, teams can together brainstorm on what works best for the business.

6. CRM tool like HubSpot

A lead goes through different stages before converting into a customer.

• Subscriber
• Lead
• Marketing Qualified Lead
• Sales Accepted Lead.
• Buyer

Is there a way to identify which stage a lead is in?

Absolutely! Yes!

With wonderful tools like HubSpot’s CRM, you have a provision of lead scoring.

Based on site visits and posts read a lead call be called:

Cold. Intermediate. Warm. Hot.

Until the lead becomes warm, sales have no part to play.

It’s time for marketing to nurture the lead.

Once, the lead gains some confidence in you through the content and become warm.

It’s time for sales to pitch in.

Sales can then play its role of discovering pain-points, suggesting solutions and converting into customers.

The biggest mistake that gets avoided with such a system in place is:

“Sales and Marketing reaching out to the same lead without knowing the lead status.”

Which is otherwise hazardous.

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Sales Playbook is a great solution to a very commonly faced problem.

Problem: Is 80% of your Revenue Coming from 20% of the Sales Team?

Read on if you wish the Revenue distribution to look as below:

(In other words, Do you want everyone on your team to sell like your star-seller?

Thus, More Sales!)

Won’t you agree?

What’s the difference between star-seller and the other reps?

It’s exactly the same as the difference between a seasoned player and a novice.

For instance:

The difference in response to a Sales Objection by star-seller and any other sales rep.

Sales Objection:

When the client says, “The other company is ready to do this project at $1000 less than yours.”

Less experienced Sales Rep’s Response

We deliver better quality results at a faster speed. Our operations team is highly experienced. That’s why our charges are premium. You shall not regret working with us.

Star-Seller’s Response

It’s interesting to know that. It would be great if you could please tell us what’s the difference in the quality of the deliverables.

How is the star-seller’s approach different?

• Star-seller showed genuine interest in discovering the difference in offerings from client’s point of view.
• Star-seller neither felt insecure about his company’s work nor defended it.
• Star-seller didn’t push to close the deal.
• Buyers today are much more powerful and well-informed to make right selection of the seller.
• Once the star-seller gets the client talking about his pain-points, he would be in a better position to close the deal.

As we always say, “Understanding of buyer and buyer’s journey is the key to success.”

Why this difference?

• A lot of business intelligence is needed at different stages in a sales cycle.
• Like discovery calls, handling requests for quotes, follow-up on proposal approval, deal closures, etc.
• Star-seller based on his experience, negotiation, and communication skills, understanding of business, and clients have aced the knack of closing deals.
• The rest of the reps are much less experienced on how to respond to clients in different situations.
• If there were a way each rep knew how to handle the situation like a star-seller, there would be definitely many more closed deals.

Does this resonate with you?

You start a business.

You make good sales.

You are a Star-Seller.

Or your partner is a Star-Seller.

You fuel your business.

You invest in Marketing.

You grow your sales team.

With more sales reps on board.

You expect the Revenue to increase.

But it doesn’t happen.

You wonder……

What’s possibly gone wrong?

Don’t worry!

It happens in every business.

Each sales rep has his/her own selling style.

Their selling style might/might not work for your business.

It’s only You who knows what’s the best way to sell for your business!

You try to train/coach the new members on the team.

Sometimes it also happens that you train the rep.

But the rep leaves before becoming profitable for the company.

You don’t want to do this training business again and again.

You wish, there was a system.

A system that can empower your team to sell just like you!

Without you having to tell it again and again.

Well, Congratulations!

You are going to discover the best solution to this problem.

We call it – “Einstein – The Sales Playbook”.

Here is a little proof that it works.

Testimonial For Einstein

We implemented Einstein for one of our premium clients GreyB Services.

Here is what the Director of GreyB has to say about Einstein.

Snapshots of “Einstein – The Sales Playbook”

Let’s say one of your sales reps is awaiting a response on a proposal.

It’s been three weeks.

He is wondering.

What shall be the best way to follow up on the proposal with the client.

All that he needs to do is.

Go to Einstein and use it simply like Google.

Search Query: “Proposal Approval”

All the results matching the keyword would appear.

One result might be an actionable email template for the follow-up.

The sales rep can use that template to follow-up.

Now, this is not just any template.

It’s a way to follow-up just the way….

Or Your Star-Seller would have followed up.

Look at the results below:

The results show three different scenarios.

And a different way to follow up in each case.

Still, if your sales rep can’t find the scenario he is is looking for.

He can always request for one, using the “Contact Support” feature.

There are tons of things that can be added to the playbook.

Like Tutorials. Tools. Learnings. Pitches. Tactics.

See Einstein in action!

What do you think of Einstein? Do let us know in the comments section.

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

How to Create a Sales Playbook?

You shall need two things for it.

1. Data – Actionable Ideas, Tactics, Templates, Tutorials, etc. from Star-Sellers of the Team.
2. Einstein

You can hire us to create it.

Leave your name and email to schedule a free consultation call.

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For any investment, if you can earn decently more than what you have invested, it’s absolutely worth it.

To gain more insights on whether HubSpot is worth investing or not, I interviewed the Director of a Niche Services Company (Let’s call him Nick).

Nick has 15+ years of industry experience. He started using HubSpot for his company 3 years ago. He definitely finds HubSpot a beneficial move for the company.

Let’s hear his story, as to what challenges he faced without HubSpot and how HubSpot solved them for him.

#WordOfCaution: HubSpot is not a magic wand but it’s definitely a great tool. Wisdom lies in how you can use HubSpot to get the most out of it.

His Story:

I lead the sales team at my company

15 years ago it was a one-man show.

Me and my two friends

We had just started our small company.

I was responsible for sales.

My partners took care of rest.

Together we built a very good business.

We started seeing more clients approaching us.

We got more work than we could handle.

As we began to grow, we

brought more people on board in operations team

In order to grow sales team

we brought in a high paying sales veteran

and few more people to handle

initial sales activities like

cold calling ,  emails,

making presentations,

finding leads etc.

We saw an year on year increase in sales

until this happened….

Our sales graph turned into a straight line from an upward slope!

Although, by this time

we had a big sales team..

high paying sales veterans…

even then the graph won’t budge.

We began to troubleshoot…

sought advice from experts…

one Venture Capitalist told us that …

“Your sales process is broken”

we could not understand…

what a broken sales process means.

we began to dig deeper….

looking for guidance from where-ever possible….

then we heard about HubSpot..

How?

By Googling our Sales Problems

HubSpot on Google is a

giant cluster of data about

improving your sales performance

“HubSpot gives tons of Free but Genuine advice”

You can’t miss out on HubSpot

While searching for any of your business problems

Explored it a bit ….

and got convinced.

It seemed as if integrating with HubSpot will repair our broken sales process.

Invested in HubSpot!

It costs us somewhere around $10000 per year.

But even after doing this investment …

we could not see the change

we expected in our sales…

However we continued to…

log in our sales data into HubSpot sales tool.

Gradually by experimenting….

by learning from experts…

by using our business acumen..

We have nailed it with HubSpot!

And all I can say is,

HubSpot Sales is a great tool…

but it’s extremely important to know….

How to use it ….

Let me give you a few examples…

Hubspot makes Contacts Handling Super Easy.

I travel across the globe for sales…

USA, Europe, UK, UAE …..

for more than 6 months in a year…

sometimes to touch base with premium clients…

with the intent of getting more business…

sometimes to warm up relationships

with old/inactive clients…

sometimes to pitch to new clients…

face-to-face conversations have helped me a great deal…

With HubSpot I can fetch all the information about

my clients in minutes….

It’s just like asking Alexa…

” Pull me a list of all the clients

located in SFO

with the details of

Company details, deals, projects, email track, type of work etc.”

This list helps me a great deal in landing meetings

thus bringing in more business.

#WordOfCaution: All this is possible only if your sales representatives login detailed information about clients and prospects.

HubSpot facilitates Contacts filter creation with hundreds of attributes. You can choose the ones relevant to your business.

HubSpot makes Remote Sales Team Management Easy.

For most of the time in a year

as I am out of my hometown

hence I manage my sales team remotely

it was quite a challenge

but with Hubspot it’s become pretty easy

to effectively manage my sales team.

let me explain…

I have 15 reps in my sales team

Each member is involved in different sales activities

and not just one sales activity but many of them…

One rep is:

preparing a proposal for client A

holding a presentation for client B

following up with client C on project completion

Another rep is:

writing a cold email to client D

holding a discovery call with client E

Yet another rep is:

doing some other sales activity.

All in all, as a whole, the team is involved

in hundreds of different sales activities.

And at many places they might need help

either to move a client from presentation to proposal stage

or from proposal to closing the deal….

or could be anything else.

So if I can access all this information in a streamlined manner

something like as shown in picture below….

HubSpot helps me warm up relationships with in-active clients.

Think of a pair of shoes..

and tell me the first brand that comes to your mind.

(It’s Nike for me) .

Or think of milk..

and tell me the first brand that comes to your mind.

(It’s Meiji for me).

The reason I asked this question is

to introduce to you a popular concept called

Top-Of-Mind Awareness.

According to the concept your company should

come on TOP in mind of a person while

looking for a product/service like yours.

How can you stay in top of some one’s mind if you

have not touched base with them in many many months?

Hence, if  HubSpot can pull out a list of clients

who have not given you any business

in last few months or

whom you have not contacted in a long time.

Won’t it be beneficial to touch base with them?

Once you get the list.

Refer to the last communication you had with them.

Learn more about their current state through their social media.

Process all this information and write emails to them.

What shall go in these emails?

Some content that can be of value to them.

Along side, may be you can also share

some information about your new service offering.

There is a very high possibility that

client might have some work for you.

And might hire you again based on

how well you did on your last deliverable for them.

HubSpot Deals Dashboard helps me chase deals strategically.

There are numerous deals in dashboard with different value and in different stages.

Let me give you one example:

Let’s say there are 10 deals in Proposal Stage,

awaiting response from clients for may be 2 months, 20 days , a week or so.

If I could rightly guess,

based on the psychology of the client,

for which I make notes with another interesting HubSpot feature,

I can easily close these deals.

OR

I can also prioritise,

which deal to chase,

based on its value,

Highest first.

HubSpot helps me bring consistency across my sales team.

Is 80% of revenue coming from 20% of your sales team (Star Sellers) ?

Happens with most of the Companies.

Same was the case with my Company too.

Why this happens?

This happens when sales reps (other than the Star-Sellers)

are not able to handle the sales objection

wisely or just as the Star-Sellers.

Below is surefire way to replicate the charm of your Star-Sellers across your sales team.

It’s a 3-step process:

1. List down all the Sales-Objections. 

2. Document the best possible response for each Sales-Objection, the one that your star sellers give to close the deal.

3. Make it handy for all the members of sales team.

Example:

Sales Objection: “Why should we give this project to you for $2000 while xyz company is ready to do it for $1800?”

Star Seller’s Response: Sharing a case-study which explains cost benefit analysis of hiring YOU.

(Something like if you invest $5000 in training your sales team

and then the team manages to bring

$50000 of additional revenue, it’s absolutely worth it).

Keeping the response Handy: This can be achieved using HubSpot.

Marketing team can go through the phone, chat or email transcripts

between Clients and sales reps.

Pull out a list of all the sales objection.

Then, get insights from star sellers and

prepare the needed material.

Accumulate all this in HubSpot so that

it’s instantly accessible by all the members of the sales team.

Conclusion from the Story.

If Sales Reps diligently put data in HubSpot,

fetching the right data from HubSpot can

help grab tons of business opportunities,

which would otherwise be lost.

The story has definitely brought great insights for the readers.

What do you think?

As I understand,

You wish to increase sales.

Improving your Sales Hiring Strategy shall be a great idea too!

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

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Before we try to increase sales; “let’s take a deeper understanding of buyers and users for the app.”.

Do Parents want to have a mobile application to communicate with teachers?

The answer is a big Yes. (As validated by talking to a lot of parents. Parents who have the app are really happy, their only concern is certain missing features. Parents who do not have a mobile app to communicate with teachers want to have one.) While speaking to parents I noted down the list of features they absolutely love. Here is it for your reference:

1. Most of the parents said they love to see their child’s pictures and videos.
2. Parents are relieved that the app updates them about class notes, homework, project work, study material, state or national level competitions, concept testing etc.
3. Parents feel that it’s wonderful that the school app provide GPS tracking system for their child’s school bus.
4. One of the parents told that school developed an app based on feedback from parents. The app is live with minimalistic features and gradual extensions.
5. One of the parents told that their school app has an e-wallet system. So, if the child wants to eat something from canteen, he/she can swipe his/her Id card where we deposit certain amount of money. Parents receive each & every detail of what the child ate, how much did it cost etc. on the app.

Does School need a mobile application to communicate with parents? #FoodForThought

Are apps solving any problems for school? Is app going to bring them more business? The honest answer is NO.

The app definitely addresses pain points faced by Parents. The app makes it easier for parents to communicate with the teacher. Parents can access class-notes, check child’s progress, respond to school circulars, track location of their child’s school bus.

Then, why would school buy the app?

(Please do write your answer to this question in the comment section.)

The point to be noted here is the user of the app is “Parent”, however buyer of the app is “School”.

So, in order for school to invest in the app and thus increase the sales of your school mobile app let’s do some brainstorming.

Who is your buyer?

How is their buying process?

What are different stages in buying process?

 What’s your strategy to address the buyer in different stages of buying process?

Answering these questions can help you a great deal in designing your sales and marketing strategies. Thus, helping you to increase your sales.

Who is your buyer?

Is saying schools enough? Or can we further define it better?

1. Preschools (Day Care Centers), Primary Schools or High Schools.
2. Private or government schools.
3. School fee and number of students.
4. Demography of students.
5. Technology oriented school or traditional school.

Finding these attributes about a school will help you estimate the likelihood of their interest in your app.

Now, in case of school mobile app there are three stake holders:

Let’s take a look at the mobile app from each one’s perspective.

1. Parents: Let’s divide the parents in two groups based on the age of their children.
   1. Parents of Preschoolers or kindergartners who send their children to day care centers. On average children spend 8-10 hours of their day at the center.
      1. Did my child eat well?
      2. Did my child sleep well?
      3. How was my child’s day at school?
      4. Was my child taken for an outdoor play?
      5. Did my child have a bowel moment at school?
      6. Is my child able to mingle well with the peers and teachers?
   2. Parents of children in the age range of 6-10 years feel anxious about how their children (especially preschoolers and kids under 10 years of age) are doing at school in many ways:
      1. Is my child attentive in class?
      2. Does he understand the concepts well?
      3. How did he perform in his show and tell today?
      4. My child’s writing speed is slow. His notes are often incomplete and 80% of the times he doesn’t write the home-work details in diary. Wish the teacher updated this on daily basis somewhere.
      5. One more Parents Teacher Meeting means wasting 3 hours in commute, waiting for my turn to meet the teacher. Wish this could be completed in a 15 minutes video call.
      6. Oops! I missed to fill the field trip consent form. Wish I could just give my consent on the mobile app with a single click.
   3. Parents with children above 10 years of age are not so anxious. As Children above 10 years of age can clearly communicate about anything happening at school.
      1. However, they can benefit from updates on class notes, assignments, circulars etc. through the app.

#FoodForThought: So why would schools invest in the mobile app? Alternatively, Parents can pay for the app, School can just facilitate it. What do you think?

 Let’s say a school has 11000 children studying in its different branches across the city. And the school invests 13 lac INR to develop the app. Each parent gets to download and use the app for a one-time cost of 300 INR. Now let’s do some math. 300 x 11000 = 3300000 = 33 lac INR. Thus, recovering their investment as well as keeping the surplus for app maintenance or updates in later times.

2. Teachers & Admin Staff:
   1. Teachers feel that admin work like updating child’s portfolios takes up too much of time. Imagine the traditional way of creating children portfolios. Selecting pictures, printing them, cutting them, pasting them, writing the child’s progress across various parameters. Versus. Uploading pictures at a click of a button. Giving objective feedback through radio buttons. Or using intuitive writing provided by the app for detailed progress report.
   2. One of the staff’s responsibility is to do temperature scan for each student of the school. Also, to record it along with attendance logs. If there were a Bluetooth enabled thermometer, integrated with your mobile app, which would directly create temperature logs. It would save many staff hours.

#FoodForThought: Let’s say school wants to send out field trip circular with a consent form to all the parents. There are 500 students. The staff will have to print and get these 500 papers and get it distributed to each and every student. Students take those circulars to their parents. Parents respond to it next day. All the circulars are collected. And based on the consent staff chalks out further details. Now look what can digitization do to it. Staff shares the circular over mobile app with parents. Parents give their consent with a single click of button on mobile itself. App then generates a report on how many student’s parents said a yes in no time.  This saves paper and time both.

3. Schools: Let’s find out WHY at all should schools have mobile apps? If our answer to WHY is convincing enough. If the school also believes in the same vision as app development company; it would be much easier for school to make a buying decision.
   1. To adapt the state-of-art practices
      1. The world is constantly changing. If the school does not keep up with the latest technology. Projecting itself as a technology-oriented school increases its brand value.
   2. To stop wasting too much paper
      1. Schools use paper for admission forms, consent forms, field trip announcements, circulars, worksheets, class notes, exam papers, feedback forms etc.
      2. Practice what you Preach! It’s the school, the teachers who teach students to save paper. But first they need to practice it themselves. And set an example by saving tons and tons of paper.
   3. To increase parental engagement
      1. Customer is the king. For a school, parents are the customers. If the mobile app makes parents happy; it’s worth it.
      2. Imagine having live sessions between parents and teachers like a video conferencing. Thus, saving commute time and fuel for parents. This reduces a 2-3 hours venture into 15 minutes.
      3. Parents feel delighted to see how their kids performed at the show and tell or delivered a speech in school.

 How is their buying process going to look like?

There would be some triggers for a school to consider investing into a mobile app. For example:

1. Competitor school is using a mobile app, maybe we should give a try too.
2. Parents are insisting on having a mobile app to better communicate with teachers.
3. Every business is benefitting from digitization, why not schools too.
4. Some mobile app business owner approached the school.

Based on the triggers school will look for mobile app solutions. Compare different solutions and choose the one that they think is best suited for their school. Breaking down this buying process in various stages; where each stage is an action taken by the buyer in the process of buying; will help you decide the right course of response to that action.

 What are different stages in buying process?

What’s your strategy to address the buyer in different stages of buying process?

 (Stay tuned for an answer to this question in the part 2 of this article.)

I got an opportunity to speak to a few principals, school owners, people from school management, coordinators to get their take on mobile app.

This is the first response from owner and principal of the school with 5 branches in Indore, India.

“Hi Aditi! We have 5 branches of school, for senior school we use NIIT’s school management software. It also provides a mobile app to communicate with parents. For rest 4 branches we use teach next. Actually, we have invested in their smart boards for classroom. They also provide a mobile app for communicating with parents. Frankly, when we bought NIIT’s school management software, we made a one-time payment as agreed by both the parties. However, their backend support is pathetic. It’s like they are not going to get any more money from us. So why care? The software crashes many a times, it’s hard to get any of its features customized (e.g. progress reports). Earlier our data was on a physical server and not on a cloud. So, if there is a loss of electricity, we could not send homework to parents. With the advent of the app we went diary less (no more parent handbook) but we had a tough time educating the parents on usage of app. This challenge can be accounted to the demography of the parents. Most of them are not so tech savvy etc.”

#FoodForThought: Onetime payment with free services for long time may seem like a good deal to win the customer. But the chances are you/your team/your company loses motivation in providing a free service later for various reasons. Better not to have such a model.

#FoodForThought: Mobile App businesses are really competitive. Our wisdom says the returns on the kind of investment you put in an app business may not be glamorous. Better to offer something way beyond it.

 One more interview with the owner and principal of a renowned school with 5000 students in India was like an eye-opener for me. And it surely is an eye opener for companies that provide School Management System or ERP (Educational Resource Planning) solutions for schools.

Me: “Hello Mam! Do use any School Management Software for your school?”

Principal: “Hi Aditi! Yes! We started with NIIT’s school management software. It had limited features, mainly dealing with fee and report cards. Then we switched to Academia. For Academia, we were the first client as a school. Before us they were working mainly with universities. They could not handle our requirements. Currently we are using MyClass. It’s best in three, affordable too, but still it’s not what I exactly want.”

Me: “What are your expectations from the School Management Software?”

Principal: “I have 5000 students and a team of 370 people working for the school including teachers, admin staff, IT staff etc. I want a tool that gives me complete information about every single student, parent, teacher, staff etc. at a click of the mouse.”

Me: “What is the kind of information you are looking at?”

Principal: “Consider this scenario Aditi, I have meeting scheduled with the parents whose child got a compartment in class 9^th in Mathematics. Even before the parents enter my room, I want all the information about child’s performance throughout the year. Details of feedback sent to parents by teacher. Parent’s response to the feedback. Regularity in assignments. Attentiveness in class. medical issues, if any. With this information handy, it would be much easier for me to converse with the parents. Not just this, I wish to have complete demographic information about students and parents. How many doctors, politicians, businessmen etc. among parent?”

Me: “Do you also use a mobile app to communicate with the parents?”

Principal: “We do have an app (as a part of School Management Software) to communicate with parents. But it has its own challenges. For 5000 students there had been only 1000 downloads. So, we can’t rely on just one medium for communication. We use SMS (Short Messaging Service), emails as well as paper-based circulars along with mobile app. However gradually we want to have a single reliable mode of communication with parents.”

Me: “How much does it cost to have a School Management System?”

Principal: “Most of the vendors we talked to offered per student model of payment. So, let’s say if they charge 90 INR per student, it becomes 90 x 5000 = 450000 INR for us. Which is a huge amount to invest with subject to the demography of our students.”

Me: “Tell us Why did you start this school?”

Principal: We started the school with a vision to providing quality education to less privileged students at an affordable fee. And after years of turmoil, I can proudly say that we have done it for thousands of children and will continue to do so. It gives me immense happiness to see my children win gold and silver medals at national and international competitions.

Based on this interview, I have created a sample of buyer’s (Principal and Owner) journey (Buying Process). The buyer who is considering to invest in a school management system. Let’s read the buyer’s mind!

 Here is the magnified view of each stage of buyer’s journey.

1.Principal faces following problems:

2. Queries in Principal’s mind who is going to try a School Management System for the first time.

3. Queries in the Principal’s mind who has already used some School Management System.

4. Principal visits the School Management System provider’s website.

5. Principal enquires about the pricing and the offerings.

6. Principal gives a go-ahead to buy/subscribe your School Management System.

After reading buyer’s mind, if we redirect our sales and marketing initiatives, our likelihood of success increases exponentially.

How to do that will be shared in part 2 of this article.

Part 2 of the article will only be sent exclusively over email to interested parties.

In part 2 we are going to share lot more key-insights towards the business growth of School Management System Solutions company.

Pro tip: If you need 30 standout SaaS growth hacks to attain double the growth for your SaaS business, fill out the form below!

If you are interested in part 2, tell us how can we reach you!

If you enjoyed reading this article, we have more for you. This article shows how focussing on buyers can increase sales for you. Special thanks to David Skok for giving an absolutely wonderful framework to build a sales and marketing machine for a company.

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