2 education has always required a different kind of sales approach. Long buying cycles. Multiple stakeholders. Deep accountability to students, families, and communities. But the environment today feels more measured than it did just a few years ago. District leaders are scrutinizing spend, thinking carefully about sustainability, and asking harder questions about long-term impact.

We are not operating in the same ESSER-funded landscape that allowed for rapid pilots and flexible experimentation. Funding conversations now center on justification, alignment, and durability. AI may be accelerating attention, but caution is shaping decisions.

In this episode of All Things Marketing and Education, Elana Leoni sits down with Shelby Jones of FuelK12 to explore what that shift means for education sales and marketing teams. They unpack ghosting, budget objections, the tension between depth and scale, and the structural misalignment that often exists between marketing and sales. The conversation stays practical, focused on what actually builds trust inside districts right now.

See the resources and show notes here.

Hey, welcome to the show, Shelby. I'm so excited to have this conversation and selfishly learn from you today. So welcome.

Oh, thank you. No, thank you for hosting me and happy to be here. So yeah, look forward to jumping in with you.

I was funny. was telling a friend, I'm like, I'm, recording a podcast with this woman named Shelby. And the first time I had this call with her, she was just like a firecracker. Like you came in with all of the things and I was like, you gotta be on my show. And even before that, like, I know that you were kind of getting into the creating content scene, but I'd been learning from you at on LinkedIn. So I was like, all right, I need to selfishly learn from her, but let's make sure our audience gets to learn from you too. So.

you are too sweet. mean, you put something out there and I always say you hope it lands and resonates with somebody. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that.

Yes, and side note for those of you thinking about content, this is like Shelby started to create content specifically on LinkedIn, but a lot of really practical thought leadership content. can find her at Shelby Jones, but when people come up to you and you already have that built in trust, that's magic. That's why I do what I do in terms of content marketing is because you've already established that you love doing it and you have that credibility and they've learned from you. And it's just, it's also, it touches your heart, right?

Cause you're like, wow.

It does. I always think I would say it's like the pay it forward mentality. You know, we learn from others and we've carried that change. It's like, you know, if we could just pass that knowledge on and keep paying it forward, then it's all full circle.

Yes. All right. So let's just dive right into it. You are going to be talking about all things sales and education, but we're going to be playing a little bit around.

They're getting ready to start doing some testing. Sorry. It'll be quick, but it's gonna happen a few times, so it'll be done. Okay. I'm just gonna pause it there so you don't have to redo it. It's life.

I am so sorry, Jordan. I didn't want her to go down. We can take it right back up if you want.

But they said a few times, you wanna wait or no?

Yeah, let's give it 30 more seconds. I am so sorry. Of course, like the only time I ever do anything.

Yeah, it's generally like this, don't worry about it. We can wait too, because I think like when we get in flow, it's just like, bah, alarm.

It's fine.

No!

I'm so sorry. You did all the stop-up preparation.

And I'm so annoyed because Lonnie did his like fortune cookie when he does for our, our academy thing, like this afternoon with our person.

Lonnie just ran to my office and he's like, see if she can pause right there right there. I don't think they're in an awkward spot. I'm trying to think.

Okay.

because it...

you

I sh-

I'm just very sure it did.

I was telling her, you could plan it out every time it had to be something that happened.

Bonnie's like, it'll make it more real in your podcast if you have the fire alarm. It's like, okay, it's still jolting. I think it's done. If we'll just take two.

Okay, perfect. Sorry, we left right off on the ending. Do you want to redo the ending or redo that whole thing again? what would you

All right, so let's dive into it. Today, I'm gonna be talking with you about mostly all things sales and education, but you know us, we're gonna be throwing in that fire alarm.

No pun intended.

Let's wait a couple seconds more and see if it-

Oh my gosh, I am so sorry. I have known this. would have just done it at home. You know, I thought it would cut me off if it was quieter.

So you're really safe in that hole.

Okay.

Elana Leoni (05:36.91)

Excuse me.

my goodness. Okay, I said that was...

I guess 30 more seconds. And if it's built in, we'll just keep rolling. It'll be fine.

Okay, I think they're done.

Okay, and take three. Okay, so Shelby, I'm really excited to dive into, mostly we're gonna be talking about all things sales and education, but you know us, we're gonna be trying to orient that to sales marketing and education as much as possible. But we've got lots of different types of people listening to this show. Let's orient everybody on just K-12 sales overall in ed tech.

I don't even know where to get started, but there's always this big misnomer about B2B is B2B wherever you go. Let me, start with what does it take to truly land sales in K-12? I know that's a big question, but what are some things that you would love to point out to people as well that's uniquely different about this environment of sales?

Yeah. So I'll talk about it from kind of a market perspective. And I think you, kind of had a personal note on the end of that type. Like, what does it take to land in here and what kind of trends are we seeing in the market space? So the first part is this is different from corporate and higher ed. don't, I don't think we're saying anything new when we're talking about, you know, K-12 education sales, higher ed, of course, has their, their buyer journey when it comes to buying in that market.

And then of course there's B2B and B2C. So in that B2B environment, specifically in the education space, you're selling to the Institute. You're selling specifically to maybe the school sites or the district offices. And so that structural design and how the school set up and how you have to navigate those channels are different. And they look different from a corporate space, right? From how they make decisions, how it's carried out through their community.

the different types of titles you're running into, the different ownership across different departments, the mission driven impact. A lot of times, sometimes they might be a nonprofit. Sometimes they might be in that setup. so carrying that mission, carrying those challenges and who they're directly impacting is involved in every single aspect. So if you're classroom facing solution, your outcome is learning for kids and impact for teachers.

If you're back office, it may be operational fluency and consistency across departments. so those different kinds of impacts that you're having, both from a solution standpoint and company standpoint, vary across this space, but also vary in the different departments that you're impacting, much like you would see in a corporate just through a K-12 lens or a higher lens.

Yeah, and generally longer sales cycles, we see lots of different people in the ecosystem that are all deciding. have disparity between decision makers and users. There's all sorts of nooks and crannies of fun funness when we think about the sales.

Yes.

There, yeah, the seasonality. And ironically, most of the businesses you'll find they've they've based their seasonality still on like a calendar fiscal year. And then of course, when you're dealing with the education space, they're running on a July one to June 30 fiscal year. So those different cycles can sometimes get lost in translation if you're not mapping the seasonality or to how it's fitting in the market. And so

So you can go.

I think the other part of your question too is like, how do you land it here now? I think part of that is thinking about what's happened even just the last five years in the market. We're coming out of ESSER, that COVID impact in the specific classroom settings. And now we're entering into this kind of rationalization market where how we were selling for the past four years looks a lot differently than how we're selling now. So some of your questions about what does it take to land at EdTech?

marketing, sales, it looks different this year. It's going to feel different. There's going to be different market impacts. You're really going to have to be that translator of change. Whereas before it might be like the translator of how do I get this product into a school and the most efficient and impactful way. And now it's like, well, you we're going to take pause. really going to think about what we're going to do in this school setting and how you fit in our world and being able to translate that as a seller specifically too.

Yeah, and you know, this morning I was kind of scrolling through LinkedIn and there was a superintendent who posted and he talked, he said pretty much exactly what you said is that if you're not aligning with our vision, like it's really about what do we want to accomplish together in terms of goals? What's our district vision? What's our school vision? How do you become a guide to help us think through those bigger challenges rather than coming in and say, well, we got AI, know, those types of things, right?

Yeah, it's, I refer to it too, like zones of friction. mean, we are talking about entire communities. I mean, when you're talking, I keep going back to K-12, this is also higher too, but you are landing into a community and you are impacting multiple users within that community. So whether your product touches, you know, student facing classroom side, whether it's back office, there are different layers to being able to.

translate that change across those departments. And so it's more than just, you like our AI product? Is that going to serve and produce learning? It's how is this going to be adopted and accepted both in our technical community, our defensibility, or larger community at whole? Like that narrative, does this make actual impact in the classroom? And then also thinking about that student side.

That's the soup I think we both saw his posting as well, like 100 % saw these are humans on the other side of this. But they're not just humans, they're also kids, they're also families, they're also teachers and and cabinet member, like it's everybody in that community coming together to make this decision.

Yeah, so you mentioned some noticeable shifts. Are there any other ones that you're like, this is definitely now more emphasized when we think of coming out of the ESSER post-COVID funds, we have less funds available. As of this week, we heard an announcement from the government that at least federal funds will be secured, hopefully, with all the Title I fundings and what. But what do you see that's like...

you

even beyond what you said, is there anything else meaningfully different? Like I'm seeing a focus always on efficacy and research, but our industry tends to be like, great, that's expensive, it's hard to do, but there is more of a focus on it. What else are you kind of seeing?

Yeah, and ironically, we actually talked about this last week at ERDI and I was talking about with some team members just running across is there was this language for the past four years that we have the funds. What kind of door does that open up? I mean, we're talking about dumping.

money that had never even been seen in K-12 before with those us dollar. And so it became this ripple effect about, I would almost argue, more decentralized purchasing. Like we have funds, go try it, go test it out, go see how this is going to impact your classroom. Like we have more flexibility and agility now to do things we maybe would have taken a pause at because we would have had to justify even further spend on it.

So there's a sales habit that comes with that and how we train sales teams to speed to purchase to aligning solutions with problems. And there's also a fundamental thing happening in districts. mean, you're talking about giving more reigns to more people to make purchasing decisions because that funding doors opened up a little bit to go try things in different streams across the district buildings. so that domino effect is now pushing into this last year and now this year. Yes.

funds were approved, we saw that, you know, announcement. Like there's things coming down which are in favor in some cases, but it's still going to be a, we have to justify the spend now. We have to think about how we're going to sustain it. You know, I talk a lot about, you know, relevance over enthusiasm. And so when I think about this, wow, that's an exciting feature. I'm so pumped about that. Kids have been asking for that forever. Okay, well, what does that look two years from now?

Like how does that carry forward? How do we communicate as a company or as a seller or a marketer to be able to say, this is how this transcends across the next few years for your school. So when you reference that superintendent earlier, he's talking about the human side on the other side of this and making those purchasing decisions. mean, there's change management that happens with that. So that is the shift you're seeing right now and feeling is less the let's try it. Let's see what works. Let's break a few things along the way and

have that natural pause of, we need to vet this further? Do we need to find this further? Do we need to get AI policies around these? Do we need to think about how we're going to carry this across the next two years? And so with that just comes the opportunity of being able to say, okay, how am I thinking about this differently? How am I going to change this impact in our classrooms? And how am I going to teach our sellers to do, to communicate around this or our marketers?

Yeah, I saw a noticeable, noticeable shift when I was at FETC around not just doing things because we can, but asking fundamental questions of why and how does it directly align to our longer term goals? And that's, that's exactly what you said. So right on. We could talk a little bit more about those shifts, but I think those you hit on a lot of them that I'm seeing now in the market. So thank you.

Hahaha

Hahaha

Let's talk about something that you probably experienced. I've experienced, it's something that we don't like talking about, but it happens to us all the time, is ghosting. When you are on the sales team or even in the marketing side too, but I'm selling here too, and when people ghost you, that is natural, especially in our environment of K-12 and higher education. Talk about some of the busiest people around, right?

But when you have this like ghosting thing where people are just not responding, I know that you kind of work on the SDR front and you train sales teams too. What do you recommend for people that are like hitting the ground, hitting the email all the time and really trying to get responses, but there's just nothing. They're just yelling at a empty room, right?

Ha!

Yeah, that's that. That's the million dollar question right now, too, right? There's literal tools being, you know, drummed up overnight with AI to how do we break through this noise? And how do we think about things differently or in a thoughtful and impactful way that's going to get somebody to want to continue the conversation? And part and I laugh because my head always goes to like those alligator emails, like, are you still there?

or like, we've been inducted, like all these, all these funny emails we used to send 10 years ago. But, right now I will, I will promise you nothing has changed in the sense of the market. Our people are wanting to talk to people who bring value. And that goes beyond the, the buzzwords in an email that says, you know, we produce teacher workload and we like all the, all the different coined phrases that we have developed over the years. It's

because I had an interaction with you, whether it was an email, phone call, sales meeting, demo, did I walk away having learned something or changed my viewpoint on something that I didn't have before? And in phone call or SDR outreach or working through this department, it's stopping and seeking to understand what's actually going on. It's knowing and understanding the pain points. It's creating curiosity and not just assuming we know because something told us or

we just dove into some, you know, battle card that you built out. it's, it's really like, are you understanding the other person on the other line of that communication tool? And it sounds cheesy to say, cause we talk about all the time, but we don't do it. We don't, we really don't get out there and say, this is a human on the other phone. This is something I'm trying to understand how you're doing this and are you doing it or have you thought about it in this way? And, and is that something we can carry the change on across

the different departments and across our conversations? And it's so many times of, I heard your five pain points. Now let me pitch you my product. And then it's just like, of course they're ghosting you because they just spent 15 minutes explaining to you what their challenges were, and you immediately went into pitch mode. and Dan always directs, help pitch slap But essentially like you've come in and you've not only, just took all this time to explain myself, but now I'm

I'm having to listen to you, rant about something that doesn't even align with what I just told you. And so it is relevance, but it also is higher level value. Like I can go learn about your product on your website. Tell me something I didn't think of today.

Yeah, and when you were talking in my mind, it was like that cartoon, like, ding, ding, ding, please listen to Shelby. So much of what you said is like building that trust, building that rapport, having the restraint to listen intently with curiosity, you know, and not be one of those people. You see them in social media, you see them at parties, like they're just listening to be able to talk about themselves and their product.

Don't be that person. really what our industry needs is people that truly care and are thought partners. And I know that sounds very mushy, but credibility is key here. Relationships are key here, especially when our key decision makers are moving across districts, right? We're here to help. People that are attracted to this industry are here. They're mission driven. I think sometimes with like targeted sales goals where people feel that pressure, it's like, okay, here's my moment to pitch. And then you get...

ghosted, right?

And it's empathy, right? Like, you know, there was some study that's like the best people, salespeople typically come from like the field of hospitality or the field of like service industry. It's something where they've been put in different scenarios, where they've had to pause and think about the situation or adapt to the situation on the other side. And so, like you said, that that's seeking to understand that's really

realizing the person that you're talking to at the other end of that. And that's, that's felt right. And conversations, you know, when you're talking to somebody, they're like, wow, they just get me. I am leaving this conversation with my cup full. They're not draining me. They're not just like taking the energy out of me to tell me about themselves. And they're really here and a part of this conversation.

Yeah, and you just reminded me. So you mentioned Dano. Dano is also part of Fuel Sales where you work too. He's the founder. And I'm going to drop some things in the show notes because we had a really good conversation, I think maybe like six months ago where we talked about that beautiful relationship between marketing and sales. And I know we're going to hit on that as well. And then I also had Jacob Cantor on our show and we talked about the power of relationships. So I'm going to drop those two resources in our show notes. You just reminded me.

Yes.

Let's do a little role play really quick. You've pitched me maybe, you built up the trust, you've been talking to me 12 to 18 months, and I send you an email and it's like, well, Shelby, I'm sorry, but we just don't have budget. Thanks for your time. Am I full of BS there? What's going on with the budget excuse?

And that's the million dollar one to ask one more question, right? It's the let's say we have spent a full six to 12 months in a buyer relationship together. mean, coming out of the woodwork with that, if we've had multiple, you know, effective interaction, you know, and we've come together as, you know, a team to really design this thoughtfully for your district.

Then I'd be like, oh, that's a hundred percent legit. Something happened, something changed on their end because we've taken the time I know in this previous sales process to identify value, build a change management plan around it. And we've done involved multiple stakeholders. Now, if it was like, ran into you at a conference six months ago and now you're, you, said we had one demo and now you're saying not interested. I I would either one say, are they, is this just completely not a priority?

I need to seek and figure out where the kind of the mist was. The other thing was something else happened. Something else, somebody else either got in their head or there was something else that was just kind of occurring that maybe I wasn't aware of or I missed in the beginning. And so what you should not do is all of a sudden just email back them everything about, well, have you tried this book at a Monday? Have you tried this funding source? Here's a grant form. Here's an RP ready, kidnast kit. Like just.

information overload them, it's to pick up the phone and say, do you have 15 minutes to reconnect on this? I know you're busy and if it doesn't work out, it's great, but I want to seek to understand maybe where we had a misstep or what went wrong in that process. And so I think the context of the journey you went down with that buyer says a lot more about that interaction than just them saying we don't have budget. And so what I mean by that is

If they've taken the necessary steps to put you in front of certain stakeholders within their team, they put in their emotional reputation on the line with their colleagues. That is a lot different than somebody you just keep emailing and asking if they have funds this year. And so that's what I can mean by that.

Yeah, that's so good because some of my instinct is, I want to help them. I want to gather resources. so probably people on this call are like, yeah, I would have sent them an email too. But if you can get them one-on-one and say, me understand, let me see how I can also be a sounding board and vendor aside. So genius. As marketers, I'm always looking at what hesitates people to do things, right? What hesitates someone to sign up for an e-book or a newsletter?

We'll

or to jump in on a social media post or really engage in our content that we create or respond to emails. I always look at hesitation. Beyond sometimes budget that we mentioned, but sometimes can be used in a false way, what do you think is driving hesitation in ed tech sales the most right now?

wow, that's a big one to impact.

Yeah, I mean, there's probably. And again, figured it out as a marketer, right? But like, it's different for every single brand I work with, with every different type of stakeholder that we're targeting. But I do know from like, you know, a landing page perspective, the more I can give them a little bit more like, it's okay, you got this, like, you know, underneath the subscribe, I say, hey, we're not going to use your information, you know, like confirmation.

That's the million dollar marketing one.

That I just was talking, or was talking, I listened to other podcasts and Jay Schwedelson talked about that alone will increase your conversion rate 9%. If you just put that kind of confirmation message on the landing page of just like, hey, here's our privacy policy. We're not going to solve your stuff. So, I mean, are there just things that come to mind? I know it's a huge question, but from a gut perspective.

Yep.

No, no, no, no. Yeah. Definitely things that come to mind. The first one. And I think it's both a marketer and seller. Are you making this easy for them? I think I'll use your farm as an example. Is it a 10 page? Is it like a spot form fill I'm filling out or is it two? Does it auto fill because it's synced up to my Google Chrome or am I being asked to input my social security number? Like what is the, what is the lift? What is the, the ask? And I think that's part of like,

On the seller side too, are you making it difficult for them to buy from you? Are you asking them to go do work to justify you? I always say if you're going to be in, and this real seller is a service space as well, like if you're going to be a partner with them and bringing your product or services into their school or marketing about it, or wanting them to sign up and interact with you in some way, there has to be the value there.

that they're going to walk away with something that was different than what they have before. So we talked about that earlier in like the emails, like, are you bringing something that's going to help them unstick something in their day? Or the second part of that is the, if you're the one knocking on their door, why are you making it so hard? Why is it asking everything of me as the buyer to, to do this when it went.

when you're the one who's approaching me from that sense, or you're the one asking me to bring you into our world. And, yes, down the road, that relationship dynamic might switch because you're providing them so much value that they're willing to come to you and do the customer spotlights and, do all the things that are going to be about you. And, but in the beginning of that relationship, you're courting them, you're, you're, taking the time to understand them and to ask them to learn about you further or to spend time with you. And so that is.

priority that is saying this person has enough of my head space for me to want to stop and learn about them because they said this or because they're doing this action.

Yeah, I like it. Like limit the friction, limit the friction, increase the ease. But I also want like when people think about jumping on a call with me or you, it's like, there's like this smile, like this joy of like, gosh, I'm going to learn something like you said, and regardless. Yeah. Regardless of what you got.

not going fix me. They're not going to just come on and just tell me and talk at me. They're gonna like actually, again, I hate to say provide value, they're gonna come in, and they're going to change something in my day or make me think about something differently.

Yep, speak in my language. You're all good. All right, let's jump into that relationship between sales and marketing. We've already been talking about it. You just put in a post on LinkedIn that I was like, yes, can we talk about this? Because it is all about the relationship between marketing and sales. even though we have this goal to work together, sometimes systems really aren't in place to most.

you

or even create the structure where we both succeed together. And then at the end we're like, well, what happened? Well, maybe they just didn't do their job or whatever it may be. So do you wanna talk a little bit about how you've been thinking about this relationship? And I know that you even put like some tactical like, if you do this, then you can be aligned, those things.

And I so full transparency, having been a seller and sales leader for the past 12 years, that's my whole career, never been on the marketing side. There's always been this kind of natural unspoken either we're really simple, you know, really connected with our marketing team or really disconnected. And it's like kind of a battlefield and it's so some of those things that you read was coming from like a place of a lived it done it. And so

I'll start with kind of the use case and what, what I've seen. And I think we've all felt before and both either on the marketing side or sales side is, know, we've all been maybe in that situation where. Marketing was working on this project for two months and it was supposed to be this amazing thing for sales or vice versa. And you get to the other side of it. And it's like, wow, they just spent two months building,

new sales decks for us and we don't even use PowerPoint in our sales conversations. And then marketing's frustrated because they just spent all this time and energy and resources doing something that sales didn't need them to do. And sales is all frustrating. Well, we could have had you pulling in leads. It just becomes this like power dynamic of just missed, just like pass the kind of they call it like passing ships, like the missed line of connection from not having this almost like one.

fundamental mentality of, okay, what is really driving net revenue? What does make sense in our seller or buyer journey? And so some of the tactical things I spoke to in there was sitting down and can your sellers and the people on your marketing team go from start to finish on your sales and buyer journey? What makes sense at each stage? I mean, you most likely have defined sales processes that marketing should be read into.

What makes sense at the awareness level? What makes sense on demo one or consideration? What makes sense on our technical evaluation or our contract? Like what can we pull marketing into that makes the most sense is actually going to help us pull in revenue. Cause where the miss happens is when marketing stops at NQL and sales covers everything else. And it's, it's not the unified. Well, everybody wins if we're pulling in revenue and revenue looks like

this across the teams. And so it becomes when you start to position those two sides of your business against each other from a CEO lens, like how can you get them, know, sales carries quota marketing, probably three X is that in their own, I can speak as a marketer on the specific, you know, MQL, you know, how many clicks, those types of things, how do we translate that into a unified goal? That's that actually has, you know, tangible things that are moving.

the buyer journey or the sales journey along effectively for that company to pull in revenue. Cause if we're winning, the whole team's winning, right? If sales is closing deals, marketing has more funds to go to. And so it just kind of powers both sides of the house.

This is tricky though. This is really tricky when it comes to our industry in particular, right? We got long sales cycles that require deep relationship credibility, trust building. And that doesn't happen overnight. It happens with multiple touch points and multiple touch points usually originate on the marketing side. And sometimes, you know, it gets passed to sales. They're still interacting with marketing materials. And so most

EdTech organizations I have are still really moat. would say 90 % of them are not happy with their attribution model. And everyone's still trying to tweak that. Some people, if you're a startup listening, you're like, I don't even have an attribution model. It's just like, roll of thumb. So because you don't have the data supporting how you both are working together, sometimes it can be like, marketing doesn't do anything or, you know, so.

that we have a lack of data and structure. And I really love that about your post is like sometimes structurally we're just not set up to work together. But when you were talking, you're like, well, how does sales bring marketing in? I'm also thinking, how does marketing bring sales in? How do we do that strategically to make sure that we're aligned with what you need when you need it most? Have assumptions, but then come in and be curious. And I always come and say, well,

Yeah.

How would you use this case study? When people are slightly ghosting you, what's the great information? What's that value-driven stuff that you can reach out and be that thought partner? So it got me thinking. I was in my thinky face.

Yeah. And, and you kind of needed to like, do we on the front end too, with marketing, was, when you were talking, I was thinking also about the, you know, on the sales side, we have an obligation to say is what we're putting awareness out there. What we're trying our different attribution channels sticking and that, know,

I always cringe every time I think about like at the end of the year, a marketing is like, well, how was that event? Or how was like, let's get your conference, like, let's get your conference picked out for next year. And it's like, oh, we got to go back and like pull those numbers and, think about like, what actually led the pipeline. And so to your point to it's setting up the systems and structure, but it's also understanding that that's going to change year over year. What worked for the market last year or what persona or title or department or message was resonating last year evolves every year. And it's

our job both on the marketing and sales side to get together and say, what does now look like what's relevant today, but also what is tomorrow in the next six months look like? How do we get ahead, you know, three months ahead of seasonality. So we're hitting those different peak seasons in the falling kind of cycle. That was K-12 that we kind of started our whole conversation with is there is a seasonality play, but there's also just different, you know, what's relevant today versus what's relevant tomorrow.

Yeah.

Yeah. And things are moving so fast right now that I would say sometimes it's month to month we're changing. When it comes to conferences though, we're kind of looking from an annual perspective and trying to figure out, did that work? How do we want to alter? What are the bets we want to make given the industry trends? Gosh, AI is disrupting everything. Attention is becoming less and less available. So I'm always looking, my gosh, how do I change now? But if you don't have that communication set up with sales,

And if as a marketer, I'm doing stuff and I don't even know how it's landing, cause y'all aren't telling me, you know, so like it does take this beautiful collaboration and trust between the two teams. Cause nothing works if you're not communicating like everything, right?

And then you throw in rev ops on top of like your different channels and teams. The company is big enough that you're also throwing in on top of all of that is the technical infrastructure and getting the systems of the people and the tech working together.

Yep.

So let me end, we're gonna do a really fun lightning round when these questions are like, selfishly the ones I'm like, ooh, let me ask her that and that. But before we get into the lightning round, I want to just, it's something I grasp with. And I think that you probably do from a sales perspective as well is this tension between depth versus breadth. Like if I can email 200,000 people and I get a very low response rate, but.

it's high because of the amount of people. So I can scatter shot it and have more of a broad approach. Hey, you know, I can combat chronic absenteeism and, you know, hitting on things that I know generally that ICP will respond to, but it's very kind of scatter shot, big, broad, or I have more of a white glove approach and, and, and reach out to people and segment.

Yeah.

And we know that certain districts are bigger than others that, you know, obviously have bigger sales contract values. But like, how do you manage that when you're managing like teams of sales? And when you were on the ground too, like how do you balance the depth versus breadth?

Yeah. Well, you can't just wake up and say, I'm going to hit five accounts today and be done and be happy. So I think there's the, so what's the list that's required for what you're trying to go after. So you said, you know, ICP, so the ideal, you know, I ideal customer profile when you're starting to think about who you're going after, who's your product going to resonate with at that time and at that seasonality, I think back to kind of the market segment, we're in a unique place where

regionally and almost with like, let's pick a department like HR or directors of CNI of secondary, like you can have broader, I would say value or pain based messaging that's going to resonate in that department within that region or state or geographical area. So let's say we're picking California or picking Southern California. We're going after directors of CNI.

That could still be a large type of campaign or sales play that you're doing and still feel like you have, you know, a big scope that you're going after. And it's not as white glove as I'm picking these four accounts on the greater city council. And I'm going to have a multi, you know, multi-threading approach with them. And this person, you know, just left as assistant soup over here and moved over to district. That's a very strategic enterprise level play that you can't.

uses your entire pipeline building strategy, right? Like you're going to have your white glove accounts. This person knows this person here. You know, we're going to go in and open the door through this unique campaign because this is relevant for that district or these five districts within this regional service center. so to your question, I think it depends on what you're building or what your team's going after. Let's say you have like an SDR team that is doing a broader scope, regional play on a specific territory.

You're not probably going to have them target three school districts in one day and only focus on this specific title in person because this change happened or this signal came up or, whatever. So I, I think it's kind of a double edged sword. can't just do the, okay, I'm only calling these 15 accounts because you're putting all your eggs in one basket. So they say, but I think there's also the, the larger thoughtful approach of if you're going to pick an IC, you know, that ideal customer profile.

you're picking it in a sense that's strategic, thoughtful, and relevant to what's happening in that market in that moment with that title and with those challenges they're facing. From a seasonality perspective too, like I am not gearing up my huge, you know, instructional campaign right now when we're hitting, you know, maybe a testing window next week, or I'm not, you know, hitting the specific title group in the July month because this is happening in there, you know.

principles are out of building, whatever you're picking and whoever you're going after has to have that certain play that meets that rhythm of K-12 and meets those playing points. So back to your original question, do I pick kind of the broader scope or the very white glove approach? I think you can put a more thoughtful, almost like white glove touch on a broader approach and you can't just like email 5,000 people and hope it sticks. But I think there's also the lens of

I do need to still have maybe my 12 strategic accounts that I'm working over here or have an account executive working on while my SGRs are running this play. Yeah.

Yeah, so what I'm hearing is, and this was kind of a setup too, it's like, it's never one or the other. It's like, what's that balance? And what I heard from you is that balance is, and what we also say on the marketing side is it depends on your capacity. It depends on your unique capabilities. So it depends on a lot of things that you can figure out what balance works best, but it's not one or the other, because that's dangerous too.

The chicken array.

Yeah. And you brought it up earlier. Like there was a lot of AI tools doing a lot around this and data points are powerful and that's never going to be a bad thing for a conversation to know, you know, somebody moved districts or this RFP came up or like, those are all just data points and a larger equation of your playbook. And so those do bring value, but it's knowing, okay, am I coming in at an inflection point that feels like I can get them curious enough to want to make that change? So

I think there is some judgment I call, you know, when you're thinking about like, there's the movable middle, as I used to call it, like, there's people who are like, they're gonna pick up the phone or you're marketing to them, it's just not gonna land because it's not, it's not resonating. They're like, like 20%. That's just not, it's not hitting them. There's that middle who are like, you know, I've thought about it, there are things going on, there's, you know, some chatter in the market, I might consider it. And then you have your top of funnel, which a lot of marketing is trying to scoop up, which is like,

I'm thinking about this. I'm actively going out in the market and doing research on this. I'm glad I ran across your form. I'm going fill it out and get my more information. So I think there's those different kind of markets. You're starting to have to tier the readiness of also your prospecting market as well as your seller market.

that. I actually have never heard that the movable middle. So sales and then I don't know if you caught what Shelby did, but she kind of changed the marketing funnel into really she talked about the sales funnel really. So that was kind of cool. All right. I know we can talk about ton of this stuff later, so much more than what we've already done on sales, but I love how we were able to come together and just gosh, how do we work together for marketing and sales and what's truly different?

I'm

going on, what are we seeing now in trends that can help us when we're hitting the ground? Because right now is go time in sales. But let's jump into one of my favorite things that we've been doing with guests lately. It's called our lightning round. And I'm just going to throw some questions at you and you just do your gut reaction. You ready? All right. So if you had if you only had one way to close deals, what would you choose?

Okay.

okay. I'll bring it back to kind of what we talked about with what's needed to land in sales right now. solution selling has something called a project plan, which is basically where you map out. it's a mutual agreement between buyer and seller on how you're going to come to your decision. It's a mutual plan. I would add a layer to that though.

I would say if I had to have one thing this year to drive, it would be almost like a change management plan. And what I mean by that is, it's not just how they're going to buy your product, but how they're going to implement and carry that product. So pulling a lot of that implementation conversation forward, I think a lot of times when you're talking about the future and you're planning for the future, not to romanticize it, but like when you're planning for the future together and you're thinking about these are the things that are going to happen.

Everything else just clicks into place, right? If you're planning these outcomes, okay, we want to see this in six months. We want to see this in one year from now. We want to eventually get to here two years out from now. If somebody is giving you the space and the connections within that district to have that type of meeting and that conversation and that one sales setting, as you would say, everything else is going to click. They're going to go find the funding. They're going to go.

work with teams to figure out how the heck they're going to get you in the district. They're going to say, go fill out all these contract forms, these technical forms, like you need to meet with this. It pulls you in because you've created a vision for where they need to go next and you're part of that vision. And so you plan that future and everything else would click. I'd almost say, know what we'll call it. I'm sure there'll be a fun phrase that comes out of this new market, but like a change management plan beyond just here's how you're going to buy our product.

how our product looks for the next 15 months with you.

are One belief about K-12 sales you wish teams would let go of? Like right now, stop doing it.

Stop thinking you're going to solve 100% of their problems. I think early in my career, heard, you know, if you, if I could solve 85 % of the problem that you just described most of the time, that's enough. I think we go in and we say, yes, we can integrate. Yes, we can do this. Did they ask you to integrate there? Do they need that API built there? Do they really need you to have all those bells and whistles that are probably by the time they buy it, just going to be toggled off anyways? So I think

Reminder to sales teams, stop trying to check every single one of their box and check the five that you do really well and lean into that because if you're solving 85 % of that problem, then it just makes sense and you're not going to solve 100 % and that's okay.

Yeah, mic drop. My head was like going, yes. Okay, one thing that salespeople over prepare for and one thing they under prepare for?

Hahaha

No way.

whoo, this is a spicy one. Stop over preparing for your demos and your presentations. I and start having conversations and start really getting to know how your product lives in their day of life. And we spend so much time saying, did I click that right? And it's okay. It's okay to want to be polished and your big presentations in front of like a conference setting. It's another thing to just

do it in a one-on-one meeting with somebody and they have to sit there for 60 minutes and listen to your polished demo instead of saying, you know, we connected today. There were three things you're looking for here. Those three things. And that does not take this big polished 60 minute demo with all these buzzwords. And so if I had to stop something on sales and I would argument say sales enablement, stop sending so much time trying to perfect the demo, the slide decks and the presentations and start taking time to work with your sellers, marketers or whoever.

and perfect the conversation and the question asking and the ability to get a higher level of thinking out of the change management design. We do a lot of this with like solution engineers, as you refer to as like thinking behind a technical, thinking about the landscape, thinking about that change management again. And sometimes that's lost in sellers. Sometimes sellers is like, no, you just need to know the battle cards, the competitor differentiators, these buzzwords, this funding source. And we forget about...

teaching our sellers sometimes like how does this look in a school? And so whether that's shadowing your implementation team, whether it's getting them meeting weekly with solution engineers or product, like I'll say and get them talking about product, but get them to understand how districts roll this out. And that is not going to be as pretty as your demo from day one.

I've actually never had this happen in a lightning round before, but you transitioned me into my next question really nicely. What's one question, because you already mentioned, what's one question that salespeople should be asking buyers, the school and district buyers, what's one question you wish that they would ask, but they usually don't?

Hello! I'm flattered.

no.

Okay, I, since I already transitioned myself into this, I will explain the why sellers do this too. As a seller, your mind, no matter, there's just this weight you carry in the back of your head that is your quoted number for a company. And it carries into all your conversations subconsciously. You're like, oh my goodness, I have to go hit that $1 million, whatever number and...

People can feel that in sales conversations. They know when you're, you see them as a contract and you don't see them as that human. And so I would almost urge sellers to, know, we think so much about the front end and what it takes to buy the product that we never asked that what happens after you buy our product questions. So the one question I would ask is what happens six months after you implement this with us, what changes for you, what would get you excited to come back and say, we want to do more with you or.

This is exactly what we talked about in the pre-sales process. Like that's the question I would urge sellers to start thinking about the other side of it and pull that into their front of their conversation versus just focusing on the, it takes to buy or, you know, the band-aid like, Oh, you have this today and let's solve this. Like get them thinking that future with you again. Um, and sometimes that takes turning off that part of your brain. That's like getting to the number.

because the number will come when you start having those conversations, that number is going to come because people are going to be building that long term trust and that sustainability relationship with you. And yeah, so that's what I would ask.

It's funny, it's almost an irony is like when you stop focusing on the goal, actually accomplish the goal, right? And you can smell it. You can smell it when you're like, I need to hit my quota. So right on. All right, I'm gonna.

Hahaha!

Yeah.

It's hard. mean, just your paycheck. Like that's your, I don't want to say it's your worth at a company because it's so culturally not okay. But it's, it, it's how we established, like salespeople were natural. Like we look at a board and we're like, I want to be the leader on the board. And there's nothing wrong with that, but sometimes you got to leave it at the door.

And it takes, you know, I think people will respect you more and you will make more impact in the industry if you have the courage to say, I don't think you're ready for us right now, or I don't think that you're a fit for us right now. Like those are powerful moments that they will never forget and they will increase the trust. And I've had people go, oh my gosh, thank you. And they come back when they are and or they refer.

So, know, having leading with that curiosity and all the things you're saying. Okay, the last question. One habit that consistently shows up in top tier K-12 sellers. So those people that want to be on the top of the leaderboard that you were saying, what's one habit that really fuels them? Maybe pun intended for your company.

Yeah. Um, seeking to understand. Um, I think that would be the one habit, right? When we think about, um, top sellers are always adapting. They're always able to call it like chess, not checkers, but they're always thinking of the next thing that they're not afraid, like you said, to have those tough conversations with their client

and say, I know you thought about it this way, but what happens if we switch it to this? It really does take a, a different sales skillset in that sense. Cause I think when you're a greener rep, you're just trying to figure out the space you're coming in and you're trying to like, keep your head above water and you're learning things as it's being built and you're

And a lot of times if you're coming from the class, you might be sitting in front of your former superintendent, you know, sitting in front of your boss. So being able to have those tough conversations, like you said, and that transparency and that sounding board type conversation that may not be the sale in that meeting, but gets you on a place of I respect this person. I see what they bring the value to the conversation. They sit there and listen. If you don't know necessarily what the district's talking about, even if you're a top seller and they go

down a path of, I don't know a ton about, you know, this type of classroom design, but like I could go in and ask the right questions. I am a, you know, puzzle piece finder for them. Like that's, that's where you're there bringing the value of that top seller. They've earned a seat at the table because they asked the right questions in the right places. And they're seeking to put everything together and a coherent and thoughtful way for their champion or better half.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Shelby, for joining. it's such a pleasure to work or to collaborate with someone who you get to see it from a larger vantage point. So you're not just running sales for one organization. So I really thank you for kind of bringing your perspective, what you're seeing in the industry. For those of you that are for those of that for those who are listening. Whoa.

Bye!

How can they get a hold of you and how would they like to continue the conversation with you?

Yeah, they can definitely please reach out on LinkedIn. So I you said mine in beginning, but just Shelby Jones fuel K 12 is our vendor facing names to definitely check us out. Happy to answer any questions or just be a friend in the space. think this is such a niche space and education sales and you know, we got connected through here. Like I think there's just a lot of it's a warm space. It's a place where people are connecting and want to help

know, pay it forward and advance each other and their careers. So happy just to be a friend in that space. And so definitely reach out directly on LinkedIn or if you want to learn more about Fuel K12, definitely reach out to our site.

Yeah, and that's Fuel K12. Okay, great. And we'll put all of that in the show notes as well. Those of you that are on the run, whatever in the car. Thank you everybody for listening. I hope you found this valuable. One of the calls I always ask for you is to pause and say, was there one thing that Shelby said, and she was talking about mind shift a lot too, from the seller perspective, was there one mind shift or was there one little thing that you were going to try differently?

fuel-k12.com.

That's all I hope. I don't expect to change your life. I expect to maybe change one thing like Shelby said as well. So thank you so much, Shelby, for coming on the show. Thank you everyone for listening. We will see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.

Thank you.