Creating Touchpoints with K-12 Buying Committees

Hey, John, good to see you.

How's the weather over in the DC area?

There we go. Well, I'm sure the kids didn't mind the school shutting down. California is also getting hit with a torrential downpour, and you know how it is, as soon as it dips below 55 degrees it's like we've got an Arctic freeze going on. Anyway, excited to jump into our topic for today: creating touchpoints with K-12 buying committees. The reality today is that K-12 purchases involve an informal coalition rather than a single buyer. Vendors need multiple channels reaching multiple people, but most either blast the same message to everyone, talk to only one person while ignoring the others, or worse, circumvent other team members to jump right to the top. John, when you're evaluating a new product, who else has to sign off before anything moves forward?

It depends on the persona you're speaking to. For curriculum folks, your assistant superintendents of curriculum and instruction, you need content that speaks to outcomes and standards alignment, blogs and case studies, especially ones that show districts matching their current reality. John, if somebody showed you the example of LAUSD with half a million students and 700-plus schools, would that really resonate?

You really have to speak the language of your buyer. It's also important to reach curriculum folks with conference sessions, which they attend for PD. Don't make your session a straight-up product pitch, nobody likes that. Peer recommendations from other educators are very important, and relationships matter. It's hard to build bridges and easy to burn them. Without naming names, I know a teacher who had a bad experience with a vendor, they weren't getting the support they needed, and worse, the vendor ghosted them. Later, a top-level administrator at a nearby district reached out to that teacher asking about their experience, because that vendor was one of a few they were considering. They were polite, but honest, and that vendor lost any chance of working with a pretty large district. Now, for tech directors like you, John, I imagine compliance and interoperability documentation is important to have upfront.

For technology solutions like LMSs and SISs, tech-focused publications matter, as do vendor review sites, EdSurge, Common Sense Education. Now, this might hurt a few egos, but awards really don't mean much in 2026. This comes from someone who submitted and won over 11 awards for companies I worked for. A lot of them are pay to win, as the kids say. Most award committees don't actually look at the product. If they're not asking for login information to access your courseware, are they really evaluating it? Tech directors also appreciate direct outreach that respects their role. They're gatekeepers protecting the rest of their school or district, so don't try to go around them.

Absolutely. It doesn't take much to be a good human being. For teacher champions, educator communities are important, teacher groups on Facebook and Twitter. Free trials matter, a teacher wants to use your tool, see it inside and out, and get a sense of what it would look like in their classroom. They attend a lot of PD webinars, so investing in that content is a good idea. And at conferences, hands-on workshops are great and let teachers play with your product. An example from my previous role as VP of Marketing at Mastery Coding: the difference between approaching CTE directors versus directors of expanded learning at conferences. The after-school folks were much more interested in signing up for a demo on the spot and spending time at the booth, while CTE directors did a lot of their research ahead of time. I can second this from my friend Dr. Jill Ranucci, a former CTE director with over 20 years of experience in Texas and Arizona. She did the majority of her research online and, as you pointed out, uses the conference as validation, not discovery.

Absolutely. John, as a buyer, what's an example of a vendor who showed up in multiple places in a way that felt helpful, as opposed to one that felt like stalking?

It sounds like if a vendor answered some of those questions before you sent the RFP, they'd have a real leg up on the competition.

Not to mention those FAQs and comparisons are great for SEO and AEO, as we covered in a previous episode.

You must have been following my LinkedIn posts. We see a lot of things missing. Sometimes it's the ongoing nurture, a lot of vendors do an initial email blast but no follow-up sequences. Sometimes it's teacher-facing touchpoints, vendors only talk to decision-makers and forget they need internal champions. Referring again to my friend Dr. Jill Ranucci, she would never pilot a CTE solution her CTE educators wouldn't be excited to use.

Absolutely. Another thing I see is conference presence without the work before or after the conference, like an incomplete charcuterie board, a board with a bunch of cheese but no meat, nuts, or olives. You invested so much in the booth, flying your team out, the badge scanner, collateral, but if you don't have the follow-up ready the week after, it's a big waste of money. Organic content and SEO matter, and a lot of companies pour resources into outbound without building the inbound engine. No social proof on the website, no clear messaging, something we covered in the episode on turning your website into an inbound lead generation machine.

Partner channels are also important. Leverage existing relationships, industry associations, resellers, integrations. When you work with a reseller that already has relationships with school districts in their state, you get access to all of those relationships through your partnership.

So, John, do you actually notice when a vendor has coordinated their outreach, or does it all blur together?

Absolutely. It's about thinking beyond the next 90 days. What are you doing to get out of feast-or-famine mode, where the current campaign may have provided some meetings or pilots, but unless you have a consistent engine running whether you're in the office or not, you'll hit those slow periods and have to be prepared for them.

And not just brand building, relationships. Just because a buyer isn't looking for a product right now, or doesn't have funds open, doesn't mean they won't in 6, 12, or 18 months. Wouldn't a vendor rather have a good relationship with a tech director for when the funds do open?

The most successful sales reps I know create those bridges and bring those relationships with them even when they move from company to company. Continuing to engage with people whose needs you understand can serve you in the future.

That seems like low-hanging fruit.

It's hard to think of just one. One thing I've personally seen is paid ads with broad targeting that result in expensive click-through that doesn't convert for 6 to 18 months. There was a time I contracted an ad agency to bring me school principals, and instead they brought me principal contractors and were really chuffed with their results. Safe to say I wasn't. I also see vendors spend a lot on giant national conferences where their ICP isn't represented, when they could be creating local relationships. I was at the Future of Education Technology Conference in Orlando a couple of months ago, and there was a vendor whose ICP was higher ed, they spent a lot doing a booth and hosting an after-hours event at a K-12 conference, great for me because I enjoyed a couple of free drinks, but they probably didn't get the result they wanted. Another vendor sponsored a state-run award show and was put in a line with teachers and principals filing past to shake hands with the state leader. Just like a school cafeteria, this vendor was forcefully shoving flyers in the faces of everybody who went past. Thankfully there was a trash can at the end of the line. They probably should have known they were in the wrong place when the booth next to them was a state-run lottery. Spending a lot on swag and giveaways that attract badge-scanners, not buyers, is another big waste, as is sponsoring publications or newsletters that don't reach decision makers or even your target ICP.

I was at a national CTSO convention where a vendor handed out uniquely designed, cool-looking kitchen timers, and educators were actually excited, because who doesn't need a timer in their kitchen? It's an item that would actually be helpful.

What's one thing vendors should do this week to audit whether their touchpoints are reaching the right people?

If you're at a loss for ideas, look at your last five closed deals. What touchpoints did each person in the buying coalition interact with before signing? If you can't track those, spend time setting up the tracking so you can capture it in the future. And if you don't have deals to look at yet, consider your sales territory mapping, are you going after the right states, what funds are available there for your solution, and are you targeting specific districts based on their needs or back to spray and pray?

That's very sound advice, John. I think that's a great natural end to this episode. Thank you so much for your time, always a pleasure.